Annihilation Book 2

Collects Annihilation: Silver Surfer #1-4 written by Keith Giffen and drawn by Renarto Arlem, Annihilation: Super Skrull #1-4 written by Javier Grillo-Marxuach and drawn by Gregory Titus and Annihilation: Ronan #1-4 written by Simon Furman and drawn by Jorge Lucas.

This is the second book in the Annihilation event, the first book of which was reviewed here.

The Annihilation Wave thunders on through the galaxies, destroying everything on it's way, and three of the Marvel Universe's space born heroes and villains get caught up. The three stories in this book takes place right after each other, but there is no connection between them as such, except for the Annihilation Wave showing up in all three. Presumably, the loose ends that this books creates, will be dealt with in the central Annihilation storyline, which is included in the third and last book. Not much is learned about the Annihilation Wave as such, rather the stories focus on the main characters and setting them up for the final book.

In terms of plot, the Silver Surfer story comes off a little slow, but Giffen does manage to bring it home. This is certainly a setup story, in the sense that after reading it, you will have to read what comes after. The story deals with entities going back to the beginning of the MU, and yes, Galactus is in it too. The art is good, although the lack of backgrounds in outer space makes it a little boring in the long run.

The Super Skrull story is the weakest of the bunch. Grillo-Marxuach tries to tell the story of the Super Skrull as seen from the viewpoints of the Skrulls, i.e. as a hero, but still wants to expose his villainous character traits. It never really feels right. In this story Super Skrull goes to the Negative Zone to find the inventor of a big world eater weapon the Annihilation Wave has brought along. While there he frees some prisoners and they become his army. Felt a bit too much like a compressed World War Hulk story for my taste. The art is so-so, one problem being that I didn't like the way Super Skrull himself is drawn. His chin is too pointy and he doesn't feel as powerful as he should.

In Annihilation Book 1 we saw Ronan accused of treachery and as a consequence he is banished from the Kree empire. In this story he finds himself on a small planet where strange things are going one. The story seems a bit confusing at first, with lots of people fighting for apparently no reason, but about halfway through things start to make sense, and at the end of the day it actually comes out as a pretty decent story. The Annihilation Wave is employed here as a mechanism for moving the story along, and thus never really takes center stage. The art is good, although I think it would have been better suited for black/white publication. Lucas obviously takes a lot of inspiration from European sf comics artists such as Moebius, and that's a perfect fit for this story.

Those who don't know much about Marvel's intergalactic characters and races, and that includes myself, will be relieved that a lot of information is provided in the form of OHOTMU-style descriptions. Still, I do sit back with the distinct feeling that the book would have been more enjoyable if I'd read stuff like Starlin's Thanos Quest and Infinity Gauntlet/War/Crusade/Abyss series, but I guess that goes for the whole Annihilation event.

All in all a decent book that moves the event along and sets up for what should be an interesting finale. One thing I like about this event so far, is that it does succeed in making the characters that appear feel less like b-rate second-string characters and more like a-rate MU characters. It brings the Universe back in the MU, one might say. Hehe, that was a good one, hehe...

5/10