Book of Doom:
War of Kings #1
First off, many apologies for the tardiness of this week’s Book of Doom. I had in-laws in town this weekend and completely spaced it until I was already in bed last night.
So as for War of Kings #1, we’ve got the Starjammers on Hala for the wedding of Crystal and Ronan. For some reason, this wedding was a surprise to me. I don’t remember if I misread something from the preview issue that came out not long ago or maybe forgot reading something else, but I thought there had been a mention of them once being engaged, but that it had been called off. Maybe it had just been put off. No matter, because it didn’t take long to realize that what I had thought was either wrong or irrelevant, for there was a couple to be wed (and that big softie Ronan got his heart broken too).
Back in Shi’ar land, Vulcan is planning to wipe out the Kree because he wants to. Thankfully for the Shi’ar, the Kree have all of their defenses coordinated from a single tower easily infiltrated by a shape-shifter, so that when said shape-shifter suicide-bombs the tower, the defenses are down and the Shi’ar can invade. That seemed a little too easy to me.
I can think of absolutely zero examples, but for some reason the concept of “Tragedy at a wedding” seems like a cliche. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but if it is, it makes good sense. You increase the sense of tragedy, because the victims are there to celebrate love but fall by war. You also clearly establish who the bad guys are, by pointing out these sneaky Shi’ar scumbags would attack people who are in no position to fight back. (Now that I think about it, recalling Abnett & Lanning’s previous efforts at comparing the Skrull invasion to “jihad,” maybe wedding attacks seem familiar because of attacks in real life.)
This issue leaves us with a bloody wedding scene filled with casualties and Medusa declaring the Shi’ar “shall pay in blood.” So now we have two alien races the Inhumans have declared war on. Given the preview issue was the Inhumans declaring war on the Skrulls, I’m a little puzzled as to why that was a one-shot and this was issue #1. I think it would’ve been fine to have that be issue #1 and this be issue #2. Not that any of that really matters. As far as stages being set, this still looks like a good one.
Here’s what Doomsday Spa thought about the issue: (more…)