What has happened before: The Kree and the Shi’Ar went to war again, this time lead by Earth-born conquerors (Black Bolt and Vulcan, respectively). The Kree won when Black Bolt set off a doomsday weapon that appeared to kill both Vulcan and himself.  While all this was going on, the former Shi’Ar empress, Lilandra, was assassinated by what appears to have been Darkhawk.

If the War of Kings miniseries had a failing, it was that the ending was rather abrupt. Thankfully, this issue provided a much needed epilogue for this epic crossover.  Writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning maintain their high level of quality output here, as does artist Paul Pelletier. Like their Secret Invasion: War of Kings one shot, this issue concisely sums up the previous crossover, tells a self-contained story, and provides all the necessary set up for the next crossover event. My only problem with it is that it makes me want to follow the upcoming Realm of Kings crossover, despite my crossover fatigue and rapidly shrinking comics budget.

Of course, if Marvel continues to publish transitional one-shots of such high quality, I may just skip the crossovers altogether and buy these every few months…

The horrible thing about comic books (aside from the smellier denizens of  cons and shops) is filing them. If you’re going to buy a comic, it’s incredibly unlikely you will throw it away, even if you hated it. Something about ink addiction, I imagine, or just sheer pack rattitude.

all hail the conquering skrull puncher

Event titles that come out after the arc is complete, even one-shot epilogues like Secret Invasion: War of Kings, tend to bug me for that very reason. The idea of dragging out a moth-balled long box just to stuff one more comic inside causes my head to wobble from side to side, strained animal noises to emit from my throat, and my arms to flail around like a nine-year-old on his long, tortured pathway to an early bedtime.

In fact, I think that’s the point, really. We readers, many of us who even enjoyed Secret Invasion, have put it to bed. Why haven’t you, Marvel?

Oh, it’s because writing team Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning are having a really awesome party in space and you are invited to come along. Let’s go!

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Ah ladies and gents, I’m through issue #18 and that mean another update on my X-Treme X-Men reading.

As a reminder, I’m spoiling this series as I talk about my reaction, so watch out (even though the series is about 8 years old).

So far I’m having a lot of fun with this series in a sense that Chris Claremont seems to be batshit crazy when it comes to story arcs. Moving from Vargas killing Psylocke to Gambit becoming some tool of inter-dimensional imperialists (with some minor arcs in there — I’m not following the wikipedia page I’m reading in order of the comics I have #1-46) this series has been pretty good. I really do like Chris Claremont’s plots, but, as I’ve said, he just goes on and on with the narration.

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, and let me just say it right now: Warren Ellis pretty much summed up exactly how I feel about writers like Chris Claremont at Wizard World Chicago when he had his late night panel on Friday. He was explaining that sometimes writers don’t know when to shut the hell up and let the art tell the story. And it’s funny because someone in the crowd actually called out and said “Could you tell Chris Claremont?” I wish I could have been there.

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