This mini-series was originally supposed to come out in mid-2020, loosely connected to the Empyre event. You remember, the one where the Coati (the telepathic trees) launched an invasion of Earth, or something? Yeah, I didn't pay it much mind either, and the COVID pandemic threw a giant spanner in the works. So Marvel, in their eternal churn, merely delayed the mini-series to instead loosely tie it to King in Black over the winter of 2020-2021.
Either way, the event is incidental to the story Grist tells, which is about a super-team meant to represent the United Kingdom, with superheroes from each part of the British Isles. Except the hero meant to lead them gets killed in issue 1, leaving Union Jack to try and lead a team of people that all hate the English and certainly don't want to follow the guy wearing England's flag on his chest.
Grist adds in some super-villains (including a talking corgi, so adorably evil), plus a super-villain turned government minister (whose power, appropriately for a stuffed shirt, was to leech the power from other people), a techbro billionaire sponsoring the superhero team, some backstory for a couple of the characters, and a race to steal a MacGuffin stone that will somehow make a person an Emperor.
I think this would have worked better if Grist drew it himself. Di Vito's work makes it look like a fairly standard superhero story, but it doesn't feel like that kind of story. The costumed heroes and villains are largely ineffectual, several steps behind the real bad guy (surprise! it's the billionaire!). Grist's own art, where besides the costume, Jack Staff doesn't look much different from anyone else in his world, would seem to match a story where the heroes can't get past their distaste for each other (or their own egos and incompetence) to actually stop anyone. Some of the character designs are pretty nifty, though.
The team does come together briefly at the end, urged by Britannia's spirit as the representation of a unified Britain, to work as a group rather than everyone trying to act alone. They still don't accomplish much The public doesn't rally behind them, they aren't the ones who eventually secure the MacGuffin. I guess Grist is focusing on small victories. Union Jack feeling he does measure up, The Choir turning away fully from her criminal past, the bureaucrat helping out because Britannia believed in him once upon a time. The team members of Wales, Scotland and Ireland not chucking Union Jack off a bridge. Progress.
4 comments:
I love Paul Grist, and Marvel's UK branch, but I just wasn't moved to pick this up. I'm not sure why. Perhaps a general Marvel fatigue, or a dislike of how everything is an event over there, although given that this has only very tenuous links to the crossover, it may not be so bad.
I wouldn't say you missed much by skipping it. It's not bad, and the King in Black stuff is done by the end of issue 2, but it's not great. Maybe just my expectation of seeing the team come together more triumphantly, but it felt like the first half of a larger story.
I think I read somewhere that it was one of these Marvel series that was supposed to be longer but got truncated, but I may be making that up.
I could believe it. It feels like the first act, the team finally managing to set aside differences and sorta work together, but without any real triumph they can claim beyond that.
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