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When
Universes Collide...
Negation
War #1
writer: Tony Bedard
artists: Paul Pelletier and Dave Meikis
For the
CrossGen Universe as some know it, the end has come. No whimpering
here, because Negation War already has plenty of bang.
The creative team delivers high action, a little intrigue,
and some solutions to longstanding mysteries for CrossGen
fans, all in a package that still easily invites the strangers
to CrossGen to sit down and stay a while.
In essence,
as promised, this is a big event that sums up what the Tampa
company has been trying to accomplish for the last four years:
good comics.
So maybe
CrossGen's claim not to have superheroes was a bit disingenuous.
Certainly those blessed with the mark of the sigil were superheroes
in all but name. And Negation War opens by finally
introducing an official costumed hero, Mighty-Man. It might
be a flip move, because despite his strength and tie to the
overall sigil issue, you can tell by the cover that he won't
fare too well.
The strongest
of the company's original books, however, revolved around
characters that did not possess any special powers anyway,
such as Cassie Starkweather in Route 666 and Simon
Archard in Ruse. (The former title will survive
this onslaught.) Leading the battle against the corrupted
Negation servants of Charon, CrossGen's strongest "normal
guy" hero, military man Obregon Kaine, will obviously prove
his worth in this mini-series.
Caught
in a struggle between a god, Charon, and a devil, Apollyon,
in the Negation Universe, Kaine has already become legend
to the resistance of that alternate plane. As he fights to
make it back to the "real" universe, Charon has already crossed
the veil and plans to take reality down one planet at a time.
It sounds
plenty cosmic, only appropriate for a book tying together
a universe. Bedard, however, draws us in on a very human level.
We know Mighty-Man, but not just because he follows the Superman
archetype. Instead, with subtle clues drawn by Pelletier and
Meikis, we see the man. He won't be fighting just to save
his world; it's more intimate than that. He has a wife and
child (or children), and there must be a specific reason that
his orange-eyed companion, too, is a child.
Such
reasons do not become clear yet, but more and more pieces
to the CrossGen puzzle fall into place. In the battles involving
Charon, his consort Evinlea, and Mighty-Man, there is just
enough of the big picture to satisfy. My only qualm with the
issue is that Po-Po the talking monkey from Way of the
Rat seems strangely subdued. Under the circumstances,
I guess, it's understandable.
Rating:
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