"Annihilation: Conquest Prologue"

 

            The following is a review of the graphic novel “Annihilation: Conquest Prologue” as presented in Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection format.

            On Lamentis Outworld, Phyla-Vell/Quasar and Heather Douglas/Moondragon were staying with the Priests of Pama following the Annihilation War. On Hala, Ronan the Accuser, now leader of the Kree, had given Peter Quill (formerly Star-Lord) the position of Special Military Advisor to the Kree Leadership following the Annihilation War. Quill had arranged the usage of the Galadorian Spaceknights’ A-Ware technology for the Kree War-Net. Quasar heard a voice from the Quantum Bands warning of disaster for the Kree and a conquest, instructing her to find a savior, a task only Quasar could accomplish. Quill met with a delegation of Spaceknights to test the A-Ware technology. The Kree War-Net turned on the Kree and attacked the Kree. Quasar and Moondragon were attacked by a Kree Sentry. The two women defeated the Sentry. Hala had been attacked by the Phalanx, a race of techno-organic beings who assimilated with the races they invaded and now wished to assimilate the Kree. The Phalanx released a pulse that shifted Kree space out of the rest of the galaxy. Quasar vowed to find the savior of the Kree people. Quill tried to fight the Phalanx, who had begun to assimilate the Kree, but was injured.

            Kree Admiral Galen-Kor had all of Quill’s technological implants removed. Quill was tasked to lead a no-tech strike force against the Phalanx to destroy the Phalanx’s infiltration system before it could be brought online. The task force was comprised of prisoners of the Kree, including the Bug, Deathcry, Mantis, Gabriel Vargas/Captain Universe, Rocket Raccoon, and Groot. The team went into their mission, and tensions rose between Captain Universe and Deathcry after Captain Universe committed a perceived slight against Deathcry by defending her from a Phalanx sentry, an act considered offensive to the Shi’ar. The Phalanx detected the team’s presence and sent more sentries after them. As the team fought off the sentries, Captain Universe once again saved Deathcry. Deathcry turned feral on Captain Universe, and Deathcry was unalived when Captain Universe accidentally used the Uni-force to protect himself from her oncoming attack. The team managed to escape from the sentries. Quill took the uniform of a Kree maintenance worker and accessed a Kree data hub. Quill discovered the Phalanx were releasing an airborne nanovirus to infect the Kree. Quill returned to the team to inform them of this horrifying news. The team was attacked by Phalanx drones. Captain Universe stayed behind to give the team time to escape from the drones. As the team reached a crowded area, they were apprehended by Phalanx sentries and detained. Mantis was able to evade capture. Mantis reunited with Captain Universe. The team realized that they were already infected with the nanovirus. Captain Universe had to use the Uni-force against the Phalanx. Mantis freed the rest of the team. The team fought to escape and complete their mission.

            Quasar and Moondragon were attacked by the Super-Adaptoid, who had been assimilated by the Phalanx. During the fight, Quasar went into an uncontrollable rage, and one of the jewels in Quasar’s Quantum Bands went dark. Moondragon was plagued with headaches. Quasar’s rage was caused by Annihilus, the previous wearer of the Quantum Bands before Phyla-Vell. Quasar learned that if all the jewels in the Quantum Bands went dark, the Bands would be useless. The Phalanx assaulted the Priests of Pama’s sanctuary and obliterated it. Only Quasar and Moondragon survived. Quasar and Moondragon went to the Kree world Dlaw-Neurg. On the Kree planet Ollupac, the Super-Adaptoid heard tell of a wizard. Super-Adaptoid attacked Quasar and Moondragon on Dlaw-Neurg and copied her Quantum Bands in order to be able to follow the savior’s energy trail, then flew off. Moondragon abandoned her humanity to become the Dragon of the Moon to aid Quasar. Quasar and the Dragon of the Moon went to the planet Morag IV, where they were ambushed by the Super-Adaptoid. Quasar and the Dragon of the Moon were defeated. The two were nursed back to health by a native named Dejann. Quasar and the Dragon of the Moon found the Super-Adaptoid attempting to assimilate the savior, who was in a cocoon. An army of Phalanx arrived on Morag IV to take out the natives. Quasar and the Dragon of the Moo turned their attention away from the Super-Adaptoid to save the natives. In the fight, Quasar used up all the energy in the Quantum Bands, leaving them powerless. Quasar led the fight with just her natural inborn powers. Quasar fought the Super-Adaptoid and drained some quantum energy from the Super-Adaptoid, then used logic in a final Quantum Band duel. In the aftermath, the previous Quasar, Wendell Vaughn, arrived to banish Annihilus from the Quantum Bands. The source of the voice was revealed, and the savior emerged.

            Richard Rider/Nova was the last surviving member of the Nova Corps and had the Worldmind downloaded in his head, containing all the data of the Xandarian culture. Nova had been flying from planet to planet, answering distress calls. Nova stopped the Planetfall weapon from causing mass destruction on Turakis and took out leftovers from the Annihilation Wave on Halexa. Nova responded to a distress call from the Research Habitat Sorona Dae, but the call was on autorepeat and all life in the habitat had long since expired. Nova traveled through a stargate and arrived on Earth’s moon. Nova decided to visit his home planet while he was in the vicinity. Nova went to his parents’ house. While partaking in a dinner with them, the conversation between Nova and his father got heated over the New Warriors and the Superhuman Registration Act. Suddenly, S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Tony Stark/Iron Man and a group of agents arrived at Nova’s parents’ house, following the energy trail Nova left entering Earth’s atmosphere and mistakenly perceiving him as a threat. An angered Nova left with Stark aboard the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. While Stark did not know about the Annihilation War, Nova was aware of the superhuman Civil War that had just concluded. Stark asked Nova to register. Nova said he needed twenty-four hours to think it over. Nova spoke to Vance Astrovik/Justice, a registered superhero and former fellow New Warrior. Justice tried to convince Nova to stay and become part of the Initiative. While sleeping, Worldmind took control of Nova’s motor functions and frightened Nova’s father. Nova was attacked by the supervillain Diamondhead. Nova defeated the villain and found himself wanted by Norman Osborn’s Thunderbolts for unregistered vigilantism. Nova fought the Thunderbolts until Iron Man arrived to intervene and end the fight. After returning home, Nova was confronted by Robbie Baldwin/Penance, a member of the Thunderbolts and another former New Warrior. Their conversation convinced Nova that he no longer wanted to be on the planet Earth if the Superhuman Registration Act was part of the status quo and returned to space. Nova received a mass amount of distress calls from Hala. While attempting to reach Hala, Nova was attacked by a swarm of Kree Sentries sent by the Phalanx. Nova defeated the Sentries. The Phalanx had converted Gamora, Nova’s former lover, into a Phalanx Select. The Phalanx wished to either kill or Select Nova and chose Gamora to do the job. Nova flew through an energy barrier surrounding the Kree System and was badly burned. He crashed on the Kree outworld Drez-Lar. Kree Stellar Captain Ko-Rel had been leading a group of Kree survivors on Drez-Lar since the start of the Annihilation War. The Kree detected Nova’s crash landing and went to investigate. As Ko-Rel approached Nova’s burnt body, the Nova Force and Worldmind entered into Ko-Rel. Gamora and a group of Phalanx soldiers teleported down to Drez-Lar and attacked Ko-Rel’s people. Ko-Rel was tasked by Worldmind with protecting Nova Prime’s body while it healed, leading her away from her people while Gamora and her soldiers took out the Kree. Gamora found Nova’s body and Selected him into the Phalanx. Nova’s conversion also meant that Worldmind would become part of the Phalanx. Before it could be converted, Worldmind told Ko-Rel to take out both Nova Prime and Worldmind to prevent Worldmind from becoming an instrument of the Phalanx. Selects Nova and Gamora went to the Kree planetoid Nil-Rast to find Drax the Destroyer and Select him into the Phalanx as well. Ko-Rel came after Nova and tried to end him, but was unsuccessful, and Gamora took out Ko-Rel. Before she expired, Ko-Rel tried to reach Nova’s humanity. The man inside Nova then battled the Phalanx Selection in order to regain control of Nova’s body. Gamora and the now Selected Drax followed Nova as he made his escape, on the mission to end his life since he would not be converted.

            Okay, that wraps up our summary, let’s move on to my personal segments of this review. As I usually do, I’ll start off by sharing my own personal opinions of the book. First off, let’s talk about the stories. I found these stories to be enjoyable. I loved how this laid the groundwork for the modern Guardians of the Galaxy. “The Phalanx Covenant” from the 1990s is an old favorite storyline of mine, so I do enjoy the Phalanx as adversaries, and I felt like the writers in this book wrote them on the same level as back in the ’90s, and took it so many steps further, turning them from a mutant threat to a cosmic-level threat. I loved the Star-Lord storyline, in particular. The team was great and I enjoyed their adventure together, and the Guardians of the Galaxy feel of the story was excellent. I also enjoyed seeing the Earth-based segment in the Nova storyline, it was nice to see some Terran action mixed in with all the cosmic goings-on. The Quasar storyline was also entertaining, the relationship between Quasar and Moondragon was beautiful, especially Moondragon giving up her humanity for the person she loved. I enjoyed reading this prologue, and I hope the next volume comes out sooner rather than later as I would love to see where the Conquest goes from here. As far as the art goes, I liked most of it except for the work of Timothy Green II in Annihilation: Conquest – Starlord. Otherwise, I thought the art was fantastic. Next up, we’re going to discuss the title. “Conquest Prologue” really wasn’t the most inspired title the editors could have given it, but it does fit the content of the book, so I honestly can’t complain too much about it. As for the cover, it shows Quasar standing with her Quantum Sword stabbed in a Phalanx sentry in the foreground, with the faces of Ronan, Star-Lord, Nova, Warlock, Moondragon and Super-Skrull in the background, with some ships flying around in a few spots. I felt like this was the perfect cover for this book as it features all the main characters from the book on it. Overall, I thought this book was pretty well done, with the exception of the artwork of Green II.

            Next up on our list of topics to discuss, we’re going to touch on accessibility. Now, I know I’ve gone over this over seven dozen times already, and I know that there are those of you who have been with me before and know what I’m about to explain, so if you do, please be patient with me while I explain to the newbs what I mean when I used the word “accessibility” when applied to this graphic novel. So, I’m posing the question of, is this book accessible? What I mean by that is, can a person who knows absolutely nothing about Marvel Comics somehow come in possession of this book, read it, and understand it as written, based solely on what is contained within the pages of this book alone with no outside context? While this book is marketed as Vol. 3, this series of Modern Era Epic Collections follows separate events, and this volume features the start of a new event after the one contained in Vols. 1 and 2, so I honestly don’t feel that you need to have read the first two volumes prior to this one. Plus, this book contains Annihilation Saga which recaps the entire first Annihilation event, so it’s already in this book anyway. While the Nova storyline does touch on Civil War and The Initiative, I don’t feel like knowing about them is essential to following this book. I think that the characters are established in the here-and-now well enough that knowing their backgrounds is not essential to understanding the characters. I feel like if you’re looking to get into reading Marvel Comics and don’t know where to start, this wouldn’t be my first pick for you, but it would not be a bad pick at all.

            Next up, we’re going to discuss my numeric score. My scoring system is extremely simple. I score on a scale of whole numbers ranging from one through ten. One is the lowest score I can give, and if I do give a book that score, you’d be better off lining a birdcage with its pages rather than reading them. If, however, I score a book at a ten, that means this book is perfection and is something that if you are my friend and you read comic books, I will not leave you alone until you read it and have a five hour discussion with me about it. So, when I score a graphic novel, what I’m looking at is how much I liked the story and the art and if I feel the title and cover are appropriate for the content inside the book. So, taking this book and laying it all out on the table, the score we’re looking at is… an eight! I thought this book was well done and I really enjoyed reading it, and I mostly enjoyed the art, and I thought the title and cover were adequate to represent the content of this collection.

            Moving on, the next segment is my recommendation segment. In this segment, I answer two questions, independent of each other. The first question is, do I, Tim Cubbin, personally recommend this book to you, my reader? The second question, regardless of if I would personally recommend the book, whom do I think would be the perfect audience for this book, aside from fans of Marvel Comics, the characters, and the creative team? To answer the first question, if you’re reading this review and are deciding if you want to read this book based solely on what you’ve spent the past few minutes reading on my blog, I would tell you go to your favorite online retailer, bookstore, comic shop, library, or person in your life who obsessively collects Marvel Comics and try to find this book there as soon as you can, as I found this to be an enjoyable read and I highly recommend it. To answer the second question, the best audience for this book are fans of space stories and aliens, and I would also suggest that this book would appeal to the LGBTQ+ community based on Quasar and Moondragon.

            Well, I’d say we’re just about ready to wrap things up. There are a few last-minute things I would like to say first. Starting with, I’ve been doing this blog for almost six years now, and I’ve done over 190 posts, so keep checking out timcubbin.blogspot.com for more content. I’ve done over seven dozen reviews of Epic Collections just like this one, including “Annihilation: Annihilation Day” and “Annihilation: Desperate Measures” which you should check out after reading this post if you have some free time to spare. I’ve also written reviews of prose novels, manga, and comic book events, as well as short stories, poetry, essays, articles, and editorials, so there is a huge variety of content on this blog if you’re into other kinds of written media. I collect every Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection and Ultimate Epic Collection as soon as I can after they are released and put reviews of them up as soon as I can after reading them, so you can imagine I post quite often. Those reviews are my main focus of content on this blog. My next review is going to be “New X-Men: Planet X” so keep an eye out for that, that review will be up within the next two months after this post, but it’s likely going to be a lot sooner than that. Keep checking back regularly for more content, I’m going to keep doing this blog for as long as I can, so you can expect that that is going to be for a good long while. So, I say to you all until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!