Comic Review:
( Review by SPIKE, edited by CORVUS, on 11/10/06 )
(Warning, here be spoilers)
(out of 5)
Whatever you were expecting to happen in Annihilation, this probably wasn’t it.
When an entire universe hangs in the balance there is one being you could always count on to save the day. No, not Superman or Thor. Not a legion of Green Lanterns or Novas. Thanos, the Mad Titan himself, was always the one you wanted in your corner. The casual fan probably fails to realize he’s saved his universe more times than he’s tried to conquer/destroy it. Though he may be playing a deeper game, it seems like if the Marvel Universe is to be spared from the Annihilation Wave he won’t be the one to do it.
Drax the Destroyer, recently resurrected and re-made, finally fulfilled his destiny by killing Thanos. Some will call Thanos’s death at the hands of Drax, and how it came about, the culmination of a story decades in the making. Others will call it poor writing and a retcon of colossal proportions. I tend to side with the latter.
Drax himself said in this issue that he was the “silver bullet to the werewolf”. However, this werewolf just so happened to be the biggest badass in all of comics and at no point in the past has Drax ever been shiny. That makes this explanation, shoe-horned in after decades of stories, one of the ultimate easy ways out in recent memory. It’s the equivalent of Lex Luthor attempting to kill Superman with Kryptonite only to find it doesn’t work because suddenly in the issue at hand Superman simply said “I’m not vulnerable to Kryptonite anymore” even though he always had been in the past. Changing years upon years of continuity for a single story is not good writing.
All that said, there is still a chance this is part of some deeper machination by the Mad Titan. The circumstances of his death would lead one to think otherwise, however, but I’ll reserve judgment for the moment and assume it will all make sense in the end.
If you don’t care about the continuity issues and buy the explanation then this issue is absolutely superb. Even if you don’t it’s still very good. Despite its questionable aspects the climax is still very powerful and the image of Drax killing Thanos is one of the most striking (and disturbing) images you’ll see in a comic.
Of course this issue wasn’t all about Thanos and his demise. Civil War is overtly mentioned, as Nova despairs over the conflict between Earth’s protectors and seems to lift a line from Infinite Crisis when he says “they’ve forgotten how to be heroes.” Knowing his home and nowhere else in the universe is safe, he embarks on what seems like a suicide mission that will likely lead to the ultimate climax of the series.
In typical Annihilation fashion this issue was so packed with action and developments it seemed ten pages longer than it actually was. Pending further explanation of Thanos’s unlikely demise, this is still one of the very best books on the market.
Tied in with Thanos’s death is the revelation of Annihilus’s ultimate plan. It goes beyond simple conquest to something no one imagined. It was also revealed that only one being in the entire Marvel Universe could stop Annihilus. Too bad he just died and the MU is now without its unlikely but constant savior.
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