Marvel Legacy 1 review

This is a 50 page comic, in an age where the normal length is 20 pages. And while it’s primarily written by Jason Aaron, there are so many artists and colourists working on this that I won’t bother mentioning any of them. They’ll just be tagged instead. So let’s get this review started.

I’m not entirely sure about all the events leading up to the beginning of Legacy, but I know that Steve Rogers is back to normal and not working for Hydra. I know that Marvel seems to be bringing back a whole bunch of their original character that they’ve been killing off or otherwise taking out of the picture. Considering a lot of people felt they replaced too many characters with legacy characters at once, that’s probably a good thing. Whatever you’re knowledge of the current Marvel Universe is though, this comic does a fairly good job at catching you up.

Beyond that, there’s a lot of mystery behind what’s going on. There’s a big fight scene between Star Brand and Ghost Rider, and there’s a small pack of Ice Giants invading a SHIELD warehouse. Apart from that, this comic is mostly mysterious build-up. The mystery makes it intriguing, but it also kind of feels like the comic’s main purpose is to advertise a bunch of upcoming comics, to try to sell the reader on as many as possible. Not that it does a bad job at that by any means. The build up also teases a major event coming up involving multiple extinction level threats. Seriously Marvel, enough with the events. A lot of us need a break. We’ve recently had Inhumans vs. X-Men (terrible, but thankfully ended the dreadful terrigen mist storyline), Civil War II (moved so slow that barely anything happened in 8 issues), The Clone Conspiracy, and we’ve got the Return of the Phoenix on the way. That last one feels like it’ll undermine Jean Grey’s current solo book.

Anyway, this comic tells you about Captain America’s current struggle to restore his reputation, and that could be a great story if it’s told well. There are vague hints about several characters who have already made their return, and teases that more may return to the land of the living (or Earth in some cases). Of all these stories, the only return made blatantly clear in this comic will be discussed below.

Spoiler warning (highlight to see text).

Wolverine is alive again. It doesn’t really explain how he came back, but it’ll probably be explained later. I have mixed feelings about this, and they could change depending on how things move forward. Part of the reason they killed off Wolverine is because people started getting sick of him. His solo series wasn’t selling as well as it traditionally did, and people started complaining about how he appeared on way too many teams. Yet less than a year after Old Man Logan arrived, he started appearing in multiple team books as well. Even Old Man Logan is already in multiple team books, and you’ve also got Jimmy Hudson appearing in X-Men Blue (and he’s a really boring character), Laura Kinney as Wolverine (who isn’t appearing on any team books at the moment), and now we’ve got two copies of the original Wolverine. If the original’s back, does that mean they’re getting rid of Old Man Logan somehow? Because I don’t feel like reading about two Logans living on the same Earth.

It also frustrates me that Old Man Logan is in multiple team books, yet the character currently named Wolverine (also my favourite X-Men character) isn’t in any. Oh, and Logan intercepts the Frost Giants just after they steal a package from the SHIELD warehouse, and it happens to be an infinity stone. Yup, Logan controls an infinity stone. And how did he know how to track down the frost giant when he only just came back? Maybe that’s part of how he came back to life, but we don’t know that yet.

End spoilers.

I mentioned how this comic has way too many artists to mention all of them. Thankfully, all of the art in this comic is great. The opening pages and the Star Brand/Ghost Rider fight are both highly detailed with a bit of a gritty appearance. There’s a detailed, cleaner look at a small Avengers squad as well. Most of the other artists only draw a couple pages, mostly in connecting scenes and breaks from the main story. Even though they’re not as detailed, they still match the overall feel and tone of the comic. Everyone handles facial expression well, and most of them also make great use of using environmental detail to help tell the story. Not sure what else to say unless I’d comment on each and every artist, and that would make this review far longer than it needs to be.

My thoughts on this comic are a bit mixed, but overall positive. The mystery build-up is very well done, there are several amusing moments, and despite the vague tone, there’s enough clarity that it doesn’t feel like a waste of money or time. That said, this does feel like more of a sales pitch than a story at times. Beyond that, any issues I have with this comic are more in personal taste for the direction Marvel is going than the comic’s own quality. Judging the comic on its own merits compared to what it’s trying to do, it’s well done. If you’re reading a lot of Marvel comics, or you want to know where the Marvel Universe is heading, this is at least worth a read. There are enough pages, and more than enough text, to make the price worth it if the comic interests you. But if you’re only picking up a handful of titles, it’s probably better to just skip this.

7/10