Welcome to the First Issue Bin, where I — Ethan Kaye — randomly grab one of this week's comics that’s just starting up and give you the details on whether it should get added to your collection … or remain on the comic shop shelf.
Imperial #1
Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Iban Coello, Federico Vicentini
Color Artist: Federico Blee
Letterer: VC's Cory Petit
Editor: Annalise Bissa, Tom Brevoort
The next big Marvel cosmic event is happening now! As we speak! In space! In the first issue of Imperial!
Writer Jonathan Hickman brings together several of Marvel's extra-planetary heroes for the summer's must-read series, with heroes like the Hulk (and She-Hulk, and Brawn), Star-Lord, and Nova solving a series of political murders while trying to keep the galaxy from breaking out in war.
Wow — I think I summarized it pretty well in one sentence.
Don't think that not a lot happens in this issue, because it's a big issue and there's a lot of action, but it can be pretty much boiled down to assassinations are happening, people get blamed, heroes get recruited, and it turns into a hot political whodunit with a cast of some big name stars. Hickman is telling a story that could be mapped onto 1970s spies and politicians in a satisfying novel you could pick up in an airport and finish by the time you land. The world needs more of these cool political thrillers, and I think that Hickman and company have a solid first issue on their hands. Definitely worth picking up the next issue to see where this goes.
Cosmic stories usually aren't my bag. There's always another goofy-looking alien out there to stir up trouble, and since I've never been to space and never will, I'm more comfortable reading stories that take place in cities, a location that I often go to and usually won't asphyxiate me if I open the door to my car. But Hickman has done enough good work that I'm pretty bullish on picking up his latest work, and if this is the summer's big "thing," as Marvel has implied, the combo of Hickman plus big doings is enough to get me to open it up.
The first issue is divided into several substories, some focusing on particular characters and some where these characters interact. And frankly, the first major section — focusing on the Hulk family traveling to Sakaar for the Hulk's son's funeral — almost killed the book for me. It's Hulks doing things and acting in ways that the last several years of Hulk continuity have not led them to. I started picking up the Hulk series during Al Ewing's incredible run and I know that we're firmly in the "Hulk is dumb and brutal, Hulk wants nothing to do with puny Banner" phase of the character. Making the Hulk in Imperial be both smart Hulk and okay with transforming back into Banner breaks the continuity that Ewing and Phillip Kennedy Johnson have been building, and makes me wonder, "Well, when does this take place?" She-Hulk has been a really involved, cool character in her own books, but is just another set of hands here.
So I didn't like the Hulks, but kept on reading. And it paid off. Star-Lord gets the assignment from his dad, J'son, to investigate the assassinations, and he taps Richard Rider, the second-to-last of the Nova Corps, to help. It's a good partnership; these heroes are clearly weary of getting pulled into any and all space adventures by Marvel Editorial. The dialogue between them digs into where they're at in current continuity much better than anything with the Hulks.
Their reluctant buddy dynamic propels us well into the next to last section, where the assassin is revealed but indicates a much larger issue: without giving spoilers, it's not someone acting alone. There's a much larger political machine in play. A cast of hundreds (I love me some Deathbird), pew-pew action, and some significant character deaths later, the wheels have been suitably set in motion for what promises to be something as wide-ranging as Hickman's X-Men books, that took the scrappy little team that began in Upstate New York to colonize Mars.
By Act IV, I was sufficiently impressed enough to admit that this book was pretty darn good, and that I should get over my dislike of the Planet Hulk Redux in the early act. The space opera is legit well-written, well-written enough that a space opera hater like myself enjoyed it. The art is incredible, considering the sheer amount of characters that need to be portrayed in nearly every panel. From crowds sitting on passenger spaceships to crowds at gladiatorial games to masses of representatives gathered at the pan-galactic trade meeting, the art team of Coello, Vicentini, and Blee had a monumental task to complete, and did so admirably. Whereas a film would just replace all these with extras or AI bots, each one of these background characters had their own style and personality. Incredible.
I don't know if Imperial is going to break me out of my "stop going to space so much" bias, but despite not really keeping up on any of these characters (I barely remembered J'son was Star-Lord's dad and had to check the wiki), I ended the book saying, "Okay, show me Nova, Star-Lord, Hulk, and Deathbird change the balance of power in the universe." Hickman is one of my few "buy on sight" writers, like James Tynion IV, and this book just reinforced that tenfold.
Crowd scenes: 5/5
Crime scenes: 5/5
Detective work: 3/5, mostly because they catch the killer in the act
Hulks: 3/3, although Amadeus Cho still works better as a non-Hulk
Beards: 3/3, if you're in space you gotta grow a beard
Verdict: After what I felt was a rocky, continuity-free opening, the space opera blossomed into a book that I can champion in this column.
