The Brilliance of Annihilation

                               (Not Starship Troopers 3)                                                                                            

Annihilation Wave

The coldest and most obscure depths of space in the Marvel Universe were considered to be drained of all life (and cash prospects) until a little story called Annihilation came along and was completely sucked into the undertow of the ocean that was called Civil War by Mark Millar. Bumper stickers, t-shirts and messageboards were filled with dissent on who was with Captain America or who was with that faux-superhero Tony Stark. The debate was on whether or not S.H.I.E.L.D and new top cop Stark had the right to procure the secret identity of Marvel's heroes and set up teams in every state(see:50 State Initiative). All this had it's affect on earth, actually only pretty much USA, and unlike what we Americans believe, that's not world changing. We aren't the center of the universe anymore, and one man learned that and knew it better than anyone, Richard Rider (or Dick Rider if you want to be ephemeral, yet hilarious about it). Richard got his power from a Intergalactic Police Force much akin to the Green Lantern Corps. that imbued a portion of the "Nova Force" power into it's centurions. 

                            (The Universe Resistance)                                    (The World Resistance) 

The Lone [Dick] Rider

Without getting to in-depth, in fact I can surmise it into just saying that his background story is almost exactly Hal Jordan's Green Lantern beginnings: dying alien, chosen at random, joined police force to protect the world, blah blah. By the way, yes I did use the Dick Rider joke twice, i'm not funny, give me a fucking break. It's not like i'm a comedian.

      (Nova, after he lets the entire Nova Force enter his body)

Background: Anyways, this guy fought on Earth with the New Warriors and was even on their reality television show taking down bad guys for a while. Then, he was promptly called back by the Nova Corps. because and intergalatic prison that held Galactus-level (that's eating worlds without chewing strong, if you didn't know) aliens had been blown up by an unknown source, and the Corps were mobilizing to oppose the impending threat. This was all happening at about the same time that Rider's ex-teammates were shooting their reality show, trying to take down clandestine supervillains  who proved much too strong for them, and Nitro blows up a square mile including a full elementary school. Enter: Civil War. 

Civil War vs. Cosmic War: Which is More Devastating?

While Mark Millar fleshed out the story of warring heroes separated by the Superhero Registration Act. Writers Christos Cage, Simone Furman, Keith Giffen, Javier  Grillo-Marxuachm Stuart Moore and current cosmic lords of Marvel, Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning devised one of the most superlative story lines in recent memory. Granted, it is quite interesting seeing that alcoholic prick Tony Stark or as we endearingly know him: "Shellhead" (really original take on Spiderman's "Webhead", and Captain America's "Winghead", and Thor's "Helmet Head" pseudonyms.) appointed himself president pro-tem of all super powered beings, without possessing any himself. Unfortunately, for Millar, the affects would only reach our borders, leaving the rest of the world (& universe in this case) as it was prior to this event (for the most part). While Annihilation was just that, it was a story about the possible eradication of all man-kind, and bug-kind. In fact, there is an mini-comic called "What If: Annihilation" in which the Annihilation Wave continues to be unstopped and is reaching Earth during one of the Civil War battles. The conflict ends completely after everyone fighting gets a lecture about how childish and temporal their struggle is from Nova, who is disgusted at their selfishness. Only when the two heroes from opposing sides join forces with Nova, and sacrifice themselves, do they stop the wave. Which is to say, you know, feeble altercations and such, greater meaning, universe isn't centered around us. Which sounds almost like a commentary on the U.S. for foreign policy, not only do others need our help, but it can overcome us if we don't work together in this world (political philosophy type junk).

                         (From "What If: Annihilation")

Characters       

While Civil War was pretty much composed of all the superheroes in the Marvel 616 Universe like Captain America, Wolverine, Daredevil, the Fantastic Four, Avengers, X-Men sort of, and so on, Annihilation pretty much dealt with characters that have each almost single-handedly defeated our combined heroes. Thanos and Annihilus being the antagonists in this story encompasses every fear any one has had about the universe ending. Thanos, as you know has come close to ending all forms of life several times, even while contending with several heroes. I mean the guys got Death personified at his side. Annihilus is at the head of the Annihilation Wave of millions maybe billions of killer bugs and sentient ships that are ravaging the universe, and despite being a failed Fantastic Four character, holds a lot of merit. He is an insectoid creature with armor capable of withstanding energy blasts from Galactus himself. In fact, he's captured Galactus and Silver Surfer and has the power to hold them against their will, that's pretty powerful. If thats not bad enough, his right hand man Ravenous wields the negative-zone equivalent of the power cosmic that Galactus and his heralds posses. One character who is integral to the story is Drax the Destoyer, and his alternate-life daughter, Moondragon. The only reason Drax exists, is to kill Thanos. The only reason that happened is because Thanos killed him (those two are encouragable). Moondragon's lover Phyla-Vell, or Quasar or Captain Marvel also appears pretty much wielding every power possible, except the power to be in a hot lesbian relationship. Moondragon just doesn't do it for me, with the baldness and pacifist stuff. Of course, all past and current heralds to Galactus appear (Silver Surfer, Firelord, Stardust, Gabriel the Air-Walker, The Fallen One, Red Shift, Terrax the Tamer and Morg the Exectutioner (or as I like to call him "Morg the botched skin-graft), it also includes Paibok the Power Skrull, Gamora (hot!) who fucks Nova on their days off from killing bugs, Ronan the Accuser, Star-Lord & Skreet the Chaos Mite, who despite her size (and goofy hair) is incredibly strong. All those people and this book still doesn't get much attention!

 (Guardians of the Galaxy)

                                           (Annihilus)

                              (Galactus and His Heralds)

The best part about this book is that it does what most limited series do in the Marvel Universe don't do,  it follows up and the ramifications are far reaching. Unlike Civil War and Secret Invasion and other recent crossovers, it isn't as easily forgotten and is not unmentioned when it is over. This book leads to relationships, hardships, powers, enemies and new threats that are directly under the Annihilation umbrella. Andy Lanning and Dan Abnett are currently writing a book called Guardians of the Galaxy which has spawned from some of the heroes of Annihilation and Annihilation: Conquest. They are like the Avengers, but fight galactic and alien threats far greater than that composed of Earth villains. They aren't just psychotic goofballs with sideways corn-rows (hint hint, see? I can be tentatively funny, too). Also, these great writers took of Brubaker's story of the Omega-Level powered third Summers brother (Deadly Genesis) who defeated the Shi'ar Empire and became the leader himself, trying to encompass all empires and lengths of space into his own domain and coming across Blackbolt and the Royal Family of Attilia and the Kree(Rise & Fall of the Shi'ar Empire, War of Kings). It's affects are imprinted on the blackness of space, unlike the fall apart of the Avengers, then getting together, falling apart again, the failing of the Initiative, Skrulls hardly being around, etc. You don't get that kind of consistency with Earth-based books anymore, change happens just as much as stability. So seriously, check out the things that are happening in Marvel's cosmic storyline, you might find something you like, or something somewhat entertaining like hot alien babes and Raccoons that wield laser pistols named after Beatles songs and make friends with a giant tree (i'm being serious, look it up).

Retro Comics Corner: Welcome Back, Frank!

Hello there! Welcome to the first in my hopefully extensive series, Retro Comics Corner, wherein I discuss graphic novels and story arcs which have become, in my opinion, classics. A quick disclaimer: I do not claim to be some sort of comic book historian, and I am writing these purely for fun and entertainment value. My goal is to provide a humorous perspective on classic stories, and if you don’t like what I have to say, I invite you to grab the nearest broom handle, break it in half (making sure of course to leave the ends nice and jagged), and enthusiastically fuck yourself with it.

That being said, let’s talk about Welcome Back, Frank!, Garth Ennis’s first run at the Punisher, and the character’s first appearance since he died and became some sort of avenging angel killing demons or something (I really didn’t pay much attention; reading that story was like watching a comic book having sex with the Bible, and then being violently raped by their offspring right in the common sense).

The Punisher as a character is deceptively complex, at least from a writer’s stand point. What I mean by that is that the concept behind him is fairly simple: his family is killed senselessly by bad people, so he decides to kill the holy bejeezus out of any bad person he can find. Murderers, rapists, mobsters, jaywalkers; you name it, he’ll eviscerate it. …That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point. He’s like Charles Bronson in Death Wish, but with way less moustache.

Yeah. Sorta like that.

However, it is this simplicity that makes it so difficult to write a captivating Punisher story. After all, how many times can you write a story about a man murdering the shit out of a whole bunch of people before it gets a bit stale? That’s when you start to see story arcs like the aforementioned ‘avenging angel’ run or whatever the fuck it was called, which suck legendary amounts of penis. Thankfully, a man named Garth Ennis

exists. Ennis knows how to make shocking levels of violence and depravity fun, and is famous for injecting very subtle, very dark humorous tones into his ostensibly unfunny stories and somehow making it work. To say he revitalized interest in the Punisher is a woefully incompetent understatement. Welcome Back, Frank! was to the Punisher what Jesus is to Christians, or for you non-believers, what bacon was to the cheeseburger. Suddenly the Punisher was not only once again a credible character, he was fucking kickass.

Let’s look at a few moments from the series that epitomize why it became a classic, shall we?

“It’s bears!” WHAMFF!

I was going to do these in chronological order, but I couldn’t resist putting this one first. This moment, to me, tells you everything you need to know about this series.

While scouting Ma Gnucci for a hit, the Punisher is spotted by one of her body guards and takes one bullet in the ribs and another in the shoulder. Unarmed and losing blood, he hides out in the zoo, and proceeds to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting henchmen that are hunting him down. He feeds one to piranhas, another to a snake, but the best is when he punches a fucking polar bear in the face, causing it to attack Ma and her remaining bodyguards.

The Punisher tells PETA to fuck themselves.

And there you go. The Punisher. Punches a bear. In the face. Admit it, if you weren’t interested in this story arc before, you can’t wait to read it now.

Don’t hide behind the thin guy.

The first time we see the Punisher in a full on gun battle in this series is when he attacks Bobbie Gnucci as he’s viewing his brother’s body in the morgue. The Punisher uses the dead body of some fat guy as a human shield, and the guy he’s shooting at decides to do the same. Only he hides behind some skinny dude, and the Punisher shoots right through the body and kills the guy.

Garth Ennis has a tradition of making movie references in his stories, which as a

huge movie nerd, never ceases to fill me with glee. This sequence is a nod to the ‘human shield’ scene in Total Recall. If you’ve ever seen that movie, you know that it’s just stupid, over the top, extraordinarily violent fun. The fact that it occurs in the first issue of the series lets you know what to expect: reading this book will be a lot like watching a Schwarzenegger movie, and that is awesome.

Oh, and the best part: immediately after he does this, the Punisher walks over to Bobbie Gnucci and delivers a classic action movie one-liner. “Got a message for your people, Bobbie. Listen:” and then he blows his head off. Oh, fuck yes, the Punisher is back.

Punisher vs. Daredevil

Let’s get serious here for a second. Around the fourth issue of the series, the Punisher attempts to assassinate Dino Gnucci in Hell’s Kitchen, and of course, Daredevil shows up to try and stop him. After giving the Punisher a speech about how he has a choice and he doesn’t actually have to kill anyone, the Punisher tells him to fuck off and a fight ensues. Punisher manages to get the best of Daredevil, and ties him up with a gun taped to his hand. He tells Daredevil it’s time for him to make that choice he was talking about. Either shoot the Punisher in the head to stop him from killing Dino, or do nothing and let Dino die:

PUNISHER: If you don’t shoot you’ve got a death on your conscience. A death you could have prevented. If you do shoot, you’re a killer.

DAREDEVIL: What kind of a choice is that…?

PUNISHER: The one I make every time I pull the trigger.

After bitching and whining for a bit (I’m pretty sure ‘bitching and whining’ is one of Daredevil’s superpowers), Daredevil aims the gun at Punisher’s head, pulls the trigger and… click. No firing pin. Punisher paints a mural on the sidewalk with Dino’s thoughts and memories, and Daredevil is utterly crushed by the realization that he just attempted to commit murder.

This issue is interesting, because it shows that at the end of the day, Punisher and Daredevil are the same. They both fight crime, but they do so from a continuum. On one end you have the Punisher, killing everything bad that moves; on the other, you have Daredevil, who just likes to hit bad guys a few times and hope they learn their lesson. However, when Daredevil pulled that trigger, it proved that the points on the continuum on which the two characters reside are not fixed. The Punisher is Daredevil; he is Spiderman, he is whoever else you care to name. The only difference is that he doesn’t hide behind a wall or pretense; he doesn’t feel the need to incessantly apologize for what he is and what he does. Spiderman and Daredevil and all the rest may seem more “heroic”, but strip away all their speeches about justice and the value of human life and they’re really no different than any anti-hero you care to name. After all, these are people that are so driven by what they think is true and right that they dress up in costumes and get in fights with bad guys every day. To make a distinction between the hero and the anti-hero is therefore futile; the only difference is where they draw the line and, as this sequence shows, all it takes to push that line over to the “dark side” is the right set of circumstances.

“I hate them.”

About halfway through the series, Ma Gnucci finds out where the Punisher lives and sends everything she’s got to take him out. The Punisher of course kills everyone, but not before taking six bullets to the chest. As he’s lying in bed dying in his mousy neighbor Joan’s apartment, this exchange occurs:

JOAN: Why do you kill them? Bad people, I mean.

PUNISHER: I hate them.

JOAN: Oh. I thought it might be because you wanted to make the world safe for

good people.

And there you go. The reason the Punisher imprint is so great under the direction of Garth Ennis. The Punisher isn’t a goddamn superhero; he’s not even really an anti-hero. He just hates bad guys because of what they did to his family, and he simply likes to kill them. Even in story lines where the Punisher is helping someone, you still get the feeling that he’s only doing it because of the opportunities it affords him to kill a shit ton of bad guys. He’s basically a psychopath; luckily for us, he only murders people who deserve it. Ennis understands this, and can therefore write compelling Punisher stories.

The Russian.

The Russian is Ma Gnucci’s last-ditch effort to put the Punisher out of commission. He’s about the size of the Incredible Hulk, twice as stupid, and ambushes the Punisher out of nowhere. This is another instance of Punisher being caught off guard and unarmed, and having to improvise. After two entire issues consisting of nothing but the Punisher getting his ass handed to him, he’s finally able to kill the Russian. How?

By throwing a hot pizza at his face, and then suffocating him to death with his morbidly obese neighbor’s body.

You know, I think we can all agree that there isn’t much that’s funnier than fat jokes. Dick jokes, maybe, and punching a bear in the face, definitely, but only barely. And using a fat guy to take out an undisputed badass like the Russian? That’s just entertainment gold.

The Russian: giving "pizza face" a whole new meaning.

Detective Soap.

Finally, we have Detective Soap. Another thing about Garth Ennis is that he often will include a character in his stories that is an epic loser in every way imaginable, and they often even have some sort of physical deformity, as was mentioned in one of Mr. Burke’s earlier articles. Well, Detective Soap is definitely that. He’s a joke to the police force, and since none of the police officers actually want the Punisher caught, they put Soap on the case. He drives his first partner to suicide, falls in love with his lesbian second partner, and generally just gets shit on constantly, both literally and figuratively (at one point during Ennis’s run on the Punisher, he even unknowingly fucks his own mom. But that’s neither here nor there.)

However, Soap doesn’t have any physical deformities to speak of, and that’s the real reason I put him on here. I can just imagine Ennis, in a drunken rage, yelling at chief editor Joe Quesada: “Dammit Joe! Just let me make his nose into a dick! Or fine, I’ll put a vagina on his forehead! That way everyone will know he’s a pussy! It just wouldn’t feel right otherwise! QUIT STIFLING MEEE!!!”

And there you have it. Hopefully you enjoyed my first entry for YNTCFC. I’ll update some more in the future; hopefully fairly regularly, but realistically, whenever I damn well please.

Update for yntcfc

For those of you who read this blog (all two of you) I have been swamped (failing) at school and have been unable to continue writing on this blog. However, after this week I will be free (jobless) to post weekly at least and will continue my riveting (insipid) articles about the fabulous (geeky and uncool) world of comics. I have just procured a second writer for this blog and he will help keep this blog alive (barely) and kicking. He's a great writer and he is very well versed and hip (unhip to say hip) to comics. He's a very perceptive and witty guy and I am proud to have him join my team (if you played tennis, we'd be enough to make a team). Nick Pawlowsky writes blogs anyways and i've, and i'm sure a lot of other people found them engrossing and funny. Anyways, my Wolverine article is coming along and it should be up shortly. After that, we will be expanding this blog as much as possible and fleshing out awesome (if you could call it that) posts and hopefully it will grow and we might move on to other sites. So if you read this, thanks and we'll be moving forward very soon. Maybe more people will start joining the collection (two) of people who read this. 

See you soon.