While the King In Black attacks the Earth, Conan the Barbarian, Deadpool and Night Flyer take their rest at the old Helfire Club.The Marauders aren’t too happy about this. Gerry Duggan, Kev Walker, Scott Hanna, Java Tartaglia and Travis Lanham enter the endgame in Savage Avengers #19.
Reading through Savage Avengers #19, I couldn’t help but feel as if I’d seen this all before. There’s a “been there, done that” sensability to nearly every aspect of this issue. Writer Gerry Duggan knows what he’s doing here, he’s playing the hits, but the result is something bland, boring and just plain bad.
Now, to the team’s credit, the deck is stacked against them. King In Black has been a slog, with most tie-ins amounting to characters fighting a generic looking goo dragon. There’s an attempt by the team to add some personal stakes, the Marauders, fresh off their own tie-in, attempt to rescue their possessed teammate Storm and Captain Commander Cyclops. Unfortunately for them, the tension is all but sucked out of the plot since the character were already freed a month ago in King In Black #4. This event has been going on for four months now, and it already felt similar to Absolute Carnage and last year’s Empyre. With little to no story progression since issue #1, it’s hard to be invested in the tie in.
Not helping matters is the art from Kev Walker. His character work is blocky, reflecting a 00s John Romita Jr. with less volume. The images feel static and weak. It’s a book that’s essentially a long fight scene but there’s no weight behind the punches, no speed behind the kicks. Part of the blame must be cast on colorist Java Tartaglia, who uses the same tones and lighting throughout. For a book about Earth’s darkest day, there’s nothing particularly menacing in the title.
With the plot being a drag and the art mediocre, the main draw of the book for many would be Duggan returning to Deadpool and writing more Marauders. In one moment, Duggan goes for an epic scale as Iceman single handedly holds back the hordes of Knull. It’s played as a character defining beat, the slacker finally living up to his potential. If only it wasn’t the go-to move of Iceman writers for the last 3 decades. Similarly, Deadpool gets a disappointing call back to widely meme’d transphobic jokes about him wearing the uniforms of female X-Men. Duggan should know better and it’s upsetting to see him reach for a cheap “gag” here.After a multi-issue diversion, I’m left wondering what the hell the point of any of this was. Savage Avengers has been dragging out a long arc about Kulan Gath and an interesting team of Avengers from around the Marvel universe teaming up to stop him. This King In Black has only served to have Conan the Barbarian hop around in the Marvel Universe, meeting friends, getting a new house and generally doing a whole lot of nothing. It’s committed the cardinal sin of an event tie-in, it killed the momentum of the book. There ain’t nothing more savage for a reading than taking a story about Conan using a Venom sword to fight a dragon and making it boring, but this team found a way.
Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.
