What does Marvel think ‘The World To Come’ looks like, and should we care?

Yes, it’s time for another Marvel “event,” as the big (?) news (?) last week was that The World To Come #1 showed up in fine comic stores everywhere! Hey, remember when Marvel did single page splashes about “things to come” from their creators (before those creators, you know, fucked off to form Image) or maybe released a free, short pamphlet about “things to come”? Well, now we get an entire mini-series about “The World To Come,” and you’re going to love it, fanboys!!!!

In case you didn’t know, the news about this book is that Joe Quesada draws it. I have no idea what the most recent comic Joe Quesada drew is, but him doing an entire mini-series is an event in itself, I guess. And the art is exquisite. Quesada saw Jim Lee doing Batman and thought, “Well, shit, I can still draw, too!” and he certainly hasn’t lost his fastball. He shifts styles nicely between scenes, from the fine line of the “present” (which takes place “16 years after the world to come”) to a rougher line in the “past” (which occurs at various times “before the world to come”), giving us a good delineation between the beautiful sterility of the ruling class and the grittier world of the peasants in the “present” while also giving us a good sense of the degradation of the time before the world to come and the achievements of the Wakandan king after the world to come. Richard Isanove’s coloring is superb, especially in the scenes where T’Challa is fighting his son for Wakandan leadership in the Fightin’ Waterfall (or whatever they call it), as Isanove uses watercolor effects to make the water rush down the rocks and provide a good backdrop for Quesada’s brutal battle between the two men. The two-page scene with T’Challa and Monica Lynne in Paris “26 years before the world to come” is stunning, as Isanove uses muted colors and gouache effects to turn the city into a rain-soaked, mysterious place, while Quesada is channeling Steve Epting quite nicely on those two pages (if he realized he was doing it, I wonder why he was doing it, but it’s probably more likely that only I’m seeing it). There’s just a lot of gorgeous work here, and it’s a bit too bad that Marvel felt the need to interrupt it so often with ads. I mean, I know they do that too often, but I never understand why they can’t just put the ads at the end of the book, or at least before the text pieces that add more context to the book. It bugs me, especially because the two-page Paris sequence is broken up by two (2!!!) house ads for the Marvel swimsuit issue and a “red band” version of Wolverine: Revenge, neither of which need to be at that particular spot because they’re, you know, house ads for other Marvel products. Oh well. Getting briefly back to the art, it’s just a really nice-looking comic — it’s a bit claustrophobic in the “present,” as we haven’t yet gotten a sense of what the “world to come” actually looks like, but I assume that will change as the story moves along.

Christopher Priest is writing this, and at this point, you pretty much know what you’re getting with a Priest book. His big thing is the time-hopping (oh, and naming chapters — this thing has an overall name — “The Death of Kings” — and each section — all five of them — also has a name). Nobody in comics, I would venture, likes jumping times more than Priest does, and it’s kind of annoying. I mean, it’s fine to a point, but Priest really digs it, and it feels like he does it on some books to hide the fact that he doesn’t have a lot to say. That might be the case here, or it might not — we’ll have to wait and see. Here’s the time-jumping in this comic:

Pages 1-6: 16 years after the world to come; two different scenes linked by a character who appears in both scenes
Pages 7-10: 8 years before the world to come; but this is being told by a character from the first time, so one panel takes us back to 16 years after the world to come
Pages 11-12: 24 years before the world to come
Pages 13-14: 26 years before the world to come
Pages 15-17: 8 years before the world to come; we’re back to the same scene as before, with the person from the “present” telling this, so we see them briefly
Page 18: Unclear, actually — it feels like it should be about 24-23 years before the world to come, but there’s no caption telling us this
Pages 19-20: 8 years before the world to come; the same scene as the others

This back-and-forth isn’t hard to follow (except for page 18, which still isn’t that hard), but it does get a bit annoying. I know, Priest isn’t the only one who does this, but he’s perhaps the most obnoxious about it, because he does it so much and for such short bursts of time.

Anyway, this is a Black Panther comic, in case you haven’t figured that out, and it’s … kind of dull? That’s the thing about Priest’s time-jumping — he can distract you if his comic is dull, because you’re too busy trying to figure out the timeline. Now, sure, it’s part 1 of 6, so it’s all set-up (with the big bombshell on the final page that makes no sense given what we know so far, but I assume will turn out to be explainable when we get to the time of explanations). On the first few pages, an old king dies, and a member of the Dora Milaje — who seem to have become some kind of paramilitary force — blow up some resistance fighters/terrorists just so one of them can chat with another old man who is connected to the dead king somehow. Nobody gets any names, mind you, so we don’t know if either of these old dudes is T’Challa. Meanwhile, “8 years before the world to come,” an older T’Challa is fighting his son for the kingship of Wakanda, and Priest does dive into how stupid that is a little bit, while also adding some new layers to it, which is why T’Challa can’t just end the practice. Meanwhile, further in the past, we learn of his marriage to Monica Lynne and her pregnancy, which implies that T’Challa is fighting the product of that pregnancy, which is why the big bombshell at the end is so bombshelly. It’s not a bad set-up, but it is set-up. It’s just the tiniest bit dull. Priest desperately wants to write about the state of the States today, it’s clear, so he introduces a religious element that has literally never been part of Wakandan history ever, and I do like that Priest is trying to figure how to show Wakanda in the modern world and the problems that might arise because of T’Challa’s relinquishment of absolute power, but it’s still uneven. Priest obviously didn’t invent Wakanda and its political structure, but it is nice that he wants to show how it might not change for the good, but it would also have been nice to see what this world is like a little more. We don’t really need 9 pages of T’Challa fighting his son, even if it is the crux of the issue. T’Challa is older when he’s fighting, so getting a sense of when all of this is happening — his marriage, Monica’s pregnancy, even the old king’s death — would be nice. Again, it’s six issues and I’m sure we’ll get to it, but it makes this single issue a bit wonky. But, that’s what you get with a Priest comic. The dude likes keeping things wonky.

I know that I’m being too hard on this, because it’s meant to be read as an opening chapter of a big story, but this is what I have in front of me right now, so that’s that. This is, of course, a long-standing problem I’ve had with Marvel and DC “event books” (I don’t know how much of an “event” this is meant to be, but the “Marvel Knights” imprint has lain fallow for a while, and Quesada clearly wants to revive it) — they are slow to get going, because they want to tease a lot, but that leads to kind of dull beginnings. That’s fine, but it makes me think the rest won’t be worth getting, either, and I’m sure Marvel doesn’t want that. I mean, the real draw here is Quesada doing interior work, but that seems like a flimsy thing for Marvel to peg its success on. Or maybe it’s not. I dunno, I’m not in Marvel Marketing. Those people are fucking geniuses, as we all know.

Rating: I mean, it’s fine.

One totally Airwolf panel:

So, Marvel Knights revived: A good idea, or yet another creatively bankrupt idea by people who simply can’t come up with something new and just want to feast on old corpses in the hopes that provides some sustenance? U-Decide!