The bad news: War of Kings is another event. The good news: It’s a “cosmic” event spearheaded by Abnett and Lanning, who are a couple of writers who are arguably better when they write events than smaller stories. That’s a rare breed.
They handle the main six-issue limited series as well as most of the tie-in books. The seeds of the tale have been sown in a few other books like A&L’s monthly “Guardians of the Galaxy” series and the X-Men: Kingbreaker miniseries.
And to illustrate just how bananas Marvel was with “Events” during this period, one of the WoK books has a “Secret Invasion” banner. Hmph.
The books that bear a “War of Kings” banner on the cover are:
- Guardians of the Galaxy #8-17 (Issue #8 is covered separately here)
- Nova #23-28
- Secret Invasion: War of Kings One Shot
- War of Kings #1-6
- War of Kings: Ascension #1-4
- War of Kings: Darkhawk #1-2
- War of Kings: Savage World of Skaar One Shot
- War of Kings: Warriors #1-2
- War of Kings: Who Will Rule? One Shot
- X-Men Kingbreaker #1-4 (covered separately here)
The book pits Vulcan–the estranged brother of Cyclops and Havok–against the Kree. Vulcan has taken over the Shi’ar empire and decides to expand into Kree territory.
Black Bolt has taken the role of King of the Kree. On their way to the Kree homeworld, Black Bolt and the Inhuman Royal Family meet a Shi’Ar fleet who bar their way.
Black Bolt shouts at them. Which, of course, decimates them. Gotta hand it to them, the “Black Bolt screaming” thing is usually a big dramatic last resort but Abnett and Lanning break it out during the SI: WoK prelude/one-shot. Good for them.
In the first issue of the series, the Inhumans are attempting to cement their bond with the Kree using an arranged marriage of Crystal and Ronan the Accuser.
Poor Crystal. She almost marries Johnny Storm but instead picks Quicksilver, who quite foreseeably turned out to be a big heel. Now she’s got to be with Ronan?
But the wedding is interrupted by another Shi’Ar attack before the vows are made. Ronan is severely injured in the attack.
So begins the war. Much of the book is one side attacking the other, but it’s well-plotted and well-told and there is some good character work along the way that features characters who usually aren’t worked with.
Like Gladiator, who now must work for Vulcan, doing the bidding of his new Emperor while simultaneously trying to protect Lilandra from Vulcan’s wrath.
He is forced to choose between them, and when Vulcan orders him to kill Lilandra, Gladiator switches sides–and most of the Imperial Guard follow him.
The big finale has Black Bolt facing off against Vulcan, with both seeming to die in a huge explosion.
In the pages of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Starhawk came back from the future to prevent a catastrophic event that would change her own future and we learn that it was in fact this very explosion. Due to the collective power of Black Bolt and Vulcan, the explosion tears a hold through time.
Without Vulcan, the Shi’ar surrender to the Kree/Inhumans.
Gladiator takes the role of Shi’ar emperor. And on the final page, Magus(!) emerges–leading into the next big Cosmic Story.
…Realm of Kings.
Some tie ins: There is a truly pointless one with Skaar, where a few combatants (including Gorgon of the Inhumans) find themselves on Skaar’s planet. Just as the young Hulk is about to smash them, Lockjaw ‘ports them away.
Look, I said it was pointless.
And speaking of pointless, Darkhawk gets a full miniseries out the WoK event. I’m not a huge fan of Darkhawk (is anyone), so I’m going to quickly summarize the side-series that tries to make Darkhawk matter to…anyone? Chris Powell, who no longer wears the armor, gets involved with a “Fraternity of Raptors” whose job is the protect the universe. I’m assuming that’s not the same thing as guarding the galaxy?
Anyway, it’s a confusing and unnecessary story that involves the Negative Zone cast of characters, but the short version is that Powell finds himself set up as the killer of Lilandra.
Converting Darkhawk into a cosmic character lowers War of Kings’ grade for me.
Blastaar emerges from this series as a big Cosmic player as well. In a story told partly in the Darkhawk issues and also in the main Nova series, he manages to take over the part of the Kree universe that had been taken over by Ravenous during the last Cosmic event, and Ravenous ends up in a Nova prison.
Nova is able to work out diplomatically that Blastaar will recognize the existence and authority of the Nova Corps. Rich Rider’s arc over the Nova tie-in issues has him going from having been disgraced and depowered to once again being the leader of the Nova Corps.
He also reconciles with his brother, Robbie, who is able to continue also serving in the Corps.
Interestingly, he’s able to take his power back from Worldmind using the Quantum Bands, borrowed from Quasar.
The Nova series continues to be one of the better Marvel series on the market at this time. I almost wrote these issues up separately, but they really are mostly tied right into the event so I decided to lump them in here.