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| Cover Art: David Marquez |
Original Price: $3.99
Title: "The Final Gauntlet, Part 3"
Writer: Donny Cates
Artist: Geoff Shaw
Letterer: VC's Cory Petit
Colorist: Marte Gracia
Senior Editor: Jordan D. White
Editor: Darren Shaw
Assistant Editor: Danny Khazem
Editor-in-Chief: C.B. Cebulski
SYNOPSIS
While Eros and his Dark Guardians hunt for Gamora, Hela and the Black Order arrive in the Negative Zone to confront Annihilus. He shows them the severed head of Thanos, which Hela takes after quickly defeating Annihilus in combat. The Dark Guardians chase a wounded Richard Rider, Nova and former lover of Gamora, to learn from him her location. Nova stands his ground until he is attacked by Wraith, who is ready to kill Rider. Cosmic Ghost Rider intervenes and tries to talk to Nova, attempting to reason with him and convince him to give up Gamora. Nova flies off, but Nebula has already figured out where he is going. Meanwhile, Star Lord finds himself relieved of command if his ship by Groot and the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy, who intend to save Gamora from Eros. Star Lord protests but eventually gives in, revealing that Gamora has gone to Halfworld to find Rocket Raccoon.
ANNOTATIONS
Podcast Review: Inner Demons Episode 39 - "Cosmic Deadpool Destroys Drunk History"" (Click to Listen)
REVIEW
Cosmic Ghost Rider continues to have a diminishing role in this series despite the cover focus.
I'm going to go ahead and say it, this series has way too many damn characters running around. When the title characters only appear in the last few pages and several of them are still woefully undeveloped as anything other than names and costumes, that's a problem. Its something that Cates has struggled with before when writing an ensemble cast, going back to the Damnation miniseries. Characters get lost in the shuffle, are given no explanation besides the briefest of description, and outside of a few focus characters most are left to languish in the background. Here, any character not named Eros or Star Lord are used almost interchangeably. Wraith gets a solid introduction, but Cates relies a lot on assumptions that everyone knows about Nova and Gladiator.
Cosmic Ghost Rider gets the worst fate of all, as the cover promises a featured role for him that the comic fails to deliver. Castle is a victim of diminishing returns in this series, he's there for what should be a good reason but the amount of characters included are serving to push him further into the background. This isn't a Cosmic Ghost Rider series, of course, but I feel like he's been used as a major selling point for this series and that comes with expectations.
While Cates may be struggling with such a large cast, Geoff Shaw seems to be thriving. He has a serious eye for style and dramatic design that really serves this series well. The splash page reveal of Annihilus is amazing and he does similar striking work during Wraith's attack on Nova. Even Groot, a walking tree, has a wonderfully emotive scowl present on his face. Shaw is definitely the highlight of the issue and the series so far.
This issue is not bad by any means, its just too crowded. It would be nice if the focus and cast got narrowed down.
Grade: B-
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