episodic story, with constant changes of writing and art teams every few pages, I guess this tells me what I need to know to follow the Empyre event, but surely there's a more entertaining way to do it, rather than a big info dump Algunos números de relleno pero al final cierra bien y emocionante Not my normal cup of tea, and I'm only reading this as it impacts the XMen universe and my reading there.
it was a decent story, but I most appreciate the incredibly wordy Handbook, as it recaps the past decade and more of the Marvel Universe, That was very helpful. The first chunk of the book reprints Incoming, which is a murder mystery roundrobin story told inpage segments by dozens of writers and artists.
A dead body turns up and the story thread jumps through the perspectives of various Marvel superheroes as they tag team and segue around theto figure out whodunnit and whydunnit.
Hohum overall, but there is a big callback for very minor characters recognizable to longtime Marvel fans,
The next chunk is a sequel to Meet the Skrulls that has some beautiful art by Mattia De Iulis and a script that might be good if it were allowed to focus on the family and let them do anything other than brood, but mostly is given the duty of providing a recap for the longrunning conflict between the Kree and the Skrulls.
The final chunk is an Empyre Handbook that has tiresome and repetitive summaries of all the stories from the many Marvel titles that lead up to Empyre and profiles of some of the major and minor characters who will probably play a role.
A real chore to read, the dry and removed narration just highlights how ridiculous comic book writing in shared universes can be, What seems fine in the moment with splash pages and fourcolors becomes ludicrous when given a history textbook treatment,
This does not excite me about Empyre, but I'm still going to read it anyway, Had no idea Incominghadfreaking pages of story in it! Definitely made up for the "technically onlyissues for" issue of this collection, Overall a good primer for Empyre, especially as I haven't followed much of anything outside of the Xbooks since Secret Wars, Though I'll admit I didn't read through all of the Handbook entries at the end, Read as individual issues:
Incoming Could have been half the length and just as effective, Some of the appearances felt forced with no apparent reason for being there of course Marvel may prove me wrong,
Each change of team/hero resulted in a change of artist, which to be honest I found off putting at first, but would certainly point me in the right direction for issues to pick up in the future.
Some gorgeous Billy/Teddy panels, Loved the FF stuff. And Spiderman both of them,
In really glad I read FF annualbefore this so I knew who the two important characters were,
Road to Kree/Skrull War enjoyed this, Gave all the necessary background you need for Empyre, I already knew some from my background reading but this added more, Never have I been more excited about and satisfied by a superhero crossover event than when it's been written by Al Ewing and Dan Slott, I didn't know about several key points in Skrull and Kree history, and I still don't know how much of this is new revelations vs old, established canon.
Definitely read this setup before reading Empyre which I'm enjoying at the moment, I've never read a "Road To" book before, I don't know if they're all like this, but at least this one bores me like hell, . .
I find the concept of doing a full issue with many creative teams each in charge ofpages interesting, however the story
is wildly boring, we just didn't click.
. .
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A murder occurs on earth, but it is something very mysterious, so mysterious that several of the most prominent characters in the Marvel universe break their heads to find out what is behind.
. . in the end everything leads to a space crisis in which it seems that the Kree and the Skrulls finally unite to destroy the Earth, . .
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The second part in which a family of infiltrated skrulls tell the story of the whole conflict between both alien races "KreeSkrull" seems better to me, if they omitted or summarized the first part the book this would be very good.
. . The Incoming one shot has such a ridiculously thin plot, Really just there to introduce all the marvel stories and events for/, Which is fine. But the conceit that every active person in the marvel universe needs to have some part in this locked room Murder mystery is a bit much.
If youre going to bother with a plot and not just have snippets from the different titles, at least out more effort into it,
The actual Road to Empyre one shot was much better, Two very different but both beautiful art styles, A solid plot picking up with the Skrull family in deep cover on Earth and how the new status quo effects their mission, And a concise but informative look at the Skrull/Kree conflict for the uninitiated, Much to my surprise, this is probably going to turn out to be required reading for most readers before they hit Empyre, Instead of reprinting several issues from other books, this volume includes two issues written specifically to get readers up to speed, The extralarge Incoming story puts some big events into motion and serves as a general state of the MU for readers who haven't been reading everything.
It's functional, it works, but it isn't terribly good, Much better is the Kree/Skrull War issue, This is part retelling of Kree/Skrull relations through history and partly the story of an Americansesque Skrull family embedded on Earth, This is actually a pretty good story on top of being a necessary history for probably a good chunk of readers, This coming event looks like it'll be cosmic in scale, but most importantly it's going to star Hulkling, one of my favorite minor Marvel characters, I'm looking forward to it, This is actually more than just your typical Road to Marvel book, It's not just a bunch of reprints, It's all new content.
Incoming is by all the creative teams working at Marvel, It's one of those jam books that is supposed to introduce you tostories at Marvel while being a subtle lead in to Empyre.
The Road to Kree/Skrull War is surprisingly good, It does give you a recap of what you need to know about the Marvel universe headed into Empyre, It's done really well though through a framing concept from the cast of Meet the Skrulls, It does spoil Meet the Skrulls so be forewarned, sitelinkMeet the Skrulls is a fantastic book in its own right and you should go and read that first if you're interested, It doesn't have anything else to do with Empyre, It's just really good. This time I don't understand the bad reviews on goodreads for this comic,
It's the build up and also backstory of the Empyre event, and it does it pretty good, I even expect that I will find this book better than the main event, This makes me so unbelievably excited to read Empyre! For anyone who's interested in Marvel Event titles but doesn't know where to start START HERE, There's a wonderful explanation of everything that's happened and this gives you each storyline and what you need to know, If you want to know the characters that this one features, click the spoiler here as it may get you interested! This was pretty well done, it just wasnt super interesting for me, If youre expecting a single narrative, dont be surprised that this isnt it, The first issue is a decent lead in to the Empyre event, though it focuses more on who is going to be involved it seems than what is going to happen.
The second issue is about a family of Skrulls and filling them in on some of their history with the Kree,
The rest of the volume is essentially portions of a Marvel universe handbook about various characters and teams, It was an interesting look back at where characters have been for the last several years most of it picks up around the last Secret Wars and continues through the present.
However, it eventually gets a bit redundant going over the history of the last few years over and over from mildly different perspectives, One of those we haveevents coming so lets try to collect them as one thing previews, Collecting some oneshots that form the prelude to Empyre, Road To is a good little primer for the event that sets the scene very well,
Incoming! was a oneshot that was meant to set in motion a load of plot threads for Marvel's stories going forward, but it's mostly about solving the mystery of the death of a Kree and a Skrull.
When it initially came out, I never made the connection to Empyre at all, but looking back it's very cleverly done, There are contributions from all of Marvel's big name writers and artists, but it's all lead by Empyre cowriter Al Ewing so it's surprisingly cohesive, narratively speaking.
The Kree/Skrull War story is also surprisingly good Robbie Thompson uses his family from Meet The Skrulls to frame the current position of the Kree and Skrull, with beautiful artwork from Mattia De Iluis.
It's mostly recap/exposition, but it's presented in a new and exciting way that actually made me curious to go back and read their original miniseries.
Road To Empyre isn't essential reading you can read Empyre and be fine without it, But it's also a lot better than the usual Road To or Prelude To trades that Marvel put out, because it has material that won't be collected elsewhere rather than a random assortment of issues, and it's also very strong storywise too.
A nice surprise for a change, .