Over the course of the last decade, it’s been very interesting to see how the popularity of the Marvel movies has turned most of the world into superhero fans with a pretty broad knowledge of the Marvel universe and its heroes, including myself. Seriously, if you had asked me what I thought about the Guardians of the Galaxy or multiversal crossovers a decade ago, I would have looked at you funny.
The point is that the comic book world and movie world are at a point where they inform and assist each other, and now that the world has been introduced to long time Fantastic Four villain Kang the Conqueror through the Loki tv show, now we get to see Marvel Comics capitalize on his appearance with a solo comic book series.
Let’s see how it works out.
Written by Jackson Lanzig and Colin KellyCover by: Mike del Mundo
Illustrated by Carlos Magno
Colored by Espen Grundetjern
Lettered by VC’s Joe Caramagna
THE ORIGIN OF KANG!
The man called Kang the Conqueror has been a pharaoh, a villain, a warlord of the space ways and even, on rare occasions, a hero. Across all timelines, one fact seemed absolute: Time means nothing to Kang the Conqueror.
But the truth is more complex. Kang is caught in an endless cycle of creation and destruction dictated by time and previously unseen by any but the Conqueror himself. A cycle that could finally explain the enigma that is Kang. And a cycle that begins and ends with an old and broken Kang sending his younger self down a dark path…
It’s Latveria in the 31st century and Nathaniel Richards is bored out of his skull. He lives in a supposedly perfect world after his ancestors defeated Dr. Doom once and for all, but he is quickly realizing that this perfect world is also the perfect prison with no progress, no struggle, and no excitement. All of that changes when he meets Kang the Conqueror, himself from a different dimension/timeline/whatever thing you can imagine that would allow someone to meet themselves without causing too much of a paradox. Kang decides to teach the young Richards everything he knows, so they wind up traveling to the distant past, one year before the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs strikes the Earth, to give the boy that will become him a harsh lesson in survival and the morality of someone who can travel to any place and any time.
“Kang the Conqueror” #1 is written by Jackson Lanzig and Colin Kelly, who present a very dense and well written script that understands how to make a time traveling warlord like Kang compelling and interesting. The first and most important thing that this writing duo understands is how to make a villain with time powers interesting and compelling. Since there really isn’t anything or anyone that can directly threaten an interdimensional and inter temporal warlord, the writing duo has gone the introspective route and they do it very well. The Kang in this book may possess incredible power and be able to go anywhere and do what he wants, but Lanzig and Kelly turn him into a very bitter and sad being who is constantly lost in a web of his own failures. Therefore, the conflict of the story is between a bitter and jaded Kang who believes that emotions like love and caring are dangerous and a younger version of himself that sees his older self as oppressive and pathetic.
The second thing that Lanzig and Kelly understand is how to balance the complexities and challenges of time travel stories with clear storytelling that doesn’t leave the reader confused. It would have been so easy for the writers to create a story that tries to show off with weird time travel shenanigans and cool moments, but would have left the reader lost and very confused. By keeping the story focused on Nathaniel Richards and his emotional journey, the writers keep the story grounded and relatable. The time travel is fun, but it’s really a side show to the real meat of the story, which is really for the best.
Continued belowThe artwork for “Kang the Conqueror” #1 is provided by Carlos Magno, and it is a practical clinic on how to use the medium of comics to tell and enhance a story. Magno uses everything from double page spreads to instill a sense of grand scale and epic action, small panel close ups to enhance rapid fire dialogue, and splash pages to deliver the proper emotional weight to specific moments that allows the book to dictate the pacing to the reader without having to rely on motion and camera edits. On a smaller scale, Magno’s art style is borderline photo realistic, but with just enough unrealistic elements in the character’s faces and motion to avoid the dreaded uncanny valley. While this does lead to some of the characters looking a little bit weird in the close up panels, there is still enough room for Magno to get some great emotional moments with fine detail in the character’s faces. It’s not a comic that does anything particularly innovative or helps push the boundaries of what comics can do, but it remains firmly in the realm of what comics have been doing for decades and it does it incredibly well.
“Kang the Conqueror” #1 is a small, emotionally dense story blown up to epic proportions across time and space. It shows the trials and tribulations of a man who has everything, who has the ability to reach out and conquer entire dimensions with barely a thought, but cannot seem to control himself or stop him from making the same mistakes over and over again. It’s a wonderful comic and a great way to bring one of Marvel’s most powerful villains back to the limelight for old readers and new readers alike.
Final Verdict: 9.8- It’s a great introduction to a classic Marvel villain for new readers and presents an incredibly powerful villain in a deep and meaningful way.
