Saturday, May 10, 2014

MadCap's Comic Reviews - "Original Sin #0"



I’ve been a fan of comics ever since I could first read.  Well, to be more accurate I’ve been a fan of superheroes since I first had working eyeballs and I’ve irregularly kept up with certain titles - most prominently Spider-Man...at least until One More Day, but if I go into that you’ll click off this and go onward on your journey through the web be ever so diligently reading rantings that people have already made since 2007, so I feel we best move on.  Besides, I’m not here to talk about the fallout from one of Marvel’s most ridiculously overblown and really rather stupid crossovers (again, if you’re on the opposite side of a moral debate as Captain America, you are wrong.  Period.), I’m here to talk about the set up to what may be a really rather good crossover - “Original Sin”.

I first heard about this through my friend EpicApathy (That Handsome Devil!™), when he told me about what sounded like a very interesting plot involve the actual death of Uatu the Watcher.  Now, any Marvel fan worth their weight in back issues knows who Uatu is.  For those that don’t, or are just getting into comics, “Original Sin #0” is clear in its intentions with the issue title “Who is the Watcher?”.  Well, to delve into the history a bit, Uatu is a member of an alien race known as the Watchers who...watch.  They’re an immensely powerful race that keeps an eye on the universe as a whole but are sworn never to interfere.

If you’re wondering why I’m not making a Time Lords joke here, it’s only because Uatu predates the Time Lords by about six years.  So, honestly, if anything, Doctor Who is ripping off Marvel.

Much like the Doctor, Uatu is the being that regularly breaks the non-interference rule and has done so a few times in order to save the Earth.  When he first appeared, it was to help the Fantastic Four save the Earth from being consumed by Galactus.  Since then, Uatu has interfered more than a few times in the course of Earth’s history, as well as appeared before several critically important events in the history of the Marvel universe.  However, that’s really been it.  For the very big cosmic events, he’s been known to intervene and even for seemingly minor events he is at least watching.  It’s been this way in Marvel for more than fifty years now.  However, “Original Sin #0” poses a question about Uatu that I don’t think has really been approached before this point.

What is Uatu watching for?

Well, that question gets answered in “Original Sin #0”, which begins with some narration by Sam Alexander aka Nova about his backstory, and his connection to his missing father - who was a member of the Nova Corps (basically Marvel’s answer to the Green Lantern Corps) and worked a janitor at his son’s high-school before mysteriously going missing.  Nova, being a teenaged superhero in Marvel, has no doubt been given the pamphlet by Spidey on keeping your girlfriends away from bridges, not making deals with Satan, and avoiding archvillains that for bizarre and completely out of character reasons feel the need to mindswap with you and be “superior”.

...I said I wasn’t going to rant, didn’t I? Oh, well.

But still, Nova gains his powers from the Nova Corp and - after a battle with the hilariously named villain “Tomazooma”, Nova gets some recognition from the Big Three of the Avengers, and here I’ll take a minute to talk about the artwork.  It’s pretty good.  Cap looks a good deal like his Marvel Cinematic Universe counterpart which is both a good and bad thing.  One of the criticisms I’ve heard for the latest film adaptations is that Cap’s original outfit from the 616 universe wouldn’t translate well to the screen (lampshaded in that hilarious USO scene in the first film).  While I disagree, this issue does the opposite and brings the MCU version into the comics and it looks...out of place.  Not bad, necessarily, and a lot more like a military universe than the classic look...but it just feels rather strange.

I don’t know how long Captain Rogers had been rocking the look, of course, but if it’s new because of the recent films, I wouldn’t be overly surprised.  And of course Thor is looking like himself, though not very Chris Hemsworth-y...and Tony Stark is outfitted in Suit #9001, the gold and black look is pretty cool, though.

Getting back to the plot, Nova poses the question of the issue.  When none of the Avengers assembled can give him an answer, Nova decides to take a trip up to Uatu’s home on the Moon.  He even brings Uatu a gift, a piece of the field where the Avengers and the X-Men stopped the Phoenix Force (assuming this was in Avengers vs. X-Men...another overblown crossover) and he is allowed into the Watcher’s compound, where Nova’s helmet begins alerting him to danger, and he sees several versions of Uatu that he theorizes are not duplicates but alternate versions of him, the implication being that they’re all the same man over various potential realities.  This followed up by Nova joining Uatu to review a video record of the event that led to the Watchers declaring their non-intervention policy.

A society that the Watchers gave nuclear weaponry to ended up completely destroying itself.  But the big twist being that the one who managed to convince the Watchers to grant that primitive race the technology was none other than Uatu’s own father.  Huh.  Suddenly, his interest in such a tiny, primitive race as humanity makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

But it’s even more than that when we learn that Uatu hasn’t just been watching the mainstream Marvel universe but every...single...possibility...that branches off from every...single...choice or event.  As Nova puts it, Uatu literally sees into infinity.  All the time.  And all for the reason of trying to find a single reality where his father was right and interfering didn’t result in the destruction of that race.  Sadly, however, across all of infinity...such a reality doesn’t seem to exist.

Now, a more cynical person might all bull on this.  Then again, anyone who wants to bring up the multiverse theory might want to give Sliders a look.  Trust me, all parallel universes have their own degree of suck. So, if there isn't actually a universe where everything is hunky dory with the Watchers helping a caveman race create the atom bomb, I'm more than willing to believe.

But really, I believe most would describe this as “feels”, and these are Uatu feels of the highest caliber.  The only thing he really wants is to find one reality where his father was right...something that Nova sympathizes with heavily.  Eventually, having learned part of the reason why he had come to visit, Nova gets around to asking about the ultimate fate of his father - really only wanting to know whether he’s dead or alive.  Uatu, speaking the only three words of dialogue that he has, tells him that his father is indeed alive and Nova leaves as he joyfully shouts the words through the void of space...somehow.

And the story ends with Uatu taking the piece of earth that Nova gave to him and setting it on a podium, observing it for a panel before walking away.

“Original Sin #0” is pretty good, and was an excellent doorway to get back into comics with my long absence.  It showed us a side of Uatu not yet seen, and managed to make us empathize with a great and powerful being that is one of the most inhuman things that exists (DC, take note).  It manages to introduce the character of Sam Alexander to the reader as well, which definitely got my attention and personally made me want to pick up his series outside of the “Original Sin” storyline.  And it made a good intro to “Original Sin” itself, even though it’s getting us to care about a character right before they’re killed off, it’s done well and actually manages to succeed in doing that.

And it does pose an even bigger question than simply who would want to kill Uatu and why.  What has he seen that someone thought he shouldn’t have?  I suppose the only way to find out is to pick up the rest of “Original Sin”...which I’ll more than likely be doing...until somebody decides to make a deal with Mephisto to bring Uatu back to life.

...yes, Joe Quesada sucks.  Now shoo!

“Original Sin #0” is now available from Marvel comics wherever comic books are sold.

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin

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