Too Much Wibbly Wobbly In The Timey Wimey: Reviewing ‘Marauders’ #9

The Marauders’ mission is to help other mutants, no matter how far they must go through time or space to do so. Caught in a time long before their own, they might be the ones that need rescuing as they fight for the mutants of Threshold while trying not to wipe themselves and their future out at the same time. 

Right away this particular issue has a lot of the same problems that I poked at for the fifth issue and the overall space of that first story arc. Let it be said, this is a series where Steve Orlando is swinging for the fences with some pretty big wild concepts. Mutants of today trying to rescue their potential mutated kin from far back pre-history who were wiped out by the sentient bacteria they created which the X-Men have fought before is pretty epic on paper. Especially once you throw in the idea of the community known as Threshold and time travel and tons of other stuff. 

Execution wise though, there is something lacking here. 

We start off with a huge fight now that Akihro/Fang was killed and consumed by Sublime, that looks great thanks to the artwork that Eleonora Carlini and Matt Milla bring to life, that is just somewhat kind of boring and hard to track. All the characters we know are clad in spacesuits essentially to protect the past from them (and their future germs) with their names down the leg for us to know who is who, yet those nametags are not in most shots so it’s just a bunch of panels of folks fighting where we can’t tell who is who and Fang just is some hulking blue haired dude now that they dispatch pretty rapidly. 

From there, things fall apart and one of the Threshold mutants (Enriched) Crave is killed off before we even knew him, they kill Fang (though the scene between Sommus and Fang in the dream space was touching and well done), escape through a portal of some kind where another Threshold member Amass is dragged into the ground and then apparently Kate also goes missing. Which I didn’t realize till someone states it on the next page, and even flipping back I cannot tell where she disappeared within the panels we’re given. 

All the stuff with the lore around the Threshold Enriched (mutants) and Enshrined (the non-mutant humans) of the rebellion within a place called Helix Home and its leader Grove, as well as the stuff about their foes the Unbreathing, is interesting. That being said it’s all just rapid-fired at us here in this issue following the opening moments, rife with some seemingly inopportune flirting from various people who just met before we’re dumped right into the last pages. We see where Amass ended up and get an out-of-left field reveal that the just introduced Unbreathing leader Commander Nightfount, who is apparently a defected Threshold mutant, is actually somehow Cable’s evil clone Stryfe in disguise. Oh and somehow Amass recognizes him with a gasp, for whatever reason. 

There is great stuff in here and Orlando does great work with the characters but all the reveals aren’t hitting the right way, they feel so out of left field compared to some other recent big reveals in the line, and the 90s level nostalgia is just becoming a bit much. I love some 90s Marvel stuff but so much of this run has centered around a lot of 90s revival stuff and not even things that maybe haven’t been seen since the 90s. Avalon, Holocaust, Marvel 2099, and Stryfe have all featured in things from Marvel quite a bit off and on since the 90s. 

As noted before, the issue looks good because Carlini comes with the same quirky and gorgeous energy as usual mixed with the vivid but toned-down colors that Milla employs. There is a sharp roughness to the artwork that compliments the smooth-flowing nature of Carlini’s style. While it’s hard to tell who is who in that first very crowded fight, there is some good energy and solid motion to the fight, even if it’s so brief. As with the last issue, there is a lot of people sitting around discussing and lore dropping but Carlini makes it interesting because of the great detail to the spaces and the emotions upon the character’s faces and in their body language. 

Much of that depth and enhancement also comes from the colors of Milla, that as I said are vivid but also really grounded and toned down some with plenty of shadows to bring that depth. Helix Home the Mid-Water Zone, where spend most of our time in the issue, are so distinct with their unique color palettes. Lots of heavy blues and purples in the water zone and a lot of lighter oranges, yellows, and greens in the Helix Home. Befitting of the more welcoming and foreboding tones assigned to each space respectively. 

As usual, Ariana Maher makes all the dialogue and other lettering, full of all that lore and revelations, stand out and feel natural as it flows around the page. All of the words are dripping with the appropriate emotion, and little gaps and pauses are built in to heighten the effect of these moments. I’ve said it before but sentence case is a favorite of mine in comics, because it sets a solid baseline ‘normal’ tone for characters, making it easier to depict when a character is louder or quieter than normal. Maher makes SFX pop so much and just dominates the space that it appears within, making sure that we know what is happening right at that moment and can hear it pretty easily within our minds. 

Marauders #9 is now available from Marvel Comics.