The Kings Of Lies — Reviewing ‘Imperial’ #4

Dark forces conspired in shadows playing a deadly game of cosmically imbalanced chess that has come to a decisive end. As the dust settles in Imperial #4, a new cosmic landscape has been born.

After a short break full of spin-off one-shots, Jonathan Hickman, Federico Vicentini, Iban Coello, Federico Blee, and Cory Petit are here to close out Marvel’s Cosmic Event.

-SPOILERS FOLLOW-

Every handful of years, since the 2000s, Marvel seems to like to shake up the cosmic can. That means either moving the varied plethora of alien races into new spaces or putting them back into places they once held, moving the pieces around in a way that can be built off of in that moment. With Imperial, we’ve gotten a bit of both when all is said and done.

So where does Hickman leave everything?

After secretly causing this whole affair, the Inhuman Royals escape any judgement and are major players again, hovering around trying to take back control of the Kree home world of Hala. They went from surging in the middle 2000s to being killed off and sent into limbo in the late 2010s.

A galactic union is actually still born, out of the secret and various power brokers decide to hide the secret in the name of the union, not to mention their own variety of empire needs and wants. Power hunger is contagious and addictive after all.

After a coup, the Shi’ar have retreated back to their isolated want to fight everyone status quo. Skrulls are the villains of the universe, after being whipped back into a religious conquering frenzy by the Inhumans plot. While their longtime foes the Kree are dealing with the aforementioned Inhuman’s power bid, as well as rumors of the Vells (Genis-Vell and Phyla-Vell) and Marvel Boy coming into play circulate. All of the Accuser corps are wary and suspicious of the Inhumans, as they should be.

Maximus the Mad, after being there to help his brother Black Bolt send the universe into chaos, has been exiled again. Peter Quill the Star-Lord is ruling the Spartax people and is now the leader of the Galactic Union. Nova the Centurion is infuriated by the secret and the power plays, swearing to tell the truth to people. Lastly, Shuri and the Black Panther prepare for a new rising of the Wakandan Empire.

Overall, this event has been a bit of a mess while also being solid. Various character issues have continued through the run, but not as a detriment to the actual story being told. Just to the sense of the seemingly constantly eroding shared universe aspect that Marvel continues to rest upon. Warlord Hulk in space and possessed by ancient evil on Earth Hulk sure are a big contradiction.

Hickman’s plotting works out as the vision has congealed. There is a messiness that isn’t due to mistakes though, as the overall story is born of mess- orchestrated mess from the Inhumans, that preys upon the messiness that is inherently baked into these various empires and their people. Old hatreds and angers are never fully gone, something we know all too well about in reality.

Part of that orchestrated messy chaos came from the artistic side of things.

Both Vicentini and Coello have sharper and rougher styles of artwork. Pairing them together, with their similarities and bold differences, has worked out quite well for the series overall. There is a ton of action, much of its spaceship borne followed by characters coming to blows, through the issue. Giving them more than the last issue where a lot of talking head moments and people playing chess took over everything.

That aforementioned rougher texture causes the artwork to really be lively and kinetic to many degrees. Simultaneously, the nature of the work makes the battle scenes feel very messy and frantic. Which is not a bad thing, mind you. Wars and fights are not clean-cut things where characters give each other turns while they square up in the most orderly of ways.

There were a few bits where it wasn’t the easiest to tell what was happening. I didn’t mind it in the long run though because the gist of things was clear. Also, I really like it when artists lean into a more realistic pacing to things, even if it muddles the overall visuals, to set the right tone. So that we the audience are as off kilter as the characters that we’re following.

Standing in the middle, offering up the right balance, is Blee. He brings colors that span the gamut of the palette choices, from the lightest to the darkest, and a ton of them somewhere in the middle. He keeps the backdrops or backgrounds somewhere in a more natural or neutral realm. So that the contrasting colors further on either side of the spectrum will stand out even more than they already do.

It would be easy to assume that space stories should be full of the flashiest vibrant out of the sphere colors, because it’s not from Earth, despite our planet being full of its own wide variety of wild colors. Mixing and matching to strike the right tone, one both foreign and familiar, is the best move in this moment.

There isn’t a dearth of words being flung around in these books. Nor is there an absence of deep emotional weight to anchor things down. We feel it in the overall story direction and through the great representational artwork. Naturally, the place where it’s felt the most is the words that we take in as we read through the story.

Petit taps into all of the realms to make the lettering, no matter what form it takes, sing. Rife with the emotions already mentioned while making it all unique to the characters and moment. No two characters feel alike in their voices, even when they don’t have their own font, color, or bubble to set them apart. Chiefly though, it’s well plotted flow-wise upon the pages.

Imperial #4 is now available from Marvel Comics.