Reviewer: Paul Sebert
Story Title: League of Losers
Writer: Robert Kirkman
Penciler: Paco Medina
Colorist: Studio F’s Marte Gracia
Inker: Juan Vlasco
Letters: VC’s Rus Wooton
Editors: Molly Lazer, Aubrey Sitterson, Andy Schmidt, Tom Brevoort, & Joe Q.
Publisher: Hmmm… Well the name of the book is “MARVEL Team-Up”
From the dark recesses of a future gone mad comes Lord Chronok; a new villain with an army of trained killers, access to devastating technology, and that cool gliding board Kit Cloudkicker from Tailspin rode around on. Coming from a time in which information on our superheroes is on common historical record Chronok and his legions have come back to out time to wipe out our heroes and take over.
As this issue begins Chronok’s scheme is working distressingly well. In the opening pages Chronok manages to cut the “Gordian Knot” that has stumped so many villains by simply traveling to a point where most of the New Avengers are in their headquarters and then blowing it to smithereens. I bet Kang, another time traveling villain, must be kicking himself right now for never ever thinking of that.
If this scenario were carried out by the wrong creative team it could’ve gotten very grim very quickly, but Paco Medina’s exaggerated Ramos-esque pencils and Kirkman’s droll script give things a somewhat tongue-in-cheek tone while not veering into parody. The character design for Chronok is actually fairly ingenious. He is both a menacing figure, and a somewhat absurd epitome of garish costume design right down to a set of Liefeld-style unnecessary pouches.
Thankfully, though, even with heroes dropping like flies, there is one source to be hope in this world gone mad- a small number of heroes who are either too new or too obscure to make Chronok’s hit list. So half the fun of this new arc is wondering who will survive and just how can they strike back at this seemingly unstoppable menace?
Kirkman has made Marvel Team-Up one Marvel’s most consistently entertaining books and this issue starts what looks to be the series best arc yet. The first issue moves at a lightening fast pace, but never loses focus as there’s a mixture of action, laughs, and tragedy.
While Medina’s pencils may prove to be too much of an animated style for some tastes, I do feel that they are a very good fit for the material.
