Warhammer 40,000: Marneus Calgar #2 // Review
The chaos is coming. The Chaptermaster of the Ultramarines is unaware of their presence. All he knows is that heretics have found themselves in a highly secure place, which brings up all kinds of questions that recall the Chaptermaster’s youth and training in Warhammer 40,000: Marneus Calgar #2. Writer Kieron Gillen carves out a remarkable origin story for one of the most enduringly popular characters in the long-lived Warhammer 40K property. Artist Jacen Burrows and colorist Java Tartaglia deliver stark brutality to the page with vivid detail that occasionally veers into the gruesomely amplified. A dark journey dwells on very intense events in the youth of the title character.
The heretics have been wiped-out on the battlefield of Nova Thulium. That much was easy. The difficult part will be figuring out how they got to be there in the first place. It might help the Chaptermaster of the Ultramarines to figure things out if he were to have intel on Thulium Minor. There are agents of chaos there; they are approaching slowly. Chaptermaster Marneus Calgar isn’t far from the Calgar Estates of his homeworld. It’s a strange homecoming that brings-up memories of his namesake.
The second issue of the series isn’t nearly as packed with story as the first was. Gillen delves directly into Marneus Calgar’s childhood for the bulk of this issue. The brutal training of a young boy who would grow to become the greatest space marine in history is interesting enough to carry the issue. Still, it veers a bit away from those things that make the Warhammer 40,000 world so attractive to begin with. It’s a bold move that largely pays-off, particularly as a major plot twist reveals itself in a very appealing way at issue’s end.
Burroughs’ work on classic Warhammer 40,000 iconography is beautiful this issue. The massive tank-like powered armor suits look as monolithic as they’ve always been. The visual dram in the story of young space marine hopefuls work for the bulk of the issue. The huge foreboding world around the young men feels immense and unforgiving. The action is appealingly bleak. There are a few moments of almost poetic intensity as young Calgar and a fellow recruit bleed out into a lake in darkness punctuated by glowing crystals. It’s crushingly beautiful sadness that is as much an accomplishment for the artist Burroughs as it is for the colorist Tartaglia. The darkness is well-modulated against the lights on the lake, and the glowing crystals off in the distance.
With Calgar’s past fully rendered in the course of the first couple of issues of the series, it’s really only a matter of time before the series will have to focus substantially more in installments to come. A more central focus on Ultramarines in conflict with chaos appears to be right around the corner. Gillen could still drift back into Calgar’s past from here, but the center of the story is free to shift a bit to the present now that the huge event in Calgar’s past has been revealed.
