Warhammer 40,000: Marneus Calgar #5 // Review
A legendary hero defends his childhood home from chaos in the climactic chapter of Warhammer 40,000: Marneus Calgar. The collaboration between Marvel and Games Workshop comes to a satisfying conclusion thanks to admirable work by writer Kieron Gillen, artist Jacen Burrows, and inker Guillermo Ortego. The conclusion moves swiftly from beginning to end, adding smart, little bits of humor here and there that finish-off the series with flash and poise. All of the major revelations about the hero’s past rest comfortably behind the series, which concludes with ample action and drama in a way that shows promising potential for subsequent collaborations between Marvel and Games Workshop.
Marneus’ Fury Interceptor has been shot out of the sky over Thulium Minor. He is recognized by a few chaos disciples who are there in the snowy wastes of a familiar region to claim the wreckage. A strange two-headed humanoid fusion is ready to lead an attack, but the real threat is a towering, devastatingly intimidating engine of chaos known as the Lord of Skulls. Calgar can win the battle, but he’s going to need to make a tactical retreat into a dangerous place in order to do so.
Gillen has been somewhat inventive with his storytelling style thus far. He’s been grafting sharp bits of text with the traditional sequential art of a comic book in interesting ways. He’s particularly clever with the introduction of the mega-mecha villain here. Lord of Skulls makes his first appearance, and one page later, there’s a schematic overview of the villain, complete with a list of units known to have survived an encounter with him. (There aren’t any.) Calgar himself delivers quite a few action-hero one-liners that are considerably more intelligent than the usual sorts of things shouted in the heat of battle. He’s a smart guy. Gillen has clearly delivered a very intelligent action hero to the page.
Burrows and Ortega continue to march emotion, passion, and all-out war across the page with a stylish appearance. Things DO begin to feel a bit stiff in places. The blood spatter effects present throughout the issue feel strangely motionless next to the blur of all the action. Arcs of energy look a bit more like solid substance than raw explosives, but the feel of a Warhammer 40,000 battle is definitely there throughout a satisfying closing issue that also features remarkable dramatic nuance in the faces of Calgar and others.
The close of this five-part series does justice to the long-lived UK science fantasy franchise. Sci-Fi action on the battlefield hits with the unique visual appearance of the Warhammer 40K universe. It’s a natural fit for the comics page that will, with any luck at all, soon be joined by subsequent series. The world introduced to the Marvel Comics page in Marneus Calgar is one that has substantial appeal. Given the size of the Warhammer universe, there’s plenty of room to grow if the two companies can get it together for more collaboration.
