Groot #4 // Review
A Kree task force is sweeping the area around Kasphirus IX. It’s a big task operation. A fleet of more than 20 spacecraft are all looking for the same thing. Colonel Yon-Rogg is losing his patience. He’s been trying to pressure the Galactic Merchant’s Guild, but that pressure has been about as effective as the scans of Kasphirus IX. Then there’s the incoming energy pulse...it’s the same three words repeated over and over again. They’re the only three words spoken by the title character in Groot #4. Writer Dan Abnett concludes a story with artist Damian Couceiro and colorist Matt Milla.
Captain Mar-Vell of the Kree Starforce might be interested to know about the exploits of Colonel Yon-Rogg. He’s got information that might be kind of useful. He can confirm collusion between the Merchant Guild and Agz and his Spoilers. Unfortunately, he’s being choked by one of Agz’s giant toe talons. So he’s kind of busy. The captain of the Spoilers is planning on killing Mar-Vell. He’s a more than capable combatant. He’s going to be able to get himself out of his immediate danger, but there’s a lot more going on than Mar-Vell’s own personal safety. Navigating his way to victory is going to be complicated.
Though Groot is clearly somewhere around the center of the story, it’s pretty clear by this point that the real center of the story is a young Captain Mar-Vell. Honestly...it’s just really cool to see Abnett go for a more traditional, pulpy Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers-style space action story. It’s a genre that had been wildly popular in a far earlier era of sci-fi, and it’s just not the type of thing that makes it to page or screen all that much anymore without being bogged down by a lot of other elements. It’s one space captain doing battle with nefariously monstrous aliens to save a planet. Cool stuff.
Conuceiro has a solid grasp of the action as it flows across the page. This being a more traditional sort of space opera action finale, it involves a hell of a lot of blaster fire...in this case, Uni-Beam fire. Action and tension are delivered to the page with smooth kinetics that work well with the pacing of the story. There’s a great integration between the action in space and the action on the surface of Planet X. The impact of the action could have benefitted from cleaner lines and sharper colors, but the overall energy of the action fits the page quite well.
Abnett is a remarkably versatile writer. He’s doing some staggeringly intricate work for 2,000 A.D. in his “Azimuth” series. His work on Wild’s End is hauntingly still. And with Groot, he’s managed a very contemporary-feeling sort of a vintage space ranger-type story. There’s a definite momentum in a traditional tale of early Mar-Vel that could gain a whole new series if Groot does as well as it should.
