Annihilation #1-2

Annihilation #1-2

Originally released in 2006

Written by Keith Giffen

Art by Andrea Di Vito

While the heroes on Marvel's Earth were fighting a civil war over superhero registration, most of the known universe was trying to deal with Annihilus, a Fantastic Four villain from the anti-matter universe known as the Negative Zone, who was seeking to destroy all life.  So a much larger problem in terms of scale.  The Shi'ar (an interstellar empire tied to the X-Men) largely stayed out of the conflict and most of the Skrull empire was destroyed early on, leaving an alliance between Richard Rider (the last of the Nova Corps.), the Kree Empire, and various other individuals.

I'd heard Annihilation recommended as being one of Marvel's best cosmic event, but starting with this issue showed me how completely unfamiliar I am with that portion of the Marvel universe. (for example, the person on the left with the robotic eye is Star-Lord)  I knew about Annihilus, the Super Skrull, Ronan the Accuser, Galactus, the Silver Surfer, and a few others (like the characters who would form the Marvel Cinematic Universe's version of the Guardians of the Galaxy), but there are quite a few differences.  Ronan the Accuser is a fugitive from the Kree, no longer an Accuser (basically the Kree equivalent of a judge, jury, and executioner), though he continues to act like one.  Drax has an adoptive daughter named Cammi, along with his actual daughter (or a reincarnation of his daughter?), a bald psychic woman who goes by Moondragon.

I knew that Galactus had other heralds beyond the Silver Surfer (Fire-Lord, Terrax the Terrible, Spider-Man's Aunt May - though that last one could have been a dream sequence, an issue of What-If, or an advertisement for Hostess snacks like Twinkies or fruit pies), but I'm not familiar with most of them, and they serve on both sides of the conflict.  Nova is the viewpoint character here, and he does a good job with explaining most of the characters, but it's a chaotic war against a seemingly endless insectoid horde and there's a lot going on at once.  I'm guessing there are issues leading up to this that I should have read first.

In the middle of all of this, Thanos is seemingly working for Annihilus (though he presumably has his own agenda - I'm not sure if he's going to backstab Annihilus to become a bigger threat to the universe or backstab Annihilus to side with Nova and company, but I feel like it's safe to say that he's going to backstab Annihilus) and Drax wants to kill Thanos.  The artwork does a great job of depicting the chaos, and the writing conveys the feeling of fighting a losing battle, of trying to push a seemingly endless force back and a looming feeling of hopelessness.

I'm interested to see where this goes, but I feel like I'll need to look up a reading list first.  It seems like a good cosmic Marvel storyline, but it doesn't seem like it works well as someone first cosmic Marvel storyline - it feels like learning how to swim by diving into the deep end of the pool, or watching Avengers Endgame as your first Marvel movie.