Marvel’s intergalactic murder mystery returns this week with the next exciting chapter of ‘Original Sin’ from Jason Aaron. When we last left Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, they tapped the expertise of Nick Fury to aid in the investigation of Uatu the Watcher’s murder. After examining the body and seeing that his eyes were missing, even more questions regarding this heinous act arose, especially when a Mindless One emerged and appeared to be sentient for the first time. While Captain America, Thor, and the other Avengers followed that lead, other heroes such as Dr. Strange, Ant-Man, Gamora, and the Winter Soldier formed unlikely alliances to investigate additional options.
Now, we catch up with a few of those covert teams to see what they find. The book opens with the trio of Emma Frost, Black Panther, and Scott Lang surveying somewhere deep within the earth among the moloids in search of the killer. Meanwhile, the Punisher and Stephen Strange ventured beyond the realms of man to find that their particular skill sets jive fairly well in this instance. Then, back in New York, the Avengers discover who is in possession of one of the Watcher’s eyes.
First, I have to mention that I misread the last issue. I thought that Nick Fury assembled the additional teams, but apparently that’s not the case. When Frank Castle was in the process of questioning his partner, Strange was about to say who brought them together, but was cut short. Of course, the big mystery of this series is who killed the Watcher, but now we have another question that is need of an answer: Who dispatched the additional teams that are currently scattered in some crazy places to find clues about the murderer of Uatu.
I haven’t decided if that misunderstanding was my own fault for misinterpreting the details of the story or if it was Aaron’s fault for not making these things clear, but I do have to say that the writer has given us some crazy surprises in this issue. The biggest one had to be the people that were behind the Mindless Ones incidents. Never in a million years did I think Exterminatrix and the Orb would be relevant to a major Marvel crossover event, but here we are. These villains certainly came out of left field, but they totally have my attention right now. Plus, if Oubliette Midas is in town, chances are good that we’ll see her ex-boyfriend Marvel Boy and his crew, the Young Avengers, joining the party. After Kieron Gillen’s excellent run with those characters ending earlier this year, it would be cool to see them make an appearance in ‘Original Sin’.
Finally, I couldn’t help but wonder how last week’s tie-in in Jonathan Hickman’s ‘Avengers’ #29 was connected to the events of this issue. That book featured the warning that it took place after this issue, but there wasn’t really anything here that would indicate how finding out that a z-list villain pulled off the caper of the century would connect to Steve Rogers remembering the dirty deeds of the Illuminati. Maybe we’ll have these answers in ‘Original Sin’ #3, but until then, we’ll just have to come up with our own theories. The thing about a good crossover is that the tie-ins do exactly as their name implies and enhance the story being told in the main title. ‘Age of Ultron’ was a crappy story, but the tie-ins were good. On the flipside, ‘Infinity’ was great and had some great tie-ins, so that story was made that much better thanks to the supplemental tales. Hopefully this event takes after the latter storyline and is good all around. (We won’t have to wait very long to find out as a ton of tie-ins come out next week.)
If you look at the structure of a story, ‘Original Sin’ is still in the early stages. We’re a bit past the exposition, though we haven’t exactly reached the hearty Act II yet. But the story has managed to pull some impressive twists and turns out of nowhere and has most definitely kept it’s audience interested. There is a ton of potential with this latest Marvel Comics event to go either way at this point, although I get a positive feeling from this one, especially after this issue. We’ll see how right I am about it in two weeks, but I have faith that this could be an event that will have True Believers talking in comic shops around the world.
Final Score:
ORIGINAL SIN #1
Written by Jason Aaron
Art by Mike Deodato & Frank Martin
Cover by Julian Totino Tedesco
