Marvel Comics 2018
Written by Nick Spencer & Donny Cates
Illustrated by Rod Reis
Lettered by VC’s Travis Lanham
The city of sin gets its biggest sinner yet. When Doctor Strange raises Las Vegas up from its destruction during SECRET EMPIRE, he inadvertently opens a big door for the embodiment of evil, MEPHISTO! The devilish villain takes the city for himself and sets his sights on the rest of the world. It's going to take heroes from all over the Marvel Universe to defeat him, but there's nothing simple about fighting the lord of Hell.
Before I start I wanna go on a mini-rant here. I remember a time long ago and far away, in other words my youth, when arcs such as this would just be a part of their series. Is Marvel so desperate for sales that they have to put out a four issue mini-series that could have and more importantly should have been a part of the ongoing monthly series.
That having been said how long ago was Secret Empire? I feel like that was ages ago already and that this is tie-in to that is somehow wrong. Had this come out hot on the heels of the whole Secret Empire series it would have felt more natural considering Sam is no longer Captain America. Still I guess we needed a cheap way to get this going and this was it. Wow I am being more negative than I thought I’d be here. I don’t read a lot of Marvel and I'm beginning to remember why now. However once we get past the whole mischegas of when this is supposed to take place and we see what Stephen does well hell this is why I wanted to read this!
The arrogance in thinking that with more power he could things on such a scale that would help make things right after what happened. The arrogance and his inability to recognise it is one of the old school Dr. Strange aspects I really loved about the character. Nobody really enjoyed working with him hell even Wong the dutiful servant got aggravated with him. The guys kind of bring that back and I like seeing it and then the fact he didn’t expect any kind of reaction to what he did well yeah another side of him where his belief in himself is so overrated that it’s delicious.
Let us talk about Rod for a moment here shall we. His work is utterly fabulous here I really like the style he brings and how the way he does it blends his imagination with detail work that coexist nicely. Seriously he’s come a long way and to see him do head to toe work here of this level of quality is a huge reason to pick this up alone. There are moments Stephen’s face alone is awe inspiring but then we get to Mephisto and the creativity and imagination are wild. His use of page layouts so that we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows such a great eye for storytelling.
Once Mephisto hits the page all else can be forgiven. The way the boys weave his tale, one of injury and insult, well in his eyes anyway, so that this was the logical thing to do once his property was taken away. The whole idea behind what we see here is superbly rendered and what we get to see while Stephen is talking brings this to a whole different level of insanely good writing.
I do like that those Avengers who were present are a non-factor in all this and that there is one person who can rally a group to stop what’s happening. I might disagree about the size of that group but those summoned definitely make me think of Marvel Knights so I am totally in for this. This story if it had appeared in the ongoing monthly would more than likely ended up resulting in more people putting on the pull lists that kind of thinking should really occur more often at Marvel.