4 out of 5

Every comic is someone’s first comic. That’s an old school maxim that can guide the readability of books, and is a mentality that was perhaps responsible for the way a lot of comics – once we’d progressed to storylines carrying over across multiple books – would use omniscient narration to resummarize the current state of things, or call out characters we’ve otherwise seen just last issue; similar to “second screen” writing, but done more in the spirit of accessibility over dumbing things down so you don’t have to pay attention. This evolved over the years, especially when the 80s and 90s had Marvel and DC doing a running series of “universe” shaping events that involved collecting multiple mini-series to see through, but I’d say you could still mostly buy a #4 of 6 limited series book or whatever and get the gist.

When we got to the 00s era of events and crossovers (somewhere after Identity Crisis and Civil War), and then furthered by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there was a bit of a branch in the approach: accessibility was still important, but so was “collect ’em all,” and it felt like a lot of books kind of demanded that you pick up several others to really get a grounding in what’s what.

There are a billion ways to cut this narrative, but zeroing in on my experience, it’s a lot rarer that I’ll pick up a random issue from a run in a 2010s and beyond book – whether part of a big event or not – and come out of it with a take. Or rather, my take will be: “I guess this might be good for people who know what’s going on, but I don’t know how to care.” On the one hand, creating an in-group of readers is kinda cool, as it’s fun to be part of the club, but on the other hand, you risk exactly my impression: the books don’t feel for me.

Of course, there’s always the possibility I’m just getting old. …Moving on.

These are many, many words to prelude that I picked up a random one-shot from a 2025 crossover series – Imperial War – and I was able to walk away not only being able to tell you what the series is about (and the frontispiece blurbs don’t count towards this; they are often still written in the “if you know, you know” list-of-in-group-characters-and-concepts tone), but also to actually have been invested in the issue itself. Like, I’m armed with enough knowledge to determine whether I’m interested or not, and not just to feel excluded.

High level: the reappearance of a thought-dead prophet is causing a potential rift in an alliance between two warring cultures – in Marvel, that’d be the Kree and Skrull. Some hero types are on the hunt for this prophet; we get to follow along in their hunty path for 20 or so pages.

The specifics are less important, I think, versus the construction: I’m going to guess most of the writing here is from Abnett, with Hickman show-running, but either way, narration is used to talk conceptually about the war (and religion, and faith) while our leads – Gamora, Darkhawk, and some Ms. Marvel – fight and banter in the foreground. Abnett / Hickman give us some action up front to dazzle, but don’t make the why-are-these-people-fighting details as important to know as using it as a springboard for the above-mentioned hunt. It’s a great way to zoom in but remain macro at the same time.

The character interplay is excellent: everyone has their own voice, and mostly avoids dumbass cliche banter – I’m going with Abnett on this, as he’s always been good at carving out whole personas from just a few lines. The pages jump back and forth between some Skrull political business and our heroes next locale, up until what feels like (both in context of this single issue and the series) a pivotal discovery towards the end. The final few pages are some comic book cliffhanger shit that reminds me why I’m not wholly interested in where this goes – introduce new people! Here’s a twist! Kill off some characters! – but this individual issue was such classic, on-the-page comic goodness, I was here for it.

We’re not told how the art is split between Cory Smith and Luca Maressa, but there does seem to be a point about halfway through when backgrounds drop a bit in detail, and the inking gets thicker, so I’d guess half and half. The character models remain consistent, though, so it still reads pretty seamlessly. And although I’ve praised this as a standalone, it’s still a lot of info to jam into a book: I applaud that the writing made me interested in understanding, but all the same, some panels had me going back over to ferret out some nuance to make sure I understood who was on who’s side; likely only impactful if you’re like me and don’t regularly read these.