Review: Marvel Legacy — Was it Good? Bad? Necessary? Yes, Yes, and Yes.

Recently, the much despised “All-New, All-Different” era of Marvel came to an end, kicking off a new era beginning with the one-shot, Marvel Legacy. Was it worth the $6? Does it set up new storylines? Will I stop asking questions and get to the review?

The single-issue book showcases the status quo of the Marvel universe after the events of Secret Empire. We see Sam Wilson’s Captain America, Jane Foster’s Thor, and Riri Williams’ Iron Heart fight some Frost Giants trying to steal an Infinity Gem. We also see a few long-absent characters make their return to the Marvel universe.

Jason Aaron’s writing isn’t bad (Thor: God of Thunder, Star Wars). He brings his signature fast-paced storytelling and covers a lot of ground. While this is just a one-shot, it seems like Marvel tried packing in too much. There is just a ton of stuff going on that will overwhelm the reader. The book could have done without the Avengers 1,000,000,000 BC and Ghost Rider parts — they didn’t fit into the rest of the story. Also, this isn’t really accessible to new readers — if you haven’t read Marvel titles for the past few years, you’re not going to know what’s going on.

The artwork is all over the place. Esad Ribić (Thor: God of Thunder) does a great job on his pages, as do Steve McNiven, Ed McGuinness and Stuart Immonen. However, with all the different artists working on the book, the look and feel for the story is inconsistent. If they decided to use three artists instead of 15, it would have worked better.

Honestly, this book is not worth the $6. As said earlier, the story is much more of a wrap-up of the “All-New, All-Different” era of Marvel. While closing the door to that era is great thing, Marvel Legacy itself requires you to have read a Marvel title in the past few years to know what is going on. It would have worked better had it been the true final issue of Secret Empire, cause that mini-series was the grand finale of that era.

While Marvel is, thankfully, headed into a new familiar direction, this finale of sorts could have been better.