Annihilation: Prologue is the lead-in book to "Annihilation", a rather ambitious 23-part crossover set to run through to next January. 

The ambitious bit isn't the scale so much as the commitment Marvel are showing to some of their more obscure characters - entire miniseries devoted to the Super-Skrull and Ronan the Accuser would be surprising at the best of times.  Marvel's outer space mythology has been pretty much ignored in recent years, and the Silver Surfer is the only A-list character involved here.  (No, Nova doesn't count, especially when the Nova Corps are being written as a transparently obvious riff on the Green Lantern Corps.)

Nonetheless, Keith Giffen and Scott Kolins get the story off to a decent start.  It's a very simple formula.  The threat turns up.  It's an army of marauding bastards.  They kill everyone.  Rinse, repeat.  Basically, it's an issue of the cosmic bit players - such as the Nova Corps - getting absolutely trounced in order to sell the Annihilation Wave as a very big threat indeed.  And, simply by sheer large-scale destruction and panic, it works on that level.  Nova himself is actually used very well here, as a minor cog in the machine who manages to slip through the carnage unscathed and just sits around in shock.  It set up a potentially interesting series for him.  The other three major characters, on the other hand, just pop their heads round the door in set-up scenes.  Giffen doesn't really seem so interested in them, and actually devotes more time to his own recent Drax revamp.  Not that I'm complaining, mind you - it was a good book.

The downside is that Giffen's cosmic stories have developed some annoying tics of late, most notably a tendency to write everything in made-up slang with garbled syntax, presumably to show us how very alien it all is.  Of course, the main effect is just to make the story harder to follow.  This is far from the worst example Giffen's produced lately - some of his recent work has been downright incomprehensible, whereas this is merely irritating.  But it's still rather annoying in large doses.

Nonetheless, the book succeeds amply in what it sets out to do - namely, establish the Annihilation Wave as a huge threat.  And given that it's part 1 of 27, that's all that's really required of it.  Granted, it could do more to sell the individual miniseries - only Nova is really pushed here, although Ronan is at least set up - but perhaps it's achieved as much by selling the event. 

Rating: B+

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