Civil War may be Marvel's big event book for the summer, but that hasn't stopped them trying to reinvigorate their floundering cosmic characters with the Annihilation series.

Mimicking the format DC used successfully for Infinite Crisis, this storyline comprises a prologue, four parallel four-issue miniseries, and now the Annihilation miniseries itself.  And in all fairness, the promotion has to be seen as a success.  Although Annihilation hasn't produced anything like the sales of Civil War, that was never to be expected from a series largely based around the exploits of obscure characters. 

True, they've got the Silver Surfer, and they've got Nova, who at least has a cult following.  But after that, it's a big step down to Drax the Destroyer, Ronan the Accuser, and the Super-Skrull.  If you can get respectable sales for a four-issue Ronan the Accuser miniseries - and they did - then you're doing something right.  After years when Marvel seemed to throw miniseries about minor characters to the wolves on a monthly basis, it's good to see them rediscovering the knack of effective promotion.

Keith Giffen is the lead writer on Annihilation as a whole, and so it comes as no surprise to see that his own miniseries with the Silver Surfer was the most important to the overall plot.  The Nova book was fairly big news as well.  The Ronan book doesn't add a great deal, and god only knows what the point of the Super-Skrull title was, since the lead character was killed off in issue #4 and none of the plot threads are picked up here.

Sensibly, given the structure of the story, Annihilation #1 is basically a stocktaking exercise which brings the remaining characters together, spells out where everything stands, and brings the reader up to speed.  Thankfully, we now have Nova and Starlord as the two lead characters, and since they both speak like normal people, we avoid Keith Giffen's tendency to write vital exposition in barely comprehensible outer space jargon.  With that problem overcome, it's a perfectly effective set-up issue that delivers a suitable plot development for the cliffhanger.  It's functional, if not particularly pretty, and it's providing a vehicle for potentially interesting reinventions of Nova and Drax.  I'm not entirely sure about the wisdom of making Nova a battle-hardened war veteran, but at least it's something to mark him out.  The cynical new version of Drax, meanwhile, plays to Giffen's strengths.

The plot and art are serviceable rather than inspired, and while Annihilus is certainly a credible threat, he hasn't quite made the leap into a truly memorable villain.  But there's nothing fundamentally wrong with this book, and a number of genuinely promising ideas to revitalise obscure characters.

Rating: B

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