Review: Marvel Rising by Devin Grayson, et al.

Marvel Rising is a five-part story that confusingly runs through one #0 issue and four #1s; it's hard for me to imagine someone outside the comic book faithful being able to figure this out. I mean, what's the different between Marvel Rising: Squirrel Girl & Ms. Marvel #1 and Marvel Rising: Ms. Marvel & Squirrel Girl #1, and why do they contain parts 2 and 3 of an ongoing story, which also has a part 0? The story unites Ms. Marvel, Squirrel Girl, America Chavez, and some guy called (for real) Dante Inferno who I never heard of; despite the covers, Captain Marvel, Falcon, Spider-Gwen, and whoever the girl wearing purple with purple hair is never put in appearances.

Since the closure of ComicsAlliance, I barely consume comic book news anymore, so I wouldn't have known this comic even existed if my local comic shop owner hadn't stuck Marvel Rising: Alpha #1 in my pull list on the basis that I read Ms. Marvel. He's always doing stuff like this, and I'm forever telling him that no, I don't want any Transformers comic that's not Lost Light, but this time I was happy to go for it, since Marvel Rising is partially co-written by G. Willow Wilson, writer of Ms. Marvel.

It's a fun enough story, and I'm glad I read it. The best parts are probably the first couple installments. In her civilian identity of Doreen Green, Squirrel Girl is volunteering at a coding camp for high schoolers, which Ms. Marvel is attending in her civilian identity of Kamala Khan. It turns out that one of the other classmates is a budding supervillain, with the ability to make things in computer games come to life.

Thus we get a lot of secret identity hijinks, as Kamala must fight back without her teachers figuring out she's Ms. Marvel, and Doreen must fight back without her students figuring out she's Squirrel Girl. Writer Devin Grayson is good at capturing the charming side of both characters, and it's especially well done when in part 2, Ryan North and G. Willow Wilson step in to write the segments featuring their own characters themselves. In part 3, there are lots of good jokes about videogames, and Kamala's enthusiasm for them. Also, North's comedic captions are super-fun, and you have to love the way having the powers of a squirrel is taken semi-seriously.

Additionally, I really like the artwork of Irene Strychalski, who draws the North-penned Squirrel Girl segments in parts 2 and 3; it has some nice cartoony energy to it, and I'd read an ongoing comic about any of these characters drawn by her. (Cover-wise, the covers by Gurihiru, who I primarily know from their work on Avatar: The Last Airbender are excellent, particularly the video-game themed ones, but my favorite of all the covers was the one by Elsa Charretier on part 3, which is the one I've emphasized at the top of this page. I wasn't previously familiar with her work, but it's clearly excellent. I'm less enamored with the variants by Rian Gonzalez, but thankfully I only ended up with his work on part 4.)

Unfortunately, the last couple parts don't quite deliver on the potential of the first couple. The characters spend much of the second half trapped in a videogame world; this concept has been done worse than this, but it's still somewhat flat. I did like that the story focused less on "if-you-die-in-the-game-you-die-in-real-life!" perils, and more on the attempts of the group to break the parameters of the game in order to escape, but the rules still came across as arbitrary. Also, in part 2, there's this whole subplot about how the villain can't create matter, just borrow it and change its characteristics, but by parts 3 and 4, this clearly is not the case, and none of the ideas referenced in part 2 ever come up again, so I'm not sure why they were included to begin with.

Being a miniseries outside of the characters' main series means that this can never have the impact that a "real" Ms. Marvel comic has, and it has less of her civilian life too, but it still captures what I like about her and by extension the rest of its cast of characters. This is a fun comic that's worth your time if you have an interest in any of the four central characters, just 1) don't be fooled by the characters on the covers, and 2) don't be confused by the bizarre numbering.

Marvel Rising was originally published in Marvel Rising #0, Marvel Rising: Alpha #1, Marvel Rising: Squirrel Girl & Ms. Marvel #1, Marvel Rising: Ms. Marvel & Squirrel Girl #1, and Marvel Rising: Omega #1 (June-Nov. 2018). The story was written by Devin Grayson (parts 0-4), Ryan North (parts 2-3), and G. Willow Wilson (parts 2-3); illustrated by Marco Failla (part 0), Georges Duarte (parts 1 & 4), Irene Strychalski (parts 2-3), Ramón Bachs (parts 2-3), and Roberto Di Salvo (part 4); colored by Rachelle Rosenberg; lettered by Clayton Cowles; and edited by Heather Antos and Sarah Brunstad.