Black Bolt #2 Review

Writer: Saladin Ahmed / Artist: Christian Ward / Letterer: VC’s Clayton Cowles / Marvel Comics I have been a fan of Saladin Ahmed’s work for years. Straight out of Detroit, Ahmed has been a novelist and short story writer for years — and a comic book geek from the jump. Marvel continues to recruit novelists as writers, to great results. Issue #1 of the comic set the stage: Blackagar Boltagon has been imprisoned in an unknown cell meant for his brother, Maximus. The jailer, invisible and unknown, demands confession and deals death at a whim — but always death with a caveat, you come back with little memory of what happened. Also in the prison are a surprisingly sympathetic Crusher Creel (yes, that Crusher Creel), Blinky (a multi-eyed alien female), and a variety of others. Page by page, Ahmed reveals the cast of characters and explains the trap they all find themselves in. Issue #2 we meet Molyb, the Metal Master (an old time villain first introduced in 1963), Spyder (another villain from 1988), and Raava (a new Skrull).

It is clear that Ahmed has the deep knowledge of the Marvel catalog that allows him to pick and choose the best characters to fill his pages. And it is those characters that take this comic to the top of my list. Each of the characters is not only carefully chosen, but crafted to fill their role in the story. In their details, they become sympathetic, genuine, believable, even as they are caught in this impossible, imaginary, situation. It is that contras…