Review: Marvel’s Black Vortex Crossover Event Is Over, And That’s A Very Good Thing

To borrow from Honest Trailers’ The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies, the final third of The Black Vortex is the best installment of the event “because it finally, finally means it’s over.” Seriously, the Guardians of the Galaxy only got to spend one issue on Venom’s home planet, but their squabble with the X-Men over a vaguely powerful mirror stretched out into a 13-issue “event?” Truly, there is no justice.

After a strong start and a mediocre middle, the conclusion of the Black Vortex is just so… blah. The evil McGuffin is wrestled from the hands of the Slaughter Lords, as we knew it would be, and Mr. Knife is left encased in amber. Nothing is learned or gained from this that required such a long arc. Last summer, Kelly Sue DeConnick lectured at the Ultimate Comics Writer’s Workshop and offered tips on quality comic book writing (which she was nice enough to post on Tumblr). One reoccurring theme in her lecture was the need to use the plot to further character development. The Black Vortex utterly fails at this (though it’s worth noting that, of the final four issues, DeConnick’s Captain Marvel #14 is easily the best). It’s quite a feat of incompetence that so many characters can undergo a cosmic transformation that unlocks their potential, yet never reveals anything new or valuable about their personalities.

The only lasting consequence of the Black Vortex is the ominous irreversibility of cosmic enhancement, the reality that none of the characters who submitted to the Black Vortex will ever truly be the same again. Yet, apart from some new character designs, Cyclops is the only character whose heart is altered by the experience… which is heavily implied to mean that his agency in deciding whether or not to go down the same dark path as his older self has been stripped away.

I just don’t understand how professional writers could botch up an arc this badly.

Perhaps it’s for the best that Marvel’s last event before Secret Wars is an anti-climactic disaster. Such bad writing lets the soul appreciate quality all the more and, on a cynical level, is bound to make whatever losses we incur during the Secret Wars’ character consolidation hurt a whole lot less.

Petra Halbur is an undergraduate at Hofstra University pursuing a BA in journalism and presently trapped in the world-building phase of writing her science-fantasy novel. You can read more from her at Ponderings of a Cinephile or follow her on Twitter.

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