Peter David is nearing the end of his Maestro trilogy explaining how the greatest mind in super-villainy came to be. Out this week is Maestro: World War M #1, the start of a five-issue series where Maestro is at the top of the food chain after defeating Dr. Doom. Or is he? Enter a new player to stand against him you won’t ever expect: Abomination!
And Abomination literally rises from the earth like the dead in the Maestro: World War M #1 preview! It’s plain as day from that preview David is attempting to humanize Abomination and make him a tragic figure. He’s all alone in a world that has been decimated trying to make sense of his surroundings. This issue serves to put us inside his head while setting up the players in the narrative. Those figures include Dr. Doom, Namor, and of course Maestro.
Much like with the Old Man Logan universe, this book plays with what we know of Marvel using characters and locations in new ways thanks to the narrative throwing everything into disarray. It’s fun to see the state of Dr. Doom after his fight with Maestro or see how Namor has a new and older look.
This issue also mixes things up with an interesting opening scene drawn by Pasqual Ferry with colors by Matt Hollingsworth. This scene has a twist that’s intriguing and a dreamlike feel due to the art. It also helps define Abomination’s place in the narrative as a victim even if he was a supervillain for quite some time.
The H, U, and L, I get, but how did they make the K?
Credit: Marvel
The rest of the issue is drawn by Germán Peralta, whose art has a darker tone with heavier ink work. Colors by Jesus Aburtov lean into the horrible destroyed future with green skies conveying a world unlike our own. A cool feature of Namor’s army is their yellow visor helmets. The glass of the helmet is well done through coloring, which ties into the yellow jets on their heels. Peralta is very good at giving characters weight, which suits hulking characters like Abomination and Maestro as well as the flowing cape of Namor.
As yo might expect, if you haven’t read the previous Maestro stories, your buy-in to the narrative may vary. Abomination is well written, though, making him an easy character you want to follow in a possible future where Maestro destroys everything to maintain his power and ego. The character has come a long way since the first issue in the first story so there’s certainly some onus on the reader to do some back issue reading.
If it wasn’t obvious in this review, Maestro is oddly not the main character here. He gets very little attention save for some action at the end. If you haven’t read the previous stories in this trilogy you may be a bit lost as to why you want to root against him.
Maestro: World War M #1 is a good start to a story that’ll make you feel for the Abomination in a broken future. It is reliant on the previous stories to feel its full effect, however, and Maestro oddly is not the main character in this go of Peter David’s trilogy.
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