To grapple with the narrative framing of Warlock: Rebirth (and the two Silver Surfer: Rebirth miniseries that bookend it), a new reader must do a fair amount of historical accounting. The book lands in a very specific place in the larger Marvel timeline (some thirty-one years ago), and it finds the characters in a very unlikely figurative and literal space: Warlock’s Infinity Watch all live on the Mole Man’s Monster Island, and each of them is (without much impact to the story at hand) in possession of one of the Infinity Gems.
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That is a lot to unpack. Younger readers, or readers curious about the character after having discovered him by way of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, are unlikely to have the narrative framework Warlock: Rebirth appears to require. Without reading the larger Infinity trilogy, which ran from just before 1991’s Infinity Gauntlet through 1993’s much less beloved Infinity Crusade, they won’t have context for 1992’s Warlock and the Infinity Watch; without having context for WatIW, they won’t have any sense of connection to the cast of characters in Warlock: Rebirth, their purpose, or their setting.
The truth is, however, that legendary creators Ron Marz and Ron Lim are forced to present this time-capsule story in such a way that none of this matters. For reader accessibility and legibility, the events put forward in the five issues of Rebirth manage to impact the narrative history surrounding it not at all; by extension, the story itself has an equal lack of present-day impact.
These stories – like a slew of other flashback miniseries seemingly foisted on classic creators for a nostalgic fanbase – don’t take place in the contemporary context of the Marvel Universe. Instead, they take place in a sort of whimsically remembered half-continuity, a Marvel Universe of days past as warmly recalled by readers now in their forties and fifties. These stories, by necessity, cannot provide any growth of character, any gravity of narrative, because they stand in a time long since passed. The stories cannot move the Marvel Universe forward in any meaningful way, nor can they provide the characters with any sense of resolution. At most – and in capable hands – they might offer an insight to a moment in time, illustrating an undeveloped aspect of events now canonized.
More often, however, they land without a sound, weightlessly floating in a sort of low-stakes stasis. The conflict with the High Evolutionary in Warlock: Rebirth barely registers as conflict; we know how it must end because we know where Warlock ends up. Nothing transformative can happen; he is in no danger.
Certainly, the work put forward in Warlock: Rebirth is fun – Lim’s artwork still feels masterful, as if he is presenting the versions of these characters at their most emblematic, while Marz’ narrative voice remains representative of the entire saga that surrounds it. It’s exciting to see one of the best creative teams of the ’90s together again. The creation of Eve Warlock presents a new, untold wrinkle to the Marvel cosmology, one that may or may not impact that saga; there are seeds, here, for a deepening of a thirty-year-old narrative. We longtime readers and comics historians are eager to take note of those possibilities.
Still, there’s a question as to the value and validity of these types of stories, which are so firmly targeted at a hyper-specific demographic that one can’t help but question the possibility of cynical cash-grabbing. Where the rest of the Marvel release schedule moves to engage a contemporary market, to grow and secure an ever-diversifying readership, these flashback stories are aimed at the wallets of a readership less vital to the continuation and reinvention of the Marvel Universe. This doesn’t make that demographic less valid, but it does present diminishing returns; while it hurts to write those words – I am a reader who overlaps with the demographic in question – they are nonetheless true.
Despite the book’s legendary pedigree of masterful creators, or the foundational nature of the saga from which it springs, Warlock: Rebirth fails to move. It fails to present narrative stakes, to engage the reader with meaningful conflict. It stands heartbreakingly close to irrelevance.
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