DRAX THE DESTROYER #1 REVIEW

[Brian Wilkinson]

Reviewer: Brian Wilkinson, bewilkinson@yahoo.ca

The former arch-enemy of Thanos gets an unlikely debut as the star of his own book and not only carries it, but manages to impress in the process.

Written by: Keith Giffen
Art by: Mitch Breitweiser
Colors by: Brian Reber
Letters by: VC's Cory Petit
Assistant Editors: Molly Lazer & Aubrey Sitterson
Editor: Andy Schmidt
Editor-In-Chief: Joe Quesada
Published by: Marvel Comics

Though a self-professed Marvelite, I had to admit that I needed to do a bit of research to remind myself who Drax was and how he fit into the Marvel Universe.

Born Arthur Sampson Douglas, he and his daughter were killed one night after they witnessed a spaceship flying over the Mohave that turned out to belong to Thanos. His daughter was brought back to life as Moondragon, and Douglas got a reprieve of sorts as he was given a humanoid body, infused with cosmic power, and programmed to take out all of his anger on Thanos. Douglas had no memory of his former life at first, and twice saw his 'programming' achieved with Thanos' defeats.

Drax can fly, is invulnerable, strong, and can produce energy blasts. Recently the character has been portrayed as something of a cosmic version of the Hulk, but as is quickly shown in this issue that while Hulk gets stronger the madder he gets, the more you beat on Drax the smarter he gets.

Right away I was not only pulled in by this book, but I'm pleased enough by what's here that I'm going to pick up the rest of the series. Drax isn't a character that you would think could pull off a series of his own, but the absence of the rest of the Marvel characters lets you focus on Drax and his current situation.

The series opens with Drax being held as a prisoner on a spaceship. A mechanical failure (one assumes) causes the ship to crash, where else, on Earth. Along with a couple of other inmates, including a skrull, Drax must figure out his next move.

The writing here by Keith Giffen is much sharper and crisp than I would expect from what is essentially a b-character comic book. The characters are fairly well defined and interesting. Drax's attitude and demeanor comes across as child-like for most of the book, until a brawl with two other inmates seems to age him much more effectively than any school could.

The presence of a young girl named Cammi is tiresome only in that 'alien creature meets young human' has been done way too many times over the years. Old monster, young human is a good dynamic as it's an interesting way to explore humanity, and though we don't see any of that in this issue, comments from Giffen suggest that it's on the way. Cammi could turn out to be very interesting, but I'm wary of her for the time being.

The book's biggets weakness is in its lettering. While admirable that Marvel strives to not only give characters definition by the kind of dialogue they speak, adjusting word balloons to match the supposed alien quality that they have is jarring and more than a little difficult to read. Giffen seems to have a slang word, d'ast, which I'm assuming is f***, but with the font type it's impact is kind of lost.

The art here by Mitch Breitweiser is nicely complemented by Brian Reber's colors. Reber adds a smooth texture, similar to Richard Isanove's work, that potentially give more definition to the art than might otherwise be present. The backgrounds and environments are nicely detailed. The only place in which the art isn't as effective as it could be comes in the alien characters themselves. More than once I became confused as to who was speaking, partially because each species gets a different coloured speech balloon which is kind of unnecessary.

Drax The Destroyer so far has all the makings of a great ongoing series and not just a limited one. We have a solid premise, interesting characters, and a set-up that at first glance looks as though it needs more than four issues to adequately tell a story.

The book is sleek and subtle in the way that all good science fiction aspires to be. While there's not necessarily a lot of meat to chew on with this bone just yet, I'm confident that bigger, and better, things are to come.

Worth a look, especially if you want to try something a little different than your normal pull-list.

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'Want more Drax? Check out X-World and save!’

[Cyclops1280]

This is a great read. Is this an ongoing? Were these characters in anything else? Much better than the old version of Drax. What happened to the Infinity Watch and what happened to Warlock and Moon Dragon?

[Kevin Sutton]

I've been thinking about getting this, but I forgot about it at the store last week.

[Mr. Green]

I never really read any of the Infinity Watch thing, but I'm familiar with the character and I really like this book. You don't really see that much from the alien's point of view, so this is really refreshing sci fi stuff. I like it alot.

Cyclops, this is 1 of 4.

[Clay Olsen]

Thanos did not kill Heather... he killed her father and mother... she was only injured. Mentor, seeing what Thanos had done to the Douglas' car, rescued her from the burning wreckage and brought her back to Titan.

A short history on Drax...
Chronos, Mentor's father, after witnessing Thanos destructive and nihilist urges brought Arthur back to life as the being Drax, with the one purpose of destroying Thanos.
Drax was very intelligent at one point. But sometime after Thanos' death, Drax discovered his daughter had developed her own delusions of granduer. She was using her psychic powers to make an entire planets populace worship her. When he and her fellow Avengers confronted her, she killed Drax with a mental blast (supposedly not on purpose!). When Thanos was resurrected some years later and begun the chain of events that led to the Infinity Gauntlet affair, Chronos once again resurrected the soul of Arthur Douglas as Drax the Destroyer, only his mind was severely damaged as a result of the mental blast that had killed him, and Chronos neglected to fix it. Hence the years of mentally challenged Drax, where he served as a member of the Infinity Watch, watched over his daughter, and eventually got trapped in the microverse and traveled with the Micronauts (that was the last he'd been seen before this). At one point in that time, Moondragon made a plea to Chronos that if she gave up some of her power that he would restore what he could of Drax's mind, it worked but seemingly not for long.

As for the Infinity Watch... the Watch fell apart for the most part when the being named Rune managed to steal the time gem and use its powers to gain the rest of the gems and then flee to his home dimension. Adam followed him and regained his soul gem but was unable to rescue the rest of the gems from the Malibu universe, where there even existed a seventh gem... (in the short-lived Thanos ongoing... the rest of the gems were finally recovered by Galactus... and then taken by Thanos who has yet to use them...) The watch mostly went their seperate ways after that... Drax and Moondragon hanging around Genis and Titan (and Drax then going to the microverse), Gammora and Adam are "honeymooning" while gaurding the child Atleta. and Pip is around... aparently having used the space gem so many times that he absorbed the ability to teleport about, he has been seen helping both Adam and Thanos.

I absolutely loved this issue. The art is good. Drax is there. (Though the blood brothers have been to Earth many times before... they were in Thanos' employ back when he killed Douglas and helped capture Drax and Iron Man for Thanos.) I can't wait to see where this is leading. Especially with Giffen writing this. And the art was amazing...
And I would so love Marvel to return to their Cosmic stories and make Drax an ongoing... but yes currently this is a mini... but that could change! (let me have my pipedreams!)