Warhammer 40,000: Marneus Calgar #3 // Review
The heretics are closing-in. The Chapter Master of the Ultramarines is in firm command of the situation. It IS, after all, a battle he is fighting on the planet of his birth. So why is he letting the enemy forces into his own family estates? The answer to this and more of the origin of one of the most legendary space marines awaits in the third issue of Warhammer 40,000: Marneus Calgar. British author Kieron Gillen continues the origin story of one of the most popular characters in the Warhammer franchise with beautifully brutal art by Jacen Burrows. The coming-of-age/frontline combat story continues to find a potent pulse in the series’ third issue.
The heretics who advance on the Calgar Estates are worshippers of Khorne--the Chaos God of blood, war, and murder. They are brutal. Marneus Calgar is every bit as brutal. He mercilessly makes his way through the advancing forces, but he allows them in. They take the bait. They will seize the Calgar Estates. Marneus Calgar has them right where he wants them. Meanwhile, he remembers his initial testing as an aspirant in his youth. Things didn’t go well. He had died more than one death in the testing.
Gillen once again shows that he has a clever grasp of the delicious brutality of the world of Warhammer 40K. The tale of Marneus Calgar as aspirant is remarkably brutal. The grizzled commander, on the other end of the story, comes across as a strikingly powerful military hero. There’s a feeling of epic intensity about it that serves the Warhammer franchise well. Though there IS some contemporary combat going on in the issue with all the standard iconography of Space Marines, its bulk focuses on the gritty shadows of a turning point in Calgar’s childhood trials. There’s a sense of power about it, but it lacks some of the distinctive energy that makes Warhammer so appealing.
Burrows’ work on the book continues to show an appreciation for the scope of the futuristic combat. The script doesn’t allow him a whole lot of space to interface with that in the third issue, but the tank-like marines seem suitably heroic against the scrappy red-robed villains who worship a god of blood. Burrows’ art scratches and claws at Calgar’s youth. The steely intensity that he etches into Calgar’s boyhood face is an impressively sophisticated early echo of the steely bionic-eyed visage of the man in adulthood. Action rips across the page with often grizzly kinetics. There’s quite a lot of blood on the page. The blood god would be pleased.
With Calgar’s early childhood out of the way, the coming-of-age narrative can start to more completely immerse itself more fully in the iconography of Warhammer 40,000 in future issues. Gillen and Burrows have developed a respectable comic book adaptation of the beloved gaming franchise. The early formation of those elements that would define the heroic legend of Calgar is firmly planted by the end of the third issue.
