Savage Land, Strange Heart (Part Two)
Written by Robert N. Skir & Marty Isenberg
Summary:
Sauron uses his abilities to drain Storm’s excess power. Storm then
destroys one of the Garokk monuments, inadvertently spreading his
essence across the soil of the Savage Land. Garokk fuses with the
planetary forces under a volcano and grows thousands of feet tall.
Sauron responds by absorbing the same forces and growing as large as
Garokk. Their fight ends in a large explosion; Garokk is once again
trapped inside a monument, while Sauron reverts into Karl Lykos. The
X-Men return home, with a better understanding of the burden Storm’s
powers place upon her.
Continuity Notes:
The High Evolutionary appears in a flashback story narrated by Garokk.
Garokk explains that the High Evolutionary was threatened by his power
and had him imprisoned years earlier.
Miscellaneous Note:
Garokk quotes Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias" when he emerges from
the ground, adding more credence to my theory that comic fans
absolutely cannot escape this poem.
"Actiiing!":
All of Storm’s dialogue in this episode is insane, but my favorite
horrific line-reading is “Rain! Lightning! Thunder! Your power is
miiine!”
Review:
The second chapter really does nothing to save this two-parter. The
character hook for this story is merely “it sure is hard being Storm,”
but at no point in the story does she feel particularly sympathetic.
There is a root of a good idea in there, hinted at in the first chapter
when Rogue encourages Storm to let loose and later realizes how
horrifying that would be, but the execution just falls apart. The other
hook for this story is seeing the X-Men team with Sauron, and while
those scenes do alleviate some of the boredom, Sauron isn’t interesting
enough to play a Magneto role. And that ending that has Garokk and
Sauron both growing several stories high after squatting over a
volcano…I’ve always
hated it. It looks absolutely ridiculous, and it’s a poor use of both
characters. I can appreciate that the producers were inspired by the
Garokk/Zaladane/Sauron/Savage Land story from the Claremont and Byrne
days, but that makes these episodes even more frustrating. There really
is solid material to be adapted here, but instead we got this mess.
Credit to http://marvel.toonzone.net/
1 comment:
I vaguely recall getting some ironic amusement out of the giant Garokk/Sauron fight, but it's been awhile, and I'd have to watch it again to be sure.
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