Last Planet Standing by Tom DeFalco

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


The previous MC2 Universe "Event" comic, Last Hero Standing Tpb avoiding many of the exceses typical of these comic book mini-series with a strong emotional focal point in Captain America.

Unfortunately, Tom DeFalco couldn't produce another winner with this series. The plot centers around Earth's heroes facing Galactus who has schemed to end his constant hunger even it means destroying the entire universe and trillions of lives with it.

To start with, Galactus is not really a scheming character, he's a force of nature, at least as established in the main Marvel universe, and here there's nothing shared to indicate that this is his style in the MC2 universe. There seems to be the suggestion that he's "evolving" which seems to explain his changing behavior but it really doesn't. If anything, it seems a lame excuse to have someone act out of character.

The series lacks\ed focus. Given that DeFalco had only a 110 pages to tell his story in, dragging in things like politicking with the government over which superhero team is allowed to engage Galactus, the Avengers fighting some random group of bad guys, introducing some lame out of space board to try and stop Galactus by blowing up the Earth, or Spider-girl speculating on whether she'll go to college all just add a whole lot of padding. All of the personal banter between characters in this book fails as it doesn't develop character or amuse, it merely bogs things down. The series is just incredibly busy.

This leads to significant plot points being given short shrift or being pushed back. The destruction of Asgard takes up all of 1/3 of Issue 2. The Silver Surfer plays a pivotal role in this story (even though he's never been introduced in the MC2 Universe) but he doesn't show up until nearly eighty percent into the book. It should be noted the Silver Surfer appeared in no other story in the world. And then there's the ending that's just bizarre.

In the end, there are three redeeming points for Last Planet Standing:

1) No hero v. hero battles.

2) It was short. This wasn't an eight or twelve issue epic. While it wandered pretty far afield, it couldn't go far afield.

3) The Silver Surfer did perform well and had some cool art featuring the character, but neither in their world or in ours is the Silver Surfer as significant as Captain America in Last Hero Standing.

And that's about it. This reads like the writers were just mailing it in after the cancellation of the Spider-girl series. So what we have is a mess not worthy of the real high quality MC2 Universe represented.



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