Collects Marauders #16-20 And #22-27, And King in Marauders.
Troubled waters for the Marauders! Double-dealing and backstabbing are the order of the day within the Hellfire Trading Company, but killing Kate Pryde crossed the line. Now the Black King must pay! And a resurrected Kate has some ideas about exactly how. The seafaring Marauders return to Madripoor to pay tribute to a fallen friend - but old enemies are being forged anew, and the team is about to face a nasty surprise! Meanwhile, Ororo is looking to the future - one that takes her far beyond the horizon. And as the Marauders point their bow to the stars, what threat awaits them out in the cosmos - and why has it sworn vengeance? Secrets, lies and hidden agendas unravel as the Marauders chart a course toward a new future for mutantkind!
A muddled mess of a book that relies on small moments to add any kind of value to the experience. It is one that requires wider knowledge of the concurrent X-Men runs to fully enjoy, and for that alone, it makes it hard to recommend for casuals. With a flip-flop narrative, Marauders Vol.2 has a few great panels, but it feels like a largely sinking experience.
What may have been the best Krakoa X-Men title fails to stick the landing.
Oh, the first half of this is great, from the response to Shaw's murder of Katherine through the Gala and to the aftereffects of that.
It's only afterward that the title loses its drive as it meanders through plots in the last few issues with the only saving grace being its attention to character arcs, mainly focused on the Hellfire Club.
And then we get a big reshuffling of the cast because the next author didn't want to give attention to those that Duggan has spent two years on. Sigh.
These will remain two great HCs from the Krakoa era, but in the future I might stop reading after the Gala.
This book sums up the entire run, it was mid. I never truly felt there were major stakes and it felt more as an advertisement for the Hellfire Gala book that came out around this time as well. The art was ok and I only recommend if you enjoy the Krakoa Era, which even then there are other runs I'd suggest before this one. Storywise, I felt myself rolling my eyes occasionally to the bits that were solely put in there to make the internet trolls happy such as Bobby's relationship. It felt forced and put in there to be queer-bait. Read if you want, it's wayyy down my list. Grade: C