Back in 2000, Mark Waid, Barry Kitson, Kurt Busiek, George Perez, Stuart Immonen, Karl Kesel, Tom Grummett and the late Mike Wieringo formed Gorilla Comics, a creator owned imprint under Image Comics. For reasons that I’ve never fully understood, Gorilla didn’t take off and the line came to an abrupt end.
Waid and Kitson eventually took their Gorilla Comics miniseries, Empire to DC, where the first storyline was wrapped up and collected as a trade paperback. But it’s been over a decade since we’ve had a new story set in that world. This week, Waid and Kitson have restarted Empire on Waid’s subscription comics service, Thrillbent with the release of Empire Volume 2 Chapter # 1.
Joining Waid and Kitson are colorist Chris Sotomayor (who also colored the original Empire series) and letterer Troy Peteri. One thing that is immediately clear in Empire Volume 2 is that the quality of the art and the presentation of the story hasn’t suffered a dip in quality. These are some fantastic looking pages. But that’s not surprising, as Kitson is one of the best artists in comics.
For anyone who hasn’t read the first volume of Empire, the story follows Golgoth, a supervillain who has seemingly managed to wipe out all of the heroes on his way to total domination of the entire planet. Ruling the world isn’t a hypothetical situation for Golgoth, it’s a reality. But even within Golgoth’s inner circle, there were people who had a vested interest in undermining Golgoth’s power and carving out their own places within his kingdom.
Empire Volume 2 Chapter # 1.picks up exactly one year after Empire Volume 1 as the entire world is forced to mourn the death of Golgoth’s beloved daughter, Princess Delfi. The bulk of the chapter is spent on citizens around the world who go to ridiculous extremes to remain quiet during the enforced minutes of silence… because Golgoth’s forces will back up the threats of their emperor.
It’s interesting that Waid uses a school lesson as an exposition dump because most of the information presented to the children are outright lies. I think even for first time readers it’s pretty clear that the story about Delfi’s memorial is just an exercise in propaganda. Golgoth’s empire is indoctrinating these kids at a really young age. Even so, the kids and their teacher know that they should fear Golgoth.
Because Thrillbent’s installments of Empire are roughly half the length of a standard comic issue, Empire Volume 2 Chapter # 1 doesn’t really give the reader any characters to latch on to because it’s too busy establishing the world again. Golgoth himself only appears in a single panel, which is the image directly above this review.
Before the chapter finishes up, we do see that Golgoth’s reign still has a few people willing to challenge it. And their way of saying “screw you!” to Golgoth is a clever visual. Still, this feels incomplete because it is incomplete. Without the second chapter (which would extend this tale to a full length comic), it’s hard to get a clear idea of what this particular story is going to be about. It’s all setup and no payoff at this point.
That said, Empire Volume 2 Chapter # 2 should be released fairly soon; which makes the chapter length easier to accept. Waid and Kitson are a world class creative team that’s still at the top of their game, so I’m more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt with the new Empire. And I’m very excited to see where this story goes.
