Writers: Al Ewing & Crystal Frasier
Artist: Lan Medina
Color Artist: Antonio Fabela
Cover Artists: Leinil Francis Yu & Sunny Gho
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Reviewer: StoryBabbler
The time has come. It’s the Gamma Flight team versus The Abomination, the genuine article, and his forces from Green Spring. The team has discovered revelation after revelation about The Abomination’s plans, and now in Gamma Flight #5, the team take the fight to him.
Review:
For any Immortal Hulk fans expecting big answers surrounding how Skaar came back, or how The Abomination came back, or how he met Dr. Alba – the former head of Weapon H and girlfriend of The Leader – and their motives on teaming up together. You will get none of the answers here. There are no big answers here only the conclusion of the Gamma Flight’s goal to stop him from building a small army of gamma monsters and mutates.
The comic provides some solid narration between both Rick Jones and Del Frye, giving an inner look to how their twisted disposition mentally functions and how the two young men stand apart from each other. This comic also picks up from the last issue with the fight between most of the team facing Skaar while the other half work on a solution to get the gamma “Fortify” supplements out of the townspeople. A major problem with this comic’s story is how things are resolved and wrapped up too neatly in this issue.
The fight with Skaar is resolved very quickly, the solution for “Fortify” was solved pretty quickly. Even the big “death” of a certain character ended up being a fake-out in a way, and everything falls into place as they all converge on the fight with The Abomination. Now this should be the best part of the comic, the big fight we’ve all been waiting for, but unfortunately it’s not that great. The art by Lan Medina just doesn’t hold up in the fight scenes here, and the fights aren’t all that fun until near the end; everything looks sluggish and slow, and aside from a couple of pages, the action just doesn’t look that good.
Spoilers:
There are several big takeaways from this comic’s conclusion. First, Rick Jones and Del Frye are finally separated back into their own separate bodies but still have their gamma powers. Maybe. The second is The Abomination gets away. He literally just leaps away through the roof after one shot from a weapon Dr. McGowan took from Dr. Alba, and it wasn’t even in a vital area, just his right arm and he’s basically swearing vengeance on McGowan before he leaps away. Don’t let the cover or the comic synopsis fool you, the main characters pretty much walk away largely unscathed.
The first reveal ties into the fact that too many things are wrapped up too neatly in this comic. While the last point about The Abomination feels like a last-ditch effort to get him out of the comic. By the end, everything with Skaar, Dr. Alba, the would-be gamma-mutated townsfolk, and The Abomination were resolved too well and too quickly for my liking and this issue’s pacing gave me the impression this last issue was rushed. Hopefully, another writer, if not Al Ewing, gives the team and the villains some better stories going forward now that they’re active players again. One can only hope that the new Donny Cates Hulk series does something great with The Abomination and the Gamma Flight team. But we’ll see.
Final Thoughts:
Gamma Flight #5 concludes the miniseries and the series finale is and isn’t what readers will expect. The big fight everyone’s looking forward to between Gamma Flight and The Abomination is fine but visually underwhelming aside from a couple of cool pages. There are no big answers to The Abomination and Skaar here as the comic seems in a hurry to resolve things. By the end, most of the story elements are resolved quickly and wrapped up a little too neatly. However, some good things came out of it, and hopefully Marvel will pick back up with these characters in later stories.