Kang The Conqueror: Only Myself Left To Conquer – Jackson Lanzing, Colin Kelly, Carlos Magno, Espen Grundetjern, VC’s Joe Caramanga
Collected in trade, Kang The Conqueror: Only Myself Left To Conquer is a five issue mini-series that fully introduces new readers to the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby time-traveller that many first met at the end of the Disney+ TV series Loki. Long-term comics fans may have recognised the man at the end of the universe from the pages of classic Fantastic Four books, when he battled with the famous family in his many guises: Rama-Tut; Scarlet Centurion; and Kang the Conqueror. But this latest iteration brings his history to a whole new readership.
Time-Wimey Stuff
We meet a young Kang long before he adopts that name, when he is just Nathaniel Richards, a boy with a dream of escaping his dreary life. Albeit a life of luxury in the dying years of our universe. What does any bored teenager want? Adventure…? Danger…? Excitement…? This book has them in spades.
Shifting between time zones we see our intrepid anti-hero pitted against dinosaurs, aliens, Marvel heroes and even Apocalypse! This book is not short of cameos, and Lanzing and Kelly (Star Trek: Year One, Captain America) make the most of having the whole of Marvel history to play with. They craft a story that spans literal centuries, but still make you care for the characters who are wreaking havoc across time and space. They humanise then, even as they make them monsters.
Back To The Future
Given the scope of the narrative, it could be easy to gloss over the impressive work that the art team deliver. But that would be doing a disservice to the beauty of this book. Whether it is the use of panel layouts that stretch across both the pages and ages, or the splash pages that burst with life, the whole book is a wonder to behold.
There are small character moments that give us an insight into the growth of Kang, and the expressive faces that convey the depth of feeling young Nathaniel goes through. These are in stark contrast to the epic level war scenes that we also see, which are as grandiose in scope as the story itself.
Whilst sticking broadly to the Marvel house style, Magno includes an outstanding level of detail, and there are panels and pages that you can pore over, finding levels of detail in the backgrounds that just get better each time I look at them.
Paradox
This is a convoluted story of time travel, history and the search for meaning. But it is also a story of a boy – then man – searching for the things that matter most in life; love, family, and in a curious way, peace. It is the type of book that you read, then ten minutes later have to come back and read again because it gets stuck in your brain and you know that there’s more to it than you realised.
I hope that there are more stories to come of Kang from this creative team, because with the whole of time and space – and the Marvel universe – to play with, there is a multiverse of opportunities for them!
Jackson Lanzing – writer
Colin Kelly – writer
Carlos Magno – artist
Espen Grundetjern – colourist
VC’s Joe Caramanga – letterer
Marvel – publisher
