The Marauders are setting sail into a new era! Meet the crew, watch the battles. Become enraptured with Captain Kate as she gets gayer and does crimes! This book is quite the ride. Read Full Review

Mauraders Annual #1 is a great start to Steve Orlando's story that feels grounded thanks to Lee's art. It has something to add to the Krakoa era and sets up the team well too. All that, and it's written with strong dialogue that gets to the point, makes these characters come through clearly, and features a killer cliffhanger too. Read Full Review

Marauders Annual #1reforms the seafaring mutant team, as a new team of creatives takes the wheel of theMarauder. With the final page teasing a mystery that Kate seems to be at the heart of, I look forward to what Orlando and artist Eleonora Carlini have in store. Read Full Review

A brand new era begins for the Marauders with a new team and a new creative direction that takes them back to their mutant rescuing mission. An X-Men 2099 villain makes their modern era debut and opens some interesting new debates, in a very heavy but energetic issue that handles the gathering of a new cast in the best way possible. Read Full Review

Marauders Annual #1 rejuvenates the concept of the Marauders of a team with new members that are sure to bring intrigue, drama, and cool powers. (See the Lee's visualizations of Somnus and Tempo's abilities.) Steve Orlando and Creees Lee also use the new-look Marauders to explore things like respectability politics and safe spaces while also including violent brawls against bad guys from the 1990s that look like a fundamentalist preacher's worst nightmare. I'm all aboard with this new book and am interested to see how Marauders recontextualizes characters from the X-Book's past while engaging with the metaphorical connection between queerness and being a mutant while having kick-ass, attitude filled fight scenes. Read Full Review

A fast-paced, slick introduction to this new dynamic for the Marauders team that can occasionally feel like it has too many parts to move into place in one issue. Read Full Review

"Marauders Annual" #1 is an energetic, confident start to Steve Orlando's tenure with Krakoa's messiest team Read Full Review

Steve Orlando is clearly having some fun with the ensemble, and if the many scenes between Kate and Bishop are any indication, he's already found the pulse and identified the tone of our favorite high seas adventurers. Read Full Review

While I am once again questioning Marvel's business practices with their choice to sell this as an annual and not a new #1 for the series it's setting up anyway, it is a nice sampler for what Orlando will bring to the table when he returns with ongoing artist Eleonora Carlini in a few months. His writing is " as ever " action-oriented and a little pulpy, but he also really leans into the mutant metaphor in regards to queer acceptance with the chosen villain of the piece, and I'm hoping we'll see more of it in the book proper. Read Full Review

This was better than I expected from Orlando. It was a solid issue. I liked the villain, for what he was. I like the idea of tackling the intuitive issues with Krakoa as a concept. Exploring that could be really interesting, and maybe a little dicey, but it's worth the trouble.

Not a fan of Orlando but he set up something interesting here, even if the writing suffers from his usual writing flaws.

I'm never excited for Orlando's writing, but this benefits greatly from a low bar — any sense of direction or intent whatsoever is a major improvement over Duggan's run — and in all fairness, this was perfectly solid. I'm sold on giving his run a try.

I had a difficult time understanding Brimstone Love's motivation here, but if all he was there to do was to bring the team together, fine. The new team is fine, though, from a strategic point of view, it's a bit risky to have a Krakoan Captain, a Captain Commander, and a quiet council member all on the same crew. Not my favorite, but those last couple of pages salvaged it for me.

My reaction is one of mild irritation: "Dammit, why can't this be better?" A sure sign of promising ideas combined with mediocre execution, that.

The art's decent. It does clear visual storytelling using safe, familiar tools. But it's journeyman work. Not polished enough to be conventionally great, not daring enough to be uniquely great.

The script has similar limitations. The structure's very good in an action movie way. Scenes are either tight and fast -- drop a cool idea, cut away on a good line -- or lavish combat setpieces. The author wants this comic to be about more than just good guys punching bad guys, but I'm not sure he knows how to make it happen.

And at the center of my frustration, Brimstone Love. It's possible to combine scenery-chewing cartoon villainy ("Let's bond by torturing this mutant together") with complex shades-of-grey villainy ("Krakoa's elitism is a betrayal of Xavier's dream"). I don't think this debut did a very good job of it. The smart parts are too smart and the dumb parts are too dumb and it strains belief to see them coexisting as written. more

Interesting team. Brimstone Love was odd and kinda lame.