Star-Lord and Kitty Pryde #1 (Marvel)
From September 2015
writer: Sam Humphries
artist: Alti Firmansyah
The benefit of all the Secret Wars nuttiness is that it opened opportunities for some unexpectedly good storytelling. I mean, the best thing to come out of Secret Wars was definitely the Secret Wars version of a sequel to Civil War, but there was other good stuff, too, even stuff that fully embraced the nuttiness, like Star-Lord and Kitty Pryde.
Listen, I had no idea these two had any kind of history together. It probably happened when Brian Michael Bendis was writing both Guardians of the Galaxy and All-New X-Men. Anyway, thanks to Secret Wars nuttiness, not only do they get a reprise, but only one of them knows their history together, and Star-Lord gets to do a lot of crazy stuff along the way, too.
Such as: Calling himself Steve Rogers. Singing Disney songs (corporate synergy, thy name is Marvel!). Especially singing Disney songs. Because in the reality where Star-Lord finds himself, Disney songs don't exist. (Never mind that people usually love to hear music they already know.)
This is the kind of nuttiness that works because it thoroughly embraces its nuttiness. Not in a Deadpool way, that doesn't take anything seriously. Or any other wacky Marvel character currently embracing the Deadpool conceit (there's lots of them, folks). No, this is good old-fashioned storytelling.
And I'm absolutely not surprised to see Sam Humphries writing it. Granted, my experience with Humphries is still fairly limited and recent, but this totally makes sense as a Sam Humphries project. He may vary considerably in tone, but the Humphries pattern begins to emerge: he totally embraces whatever it is he's writing. This is a very, very good thing.
Even when it's complete nuttiness.
Sounds nutty.
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