Warhammer 40,000: Marneus Calgar #3 - Marvel Comics

WARHAMMER 40,000: MARNEUS CALGAR No. 3, February 2021

Dynamically split between the titular character’s current crusade against the Forces of Chaos infesting his former family’s estates on Nova Thulium, and the Lord Defender of Greater Ultramar’s earlier exploits as a wannabe Space Marine aspirant on the Agri-world’s savage moon, Kieron Gillen’s script for Issue Three of “Warhammer 40,000: Marneus Calgar” must surely have pleased many within the mini-series’ audience with the central protagonist’s contrasting fighting abilities. Indeed, in many ways it is hard to imagine that the thin, scruffily-clothed adolescent desperately trying to stay alive amidst a slavering cabal of Khorne worshippers, would ultimately survive to become the formidable Chapter Master who single-handedly storms a hapless Blood God death machine and causes untold carnage wearing just the Gauntlets of Ultramar.

Enjoyably however, this well-defined distinction is definitely what the British author’s narrative needs in order to remain at least slightly ‘believable’. Armed with little more than a knife and a belly full of revenge for his fallen friend, it would arguably have been all too easy to have penned Tacitan waging a war upon the perfidious Crixus like some sort of super-fighting machine. But rather fall into that particular trap, the former video game journalist instead shows the outnumbered loyalist desperately trying to use his brains to overcome his opponents’ brawn, and ultimately actually failing in his mission to destroy the traitors’ foul underground altar.

Likewise Gillen appears rather good at depicting the sheer might of a lone Space Marine sergeant when faced with a cybernetically-enhanced, axe-wielding maniac and his fanatical brethren. Power sword in one hand and bolter in the other, Arta readily overcomes all of the physical hurdles which stood in Tacitan's way, and still has time to rescue the awestruck youth from a self-imploding demonic dais before he’s done dispensing the Emperor’s justice; “I saw the monster that was Crixus advance. Full of dark power and darker madness. Any man would have run. But the marine? He knew no fear.”

Just as important to the telling of this twenty-page periodical’s pulse-pounding plot is Jacen Burrows’ awesome artwork, which genuinely seems to add an awful lot to the mythos behind Calgar’s rise to become the Lord of Macragge. The sheer weight behind Marneus’ power-fists can almost be felt whenever he swings the gigantic close-combat weapons in anger, and such well-pencilled scenes diverge marvellously with those of the light-footed serf, who is forced to rely upon sheer speed and cunning rather than the overwhelming weaponry of the Adeptus Astartes.

Writer: Kieron Gillen, Artist: Jacen Burrows, and Colorist: Java Tartaglia