When Hulk left the planet Sakaar (aka “Planet Hulk”) behind, he also left his son. But he didn’t travel halfway across the galaxy to avoid paying child support–he didn’t even know the boy existed.
These issues describe his birth and early childhood development, where the motherless child was adopted by a race of Sakaar/Brood hybrids and educated by the spirit of his dead mother, Caiera.
The main villain is “Axeman Bone,” a dude with a giant axe who rides a winged, fire-breathing dragon, and likes to enslave people. A dude named Hiro-Kala is part of his army.
There are backups across these issues that go into detail about the extended cast. Hiro-Kala’s home was destroyed by Hulk as a child, and he finds himself choosing Axeman over Skaar because of this.
Skaar takes after his dad in that he hates slavers and loves to fight, so he and Axeman end up on opposite sides pretty quickly.
There’s also Princess Omaka, who briefly teams with Skaar but ultimately throws in with Axeman Bone more out of fear than moral choice.
Much of the story beats and characters are what you’d expect: Wise old philosophers, prophecies, a series of “trials” that Skaar must go through to prove himself, Skaar’s struggle to live into the legend of his dad…Much of this feels like a different way to tell the same story Greg Pak wrote in Planet Hulk. But given that Marvel didn’t have any other fantasy-type series running at the time, Skaar fills a gap. There’s also short back-up stories that try to better establish the world of Sakaar and the supporting characters in the main story, but I found it hard to get too invested here. Your own results may vary, especially if you like the idea of merging Marvel with Conan-type stories.
By the end, Skaar has formed a small group (much like Hulk and his small group). They have to access the “old power,” but doing so could break the entire world of Sakaar. Just as that begins to happen, Silver Surfer shows up…
He tells Skaar that Galactus is coming to eat Sakaar, but offers Skaar the chance to evacuate his mother’s race of Shadow People and any other innocents.
But in a pretty cool twist, Skaar decides to enslave Surfer so that he can’t leave and bring Galactus.
It’s really here that the book breaks away from the formulaic/expected and gets interesting.
Not saying that these issues are bad. They’re not. It’s all very well executed. The backstories are a nice touch as well.
It’s just not all that original.
English (US) · 