Published Jan 2016 by Marvel
Written by Joshua Williamson
Art by Shawn Crystal
Cover A by Riley Rossmo
28 pages, full color

'Bad guys win every day… why not us?'
How do the villains of the Marvel Universe live in a world where the sky is constantly filled with heroes? What do they do when they want out of that life? There is no escape. No future. Who saves the villains? The Hood believes he might be that savior. He wants everyone to have a place at the table. Now all he needs to do is build his army...

Featuring Titania, Mad Thinker, Thunderball, Black Ant and Enchantress, Illuminati is a tale of villains just trying to survive in the All-New All-Different Marvel Universe.

Even as weird as the Marvel Universe is, The Hood is a pretty strange character. Created by Brian K. Vaughn, Kyle Hotz and Eric Powell in a MAX series, he was essentially the Peter Parker of supervillains. Hell, his name is Parker, for crying out loud! He was a down on his luck kid who stumbles upon great power, but instead of using it to fight crime he used it to commit crime. His original series was a pretty self-contained story that simply explored the idea of the Peter Parker archetype if you flipped it on it’s head, but since then he’s been brought into the mainstream Marvel Universe and here, in “Illuminati” #1, Joshua Williamson and Shawn Crystal are exploring what happens when you give a small time crook unlimited power.

The thing about “Illuminati” #1 that’s most surprising is that, despite all of Marvel’s marketing, this turned out to be an entirely different style of series than I was expecting. From Riley Rossmo’s cover to “Nailbiter”‘s Joshua Williamson being the writer to the focus on The Hood in the marketing, I went into this issue expecting one thing and got something entirely different. A lot of that has to do with the artwork. Shawn Crystal’s style was not the usual gruff, grim and gritty style I was expecting for what had been marketed as, essentially, something of a horror crime book. Instead, Crystal’s artwork is much lighter and pretty cartoon-y in a Kyle Baker sense with light linework that seems representative of soft lead pencils or even crayons in certain panels. Be sure, this isn’t the grand, operatic drama about the hubris of man and the end of the world that Jonathan Hickman wrote with the Illuminati. This is something a bit more fun and a bit more human all together.

Despite what the cover (or my first paragraph) might tell you, The Hood isn’t actually the main character of “Illuminati” #1, Titania is. This is an interesting shift in perspective that I wasn’t quite expecting, but Williamson and Crystal use that change in perspective to introduce us to the character as she’s trying to go straight and turn her life around and show just how hard that is for supervillains to go straight in the Marvle Universe. Williamson uses this to immediately grip us by showing us a sympathetic angle to a character that you would never have thought would be sympathetic and tying that in to Crystal’s lighter style of artwork brings a lot of warmth and humour to Crystal’s story. The ultimate example of that is the scene where two major Marvel characters show up that, honestly, I’d rather not spoil, but one of them is wearing a shirt that made me howl with laughter when I saw it. The last thing I expected to do when reading a book called “Illuminati” is laugh.

Yet warm humour and light action is really the core element of “Illuminati”. Shawn Crystal’s artwork lends itself to incredible action in the issue, showing the destructive capabilities of characters with superpowers in a very cartoon-y, exaggerated way without taking away from the light style of artwork. The fight scene in the middle of this issue is actually incredible to behold and shows Crystal as a very impressive artist who is able to channel the weirdness of the Marvel Universe through a visual style that remains light and visually comedic in some panels without breaking the tension of Williamson’s script. It’s a very fine line that the artwork walks and while the effect is surprisingly closer to “Superior Foes Of Spider-Man” than “New Avengers”, Crystal manages to pull it off perfectly in this issue.

The only downside to this issue is that, despite the team being assembled on the cover and it highlighting The Hood as the major character in the story, he doesn’t show up until more than halfway through the issue and the transition from Titania’s story to him introducing the concept of the Illuminati is pretty jarring. He essentially shows up out of nowhere only to grab Titania and sit her down, explaining that he’s putting a team together all Tony Stark at the end of The Incredible Hulk style before we get one panel that introduces the rest of the team in name only before the issue’s over. While Williamson and Crystal do a great job at introducing tone and lightness and humour through Titania’s story in the opening of the issue, the concept of the Illuminati itself shows up almost as afterthought in the last couple of pages and you’re left without much of an idea of who the group is or why they’ve been brought together. It’s a strange feeling because Titania’s story is an element of this issue is one that was entirely unexpected and yet, looking back, it’s the part of the issue that’s the most engaging.

All in all, this is still a strong debut from Williamson and Crystal if you’re looking for a series that takes a look at the criminal underbelly of the Marvel Universe while retaining a warm sense of humour. I don’t want to stress this as a spiritual successor to “Superior Foes Of Spider-Man” too much, but it’s a safe bet that fans of that series will likely be interested in this. However, we’ll need to see in the next issue whether Williamson and Crystal will be able to transition from Titania’s story, which was genuinely engaging and had a very strong human element mixed in with some humour, to the actual story of the Illuminati group while keeping that human element and, hopefully, the humour intact.

New Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness Teaser Confirms Those Darned Illuminati
As rumored, the elite council will be joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the film.

The messy Marvel Cinematic Multiverse is about to come under some new management... or rather, new managers are about to be revealed in the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Because as this newest teaser for the film has revealed, the erstwhile Sorcerer Supreme is about to be hauled in front of the Illuminati for his rampant reality-tampering.

The Illuminati, if you’re unaware, is/was a secret council in the Marvel Comics universe comprised of Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Professor X, Namor the King of Atlantis, Black Bolt the King of the Inhumans, and Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, who were stealthily working together to “mold and shape the status of the superhuman world and the world around it,” according to Marvel’s official bio page for the group (Black Panther was invited to join, but declined), after the events of the Kree-Skrull War. The rumors that the Illuminati would be a part of Multiverse of Madness erupted when Patrick Stewart’s distinctive voice was heard in the movie’s last full trailer, leading fans to suspect the actor would be reprising his role as Professor X from the (now Disney-owned) X-Men movie franchise. This is almost certainly true, now that this teaser has confirmed the Illuminati are real:

They also seem to be in charge of governing the multiverse, unless Marvel Studios is going to retcon the X-Men movies into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which seems highly unlikely (surely they’d want a clean mutant movie slate, although thanks to multiverse shenanigans Stewart could again play Professor X in the new movies, just as J.K. Simmons returned as J. Jonah Jameson in the Spider-Man movies). But how the Illuminati do or don’t mesh with Kang, the other guy who appointed himself in charge of the multiverse in the Loki TV series, will definitely require an answer.

Still, the bigger question is, who else will be part of the Illuminati? Because it can’t just be Xavier sitting up there. Will Robert Downey Jr. come back to play a Tony Stark from another reality, or will someone else step in? Those are Ultron-esque bots leading Strange to the council, after all. Might Anson Mount from the Inhumans miniseries make an appearance? Hopefully not, because Inhumans remains the very worst MCU-adjacent thing Marvel has ever made, and after all, he’s busy commanding the Enterprise. Could the movie introduce Namor or Mister Fantastic, or will other characters fill their seats? Will someone other than a white man/inhuman make the cut?

We will find out very shortly, as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness premieres on May 6. Oh, and just because there are a lot of empty chairs in the teaser doesn’t mean they won’t be full in the movie; remember, Marvel has a habit of photoshopping characters out of promo material they want to keep secret...

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