With Ove appearing to be a direct descendant of Namor and Clash of the Centuries being emblazoned across the cover of last issue, I may be coming into this issue with some elevated expectations. Let’s see if this comic can live up to my self induced hype.

We enter this issue with Ove taking Carol and her team on a little walk down the street of this shinning golden palace sitting in the middle of ground zero. Ove built this place with the New York Public Library as the center of his “kindom”.

Carol’s team of Emma Frost, Gerry Drew, Brigid Thorsdottir, Katie Barton, Johnny Watts, and Carol Rhodes should all be smacking each other for not noticing this place being built. There are some skyscrapers still standing to block a total view of your surroundings, but I mean not only are the buildings glimmering in the sun light they are surrounded by Armor’s shield. That gives off a very characteristic glow. So much so they ask Ove about it.

Ove Pretty much dismisses Carol’s question. Carol is thinking what we all are thinking, this is messed up. This Ove has to be holding people hostage that have powers and is syphoning them off some how right?

Ove says Armor is here of her own free will. Carol asks to speak to her Ove says, she may, but not right now because Armor is busy. Apparently she can’t talk and keep the dome up at the same time? For some reason Carol doesn’t demand right here to see Armor? I’m three pages in and I have seen enough to comfortably jump to a confidant conclusion that this guy is bad. This issue really irritated me on that fact alone. Everything points to this guy is a bad guy and it just gets driven home the whole issue.

1. Luke Cage came to invite you. He supposed to be dead but he is not. He seems to be mind controlled.

2. Armor missing (kidnapped) her Armor is protecting this place when you walk up.

3. Ove says he is half Asgardian RED FLAG!!!

4. He mentions Crystal the Inhuman is controlling the climate in this dome. He also says she is too busy to talk.

5. He says he has another girl here that supplies the power by the name of Jolt.

6. No civilians come up and talk to them.

All these reasons in my mind are plenty of grounds to DEMAND to talk to any of the super powered people “donating” their time, but instead the team agrees to except Ove’s hospitality and stay the night. WTF?! Even Emma is swayed over a bit at the prospect of silk sheets. Which is pretty ridiculous in my opinion. Yeah Emma was always a person that enjoys the finer things in life, but you know what Emma loves more LIVING!! She hasn’t even transformed out of her crystal form this whole arc. It has been many many years they have been fighting for their lives and she is going to risk staying inside this Library Palace?

At least they all agree to sleep in the same room, but they know he has some ability to control people since they recently saw it with Luke Cage. They must suspect he has at least the same powers of Namor, and Namor is a badass. Plus whatever powers he got from his asgard side too. This to me just comes across as a tactically flawed plan.

Ove invites Carol and only Carol to have dinner with him, to which she excepts. Again I find myself asking why and all I can figure is she is on a fishing for information expedition. Even though as I have already said there is enough here to get mad and demand answers about.

At dinner we get Ove telling his back story but Carol really asks no questions and gets no real vital information. She doesn’t even ask him what asgardian woman was his mother. Ove hits on Carol and talks about himself and they eat. The story he gives her about his past she knows it’s mainly bullshit and we the reader get the feeling it is mainly bullshit. Personally I think Ove and his Mother killed Namor and the Atlanteans kicked them out but it doesn’t really matter.

Once back with her team they split into smaller groups to search the building and guess what they find out Ove is a bad guy!! Let me get my shocked face on.

Final Thoughts:

This was an OK issue. Carol and her team did too many stupid things just to progress the plot in my opinion. I thought the Flashback art by Ortega looked better than Garbett’s for some reason and I love Garbett’s art normally. He just doesn’t seem to be hitting on all cylinders for me on this arc, not like he was on the Last Avenger arc. It might be because everything feels like we are just walking around in an apocalyptic hell. This issues story was just too predictable it was frustrating. I was yelling at the page like some cheesy 80’s horror movie, “NO DON”T GO IN THERE WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”

7/10