To borrow from Honest Trailers’ The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies, the final third of The Black Vortex is the best installment of the event “because it finally, finally means it’s over.” Seriously, the Guardians of the Galaxy only got to spend one issue on Venom’s home planet, but their squabble with the X-Men over a vaguely powerful mirror stretched out into a 13-issue “event?” Truly, there is no justice.
After a strong start and a mediocre middle, the conclusion of the Black Vortex is just so… blah. The evil McGuffin is wrestled from the hands of the Slaughter Lords, as we knew it would be, and Mr. Knife is left encased in amber. Nothing is learned or gained from this that required such a long arc. Last summer, Kelly Sue DeConnick lectured at the Ultimate Comics Writer’s Workshop and offered tips on quality comic book writing (which she was nice enough to post on Tumblr). One reoccurring theme in her lecture was the need to use the plot to further character development. The Black Vortex utterly fails at this (though it’s worth noting that, of the final four issues, DeConnick’s Captain Marvel #14 is easily the best). It’s quite a feat of incompetence that so many characters can undergo a cosmic transformation that unlocks their potential, yet never reveals anything new or valuable about their personalities.