What’s up everyone! Welcome to Beyond The Panel. Coming at you today with talk about Marauders #16! This is the issue that I was looking forward to at last. Mainly because revenge against Sebastian Shaw was something which they set-up well before X of Swords began. That was was partly soured me on the event. You kick those off and everything else tends to be put on hold till said event wraps up. So now here we are at Marauders #16. The Black King did wrong. Now he must pay.

That said, I was happy to see that this issue would pick-up right where we last left Kate and Emma with this situation. First of all, it was good that it was addressed that this was pushed back due to the event. Secondly, it was even better to see that this was still on everyone else’s minds even during the tournament. Credit where it is due that they allowed this gap in time for plans to be set in motion against the Black King. It only made sense that there would be others who didn’t simply let things go with the resurrection of Kate. Because honestly that would have never made too much sense. When one of your own is clearly murdered. You find out exactly what happened to that person. Otherwise you are pretty much inviting the same thing to happen again down the road. It is amazing when some creative teams don’t look that far into dodging plotholes.

So this brings us to the Black King paying for what he did to Kate. After all this time I expected there to be some grand plan from Kate and Emma. That they were going to set this elaborate plan in motion to bring Sebastian Shaw’s world crashing down on his head, and then put his head into the ground. Though that would seem like too much time given to the Black King to continue thinking he got away with murder. No, this creative team treated us to the moment we were waiting for, and the right way from two people who are taking this quite personally.

I for one loved that everything about what happened in this issue was direct. That is what you like to see from two characters who have no reason to play games with someone who had it out for them. By the end of the issue, the main question was if Shaw’s punishment matched his crime. And my answer to that? Hell yes it was. They set things straight for the guy who thought he was still in control, they took their pound of flesh, and they made sure that there was something at the end of it all to satisfy them past the confrontation. That looked like a win to me and worth the long wait.

I would say that what made this was an exhilarating issue was the work on the art team’s end. This wasn’t an action-packed issue. Which meant that the focus really needed to be on the characters themselves and the emotion we should be feeling from them during such an intense moment. Visually every scene was a treat between Kate and Emma commanding the room with their presence, and the look of fear which washed over Shaw’s face as he realized this was his reckoning. One thing I particularly loved was the looks of indifference from these two ladies as they took everything they could from Shaw. Even that pound of flesh they took from him was a cringeworthy panel for the pain they thought he should suffer. What really brought it all home was having a colorist who knows how to make all those nasty bruises, afflictions, and expressions of pain look genuine.

Overall, Marauders #16 was a thrill from start to finish for everything that was hyped up when Kate made it known that she was out for blood. This right here is what revenge and justice looks like. Within the rules of Krakoa that is.