I would like to thank Sarah at Titan for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Titan

Published – Out Now

Price – £16.99 hardback £9.99 Kindle eBook

This thrilling Marvel murder mystery is packed with shocking twists and turns in an exciting re-imagining of the comic crossover sensation.

Uatu the Watcher, a mysterious being who observes mankind from the Moon, is dead. Nick Fury leads a cosmos-spanning investigation into the murder, forging unlikely alliances and sending Marvel's mightiest heroes to the farthest corners of the universe.

To uncover the truth, Doctor Strange and the Punisher must cross deadly dimensions, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Moon Knight and the Winter Soldier head into deep space, and Emma Frost, Ant-Man and Black Panther journey to the center of the Earth. All the while, Unseen forces gather, and just when the Avengers think they've cornered their murderer, everything explodes―unleashing the Marvel Universe's greatest secrets and rocking the heroes to their core!

In this novelization of the epic storyline by Jason Aaron and Mike Deodato Jr., truths will come tumbling into the light and the original sins of our heroes will be exposed for all to see.

The crossover event in comics is a phrase ghat both entices a reader and can really put them off. On the one hand your favourite heroes and villains crossing paths should be fun. This is something we now see in various Marvel movies where the idea of just having the odd Avengers film has fallen away as the cast of characters is more known. Why not have all the toys out of the toybox? The downside is they often screamed Marketing event; disrupted your own favourite comic book and you knew the consequences can be overwritten. A novel though can trim all of this to its core and I’m delighted to say the new Marvel prose novel Original Sin by Gavin Smith (adapted from the graphic novel by Jason Aaron and Mike Deodato Jr) gives us an engrossing mystery that also explores the darker side of the Marvel universe that a host of characters need to solve.

In the Marvel Universe Earth has a mysterious character known as Uatu The Watcher who lives on the Moon and sees…everything and has done for millennia. He knows what happened, by whom and even why. He rarely intervenes and is viewed with suspicion by the few aware of him. Then one day mysterious visitors from earth arrive, Uatu is killed, and his base suffers an explosion. The Watcher is dead. The Avengers in the form of Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow and Nick Fury all got o investigate. While in different parts of the world various other heroes have been hired to trad the realms of spce, magic and the underworld of the earth to find clues. The powers of the Watcher are not yet dead and have ramifications for everyone to confront but could also tear many teams apart.

Let’s be clear here this is not the Marvel Cinematic Universe but the Marvel Comic one. For example, this Nick Fury is the one that fought in WW2 and has through mysterious stuff survived to the present day. Hence Smith weaves a tale that takes many characters’ comic-book histories and weaves an engrossing mystery that actually also smartly elaborates on who these heroes (and sometimes ante-heroes). Smith reminds us that so many of our favourites are…complicated. Fury is a master manipulator; Stark is an often very selfish screw-up, Bucky Barnes is an accomplished assassin. One of our main characters in this tale is The Punisher and while this character is often looked down upon this novel does point out certain hypocrisies in how these people see what they do as sadly necessary and what he does as wanton destruction. The reader may amazingly think Frank Castle has a point after reading this.

At its heart is a murder investigation but one that involves the moon, a near immortal alien and several other crime-scenes across the world and beyond it. We get unusual team ups such as The Punisher and Doctor Strange (they do not get on); Bucky, Gamora and Moon Knight…(a powder keg) and Black Panther, Ant-Man and Emma Frost (you can guess…). What impressed me in the story is that Smith weaves these threads initially as just standard crossover pairings but gradually through intermittent use of a first-person narrator we see a much larger and stranger story that this is the culmination of after many decades. The core mystery is focused on three lets say politely lesser known Marvel villains but actually these events allow us to focus on the ‘goodies’ and as well as reminding us that our heroes have long and tarnished legacies that they don’t want people to recall we also have a rather brilliant idea of a bomb that really upsets the apple-cart in way I definitely didn’t see coming but its impact is written with a chef’s kiss of scenes impacting heroes in unexpected ways. My only reservation is that while this story delivers a focused core crossover you can sense lots of spin-off tales that Smith makes here all sound rather exciting; but I don’t get see the resolution of them.

Original Sin is a fast, well plotted, action packed yet character-driven ride into Marvel’s shadowy side of its stories. Casting spotlights on people we love to watch do amazing things but reminds us there are consequences and being good and winning are not the same. Smith delivered a tale I was not familiar with and I think any new Marvel reader would like me enjoy seeing this different spin on classic characters. Highly recommended and of course Excelsior!