The Evolutionary War as a whole

And so how does The Evolutionary War stand as a whole?

To be honest not very well.

On paper the project sounds like a good idea - tell a story whereby a powerful being is putting together a master plan with different series tackling different aspects of it. Putting it in the annuals at first glance suggests that there will be forgettable chapters written by guest writers but what's astounding is that of these twelve annuals no less than eleven are written by respective series' regular writer at the time and the twelfth (Web of Spider-Man Annual #4) notably lacked such a regular writer at this stage. So this should be the opportunity to combine a lot of talent and come up with a great spectacle.

Instead we get a rather incoherent mess. The underlying problem is that the various Marvel heroes range incredibly in terms of power and scope such that it becomes hard to believe a master plan can simultaneous involve a war on drugs and investigation of aliens. It's also clear that a lot of writers were not terribly interested in the crossover and instead at best used it to provide motivations and/or some hi-tech foes for the stories. At worst we get attempts to build up other characters and the central plot is ignored. To add to the mess too many of the annuals instead seem to be promoting new characters or guest stars at the expense of both the headline stars and the crossover event.

Where the stories work is when a writer takes the Evolutionary and his plans and uses them to generate a tale that really involves the characters and develops them well. The best chapter is probably New Mutants Annual #4 which uses the event as the opportunity to beef up Mirage and her powers followed by the climax in Avengers Annual #17. But it is saying a lot about the weakness of the chapters as chapters that the third best annual is Alf Annual #1 with little more than a comedic encounter between the start and Evolutionary. At the other end of the scale the worst chapter is Web of Spider-Man Annual #4 that throws far too many elements in and is far more interested in introducing a new character called Poison. Also dire is Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #8 that has too much attention devoted to the Young Gods but completely fails to sell the idea of giving them their own title. And whilst Punisher Annual #1 may be a decent Punisher story it is a chapter that cannot even disguise that crossover is completely out of the Punisher's league.

It doesn't help that the lead character is fundamentally misnamed. Evolution is not some fixed path by which a species advances and which can be accelerated. Instead it is adaptation and survival as a species develops to better meet the challenges around them with the natural mutations that best fit the challenges coming to the forefront. What the Evolutionary is aiming for is instead a mass mutation to enhance the species which is a goal in its own but outcome isn't going to turn humans into what they will have evolved into many thousands of years in the future.

And the nature of the individual chapters also means that most of the Evolutionary's plans end in failure because he goes after a big goal and is defeated rather than exploring things on the sidelines. A few vary from this such as his restoration of the Savage Land in X-Men Annual #12 which does actually succeed advance his plan whilst his exploration of the nature of the Professor Warren clones in Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #8 is more of a sideline than an actual exploration. But otherwise there are many defeats and it's amazing he's able to get the genetic bomb together by the end.

The plot line of a powerful being wandering in and out of various series had been done a few years earlier with Secret Wars II and it's easy to see why such a format is attractive as it not only makes it easier for readers to not have to buy every single issue to have a clue what's going on but also can be very friendly to changing schedules where the final choice of which series got annuals that year may have changed last minute - certainly The Punisher's first annual came surprisingly early in a series's run and was clearly down to initial huge sales. But it invariably leads to such an inconsistent meander through the books as they all try to do their own thing and slot in the crossover rather than a better structure focusing the plots on the Evolutionary and using the characters as appropriate. Many later crossovers would veer more towards this structure.

The back-up story "The High Evolutionary" is the main direct link between the annuals. It's a pity that a mess resulted in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #22 and Fantastic Four Annual #21 getting swapped around such that the lead stories and saga chapters come in different orders but otherwise this is a consistent flow from title to title. It's a good attempt to introduce the Evolutionary and tidy up what had become quite a sprawling backstory but it also shows just what a mess had been created with so many different characters having links to Mount Wundagore over the years that the saga at times struggles with.

Over The Evolutionary War is a failure. The basic storyline just not lend itself to endless appearances across multiple different titles and it's compounded by many of the writers not really incorporating it so well. So much of the crossover is structured to be missable that very little of it is essential and it shows. This was a bold experiment by Marvel and clearly sold well enough that not only would they repeat the structure of crossovers between multiple annuals in later years but DC would also go down that route, but as a story it's a failure.