This Quicksilver: No Surrender #1 exclusive sends a speedster outside of time

Pietro “Quicksilver” Maximoff sacrificed himself to save the Earth at the end of Avengers’ “No Surrender” storyline, and while the rest of Marvel’s heroes think their speedster ally is dead, the new Quicksilver: No Surrender miniseries reveals what happened after Pietro disappeared in a bright flash of light. Written by Saladin Ahmed, an Eisner Award nominee this year for his work on Marvel’s Black Bolt, with art by Eric Nguyen and colorist Rico Renzi, this five-issue mini sends Quicksilver on an introspective journey at the edge of reality, sorting through his personal baggage as he tries to find his way back home and back into the timestream. Ahmed successfully turned Black Bolt into a complicated, compelling character, and he gets a lot more to work with in Pietro, who is more dynamic in nearly every way. He has bigger personality and a long, deep history with different parts of the Marvel Universe, giving Ahmed a lot to explore as he digs into this lead hero.

Quicksilver is also really fast, and this exclusive preview of Quicksilver: No Surrender #1 shows how that fundamental aspect of the character plays into both the script and the artwork. Pietro explains the nature of his abilities in the narration, and the artwork visualizes that speed with searing intensity as Nguyen and Renzi use bold, flowing graphics and vibrant colors to depict Quicksilver in motion. There are no panels on that first page to reinforce the idea of super-speed breaking through all barriers, and when Pietro catches the beacon, he breaks through the walls of time. That shift is depicted with the absence of color, and the only things that aren’t gray are Pietro and the speed lines that follow him when he moves. That contrast is amplified because the coloring at the start is so aggressive, and these pages are a great example of how a colorist is essential to visual storytelling.