Anghus Houvouras reviews Secret Wars #1…
I’m old enough to remember the original Secret Wars when it was released back in 1985. It was the first event comic I had ever read. Back then the concept of superheroes crossing over into each other’s books was still a novelty. If you wanted to see your favorite comic book characters team up, you had to buy World’s Finest, The Brave and the Bold, or Marvel Team Up.
Marvel had attempted a similar superhero event comic with the highly underrated Contest of Champions. They had built on a similar formula: an intergalactic entity known as The Beyonder assembles the world’s greatest heroes and villains on an alien world created for them to battle one another. The Avengers, The X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and heavy hitters like the Hulk faced off against Doctor Doom, Ultron, Molecule Man, and a dozen other dastardly villains. For comic fans, the title delivered big thrills and epic battles. Marvel is hoping to recapture lightning in a bottle with their new Secret Wars title. If the first issue is any indication, they’ve got their work cut out for them.
Secret Wars #1 is a beautifully drawn, densely plotted quagmire. It struggles to set the stage for this massive event and is indulgent to a fault. An embarrassment of riches that lacks a strong emotional core. Much of the story suffers from the same laborious plotting that has plagued the Avengers titles since the Marvel Now relaunch.
For those of you who haven’t been following along: The Marvel Multiverse is dying. Universes are being destroyed as they converge on one another. As the inter-dimensional decay continues, only two universes remain: The original Marvel Universe (the 616) and the Ultimate Universe (1610). It’s kill or be kill. Only one universe can survive.
I’m amazed how convoluted and complicated this new Secret Wars is. They took such a wonderfully simple premise and have made it another extension of some below average storytelling. It feels like an excuse for Marvel to hit the reset button and piece together a New Universe using characters from both worlds. Secret Wars #1 doesn’t feel like a first issue but a prologue. It’s a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing… literally. Both universes are destroyed at the end of the first issue leaving the future quite uncertain.
Esad Ribic’s artwork is stunning. He creates some beautiful anarchy while destroying these two once flourishing corners of the Marvel Universe. There’s just nothing in this chaos to latch onto. No central character which the story is being told. The best we get is two versions of Reed Richards who are barely sympathetic in their attempts to ensure that their world survives.
I’m excited by the promise of what Secret Wars could eventually. Then again, I said the same thing about DC’s Convergence, a series which has slowly dragged itself from ‘awful’ to ‘average’ five issues into it’s run. I’ll give Secret Wars more time to develop, but I’m getting a real Infinity vibe from Secret Wars, i.e. another Marvel event with a grand sweeping story without any emotional weight. The first issue felt like last year’s Cataclysm. Lots of action, but no direction. Destruction for destruction’s sake.
Jonathan Hickman’s run at Marvel, for me, has been wildly uneven. Secret Wars claims to be the end of the Marvel universe as we know it. For all our sake, let’s hope Secret Wars is more ‘bang’ than ‘whimper’.
Anghus Houvouras is a North Carolina based writer and filmmaker. His latest work, the novel My Career Suicide Note, is available from Amazon. Follow him on Twitter.
https://youtu.be/pnc360pUDRI?list=PL18yMRIfoszFLSgML6ddazw180SXMvMz5
Originally published May 7, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
