My Secret Wars, let me show you them (Secret Wars II and Secret War)

Previously, on chezkevin. . .

The Beyonder, that crazy omnipotent cat, got all his Marvel action figures together and hit them against each other. Then Jim Shooter put them in a twelve-issue comic book series called "Secret Wars." Read more here: http://chezkevin.blogspot.com/2014/06/my-secret-wars-let-me-show-you-them-1.html

Now, back to chezkevin. . .

Secret Wars didn't take a long time to churn out a sequel. In fact, the original writer Jim Shooter followed it up with Secret Wars II just a mere handful of months later, in 1985! Al Milgrom takes over the art and the style generally remains the same.

It's a direct follow-up to the Secret Wars, and puts you through the lens of the Beyonder as he attempts to gain understanding of this new human world, Earth, through experience. He becomes a crime boss, befriends a hooker, styles himself after 80s' Michael Jackson, and attempts to find love in a number of stories. Early on, each issue reads like a done-in-one of the Beyonder trying to experience life. There's a lot of re-hashing in each issue.

Eventually his experience becomes so unpleasant that he decides to wipe out all of existence, including his memory of it. It's a weird, non-super-hero story with superheroes, that constantly reminds you of the plight of living in a world of desire and the meaning of a finite life. By the time I got to the ninth and final issue, I just wanted to be done with the repetitive backtracking. You'd have to be a pretty big Marvel fan to like this story. I could do without this.

I wouldn't say Secret War is any better. It was a five-issue miniseries that, due to delays, ran from 2004 to 2005. Brian Bendis wrote it and Gabrielle Dell'Otto painted it.

It's the story of Nick Fury's "Secret War" against a country thought to be America's ally -- Latveria, under the control of Lucia von Bardas. Fury gathers a who's who in the Marvel U., Captain America, Luke Cage, the works.

There are what seems to be four issues of conspiracy that climax in the final fifth issue where you find out what actually happened. If you ask me, the beginning takes way too long to get moving, and this could have taken place in 3 issues or less.

I wouldn't purchase either one of these series with my own money.

I know, battle-damaged Spider-Man. I know

Follow chezkevin on rss | twitter