I read some more Secret Wars tie-ins:

Age of Ultron Vs. Marvel Zombies

The back cover of this trade paperback collection of the four-issue series reads "Two fan-favorites in one dangerous place!", which seems disingenuous at best. I'll give the back cover copy Marvel Zombies as a fan-favorite, no argument. It's been a decade and the bloom is off that particular rose but, on the other hand, it has been a decade, and Marvel published a lot of comics under that particular title, and sold a lot of them, even if the returns inevitably diminished.

Age of Ultron, though? I don't recall anyone that 2013 event series being particularly beloved. I mean, it sold just fine for what it was, but I remember reading a lot of pieces on line dissecting the many other films and comic book series it seemed to be derivative of (particularly its opening chapters), a lot pointing out how weird it was that almost the entire comic is set before the so-called Age of Ultron and some that did both. And that's about it.

But let's give the poor person who wrote the back cover copy a break. It's still a sorta weird title for a series, even a Secret Wars series, as it revolves not around a conflict between Ultron and the Marvel Zombies, but an alliance between the two factions so that they combine their might to take on a group of Marvel heroes with connections to Ultron.

So, this is going to get a little complicated; I suggest you blame series writer James Robinson.

The giant, ever-guarded wall known as The Shield separates most of Battleworld from the mindless hordes to its south: The Deadlands, home of the Marvel Zombies and, apparently, Perfection, ruled by a shiny gold Ultron and hims many, many duplicate soldiers. When people violate Doom's laws, they get sentenced to work the wall, or, if they're real bad, they get tossed over the wall.

As the story opens, we see one such criminal–Tigra–hunted by the Marvel Zombies, who chase her into a creepy crowd of Ultron footsoldiers. The Ultrons erase everything that's made of flesh, undead or otherwise, and so the zombies and Ultrons fight for an entire splash page.

We then get a history less of Perfection, and it a mostly unnecessary affair about an alternate universe where Ultron defeated the Avengers and kept on winning; it directly references particular points in old-school Avengers continuity.
And then we get introduced to Janet Van Dyne and Hank Pym...from the domain of 1872. Pym gets pitched over the wall, but is saved by Jim Hammond (the original Human Torch, in the incarnation that Robinson was writing in Fantastic Four and All-New Invaders), safari-coat Simon Williams/Wonder Man and The Vision. The trio take him to the town of Salvation, which they built after rebelling from Ultron. There they've gathered survivors and protected them with an ionic energy force field derived by Wonder Man.

They want this Pym to come up with a way to defeat Ultron, even though he's a dumb cowboy version who has never heard the word "artificial" before, since another Pym invented Ultron (Cowboy Pym was working on a steam-powered, clockwork Ultron though...that's why he got sentenced to the Deadlands in the first place). He tries his best.

Meanwhile, Ultron and Zombie Magneto form a pact, in which Ultron sticks Marvel Zombies into tubes and they come out as half-Ultron, creepy-ass looking cyborgs that I guess are pretty much just Deathloks, only with Ultron-y faces. It's not clear why Ultron would even bother to do this, instead of simply allying with the zombies and sending both hordes against the forcefield of Salvation at once, but whatever.

Some heroes die, others live, Ultron and the Zombies are defeated...or defeated-ish, maybe, as I think both hordes show up at the conclusion of Secret Wars. I kinda wish I kept a volume of Secret Wars handy while reading all of these tie-ins, so I could occasionally refer back to it to see if and/or how well these various tie-ins actually work with it.

Steve Pugh handles the artwork, and it's far from his best work, but it is well beyond serviceable. So much has been done with the ZOmbies before that he doesn't actually have too much room to come up with new characters from the catalog to zombify, or inventive ways to portray them, although I liked his Mandrill and his Stilt-Man.

I think his Ultron is a particularly good one, too, as the jack o' lantern face that defines the villain looks more and more like an animal skull from certain angles, particularly when it comes to the prime Ultron.

This is probably my favorite image from the book:

That's 1872 Pym remembering being arrested by a Thor, who is apparently a Rawhide Kid-as-Thor. Note the twin Mjolnirs in his holsters. Sure, maybe they should be in there handle-up, for quick-draw purposes, but I just kinda love the idea of a Rawhide Kid with a pair of holstered Mjolnirs. I wonder if this Thor shows up elsewhere in the hundreds (thousands?) of pages of Secret Wars tie-ins Marvel published, and if he ever has cause to draw against anyone; for the most part, the Thors seem to just show up and zap people, rarely encountering anyone who puts up a fight. And who would he need to fight with two hammers?

For the most part, this seems like an extremely inside baseball tie-in, as it takes a few of the common elements of Battleworld and smashes them against each other in order to form a coherent story; whether one enjoys that story will likely rest one one's affection for these strictly C-List characters.

As with each of the collections discussed in this post, this one includes a space-filling reprint in the back: The first issue of Brian Michael Bendis and Bryan Hitch's Age of Ultron miniseries, in which we are introduced to the dystopian future where Ultron is still in the mopping-up process of Earth's heroes and villains. This is the issue that includes Hawkeye murdering people, Spider-Man being tortured and Captain America crying. Not exactly a fun-fest.

Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars

This is one of the two Secret Wars tie-ins I've read that have absolutely nothing at all to do with Secret Wars (the other was Where Monsters Dwell), and isn't even set on Battleworld. Rather, Marvel seems to have just used the excuse of Jonathan Hickman's extended reference to the original 1984 Secret Wars to publish another Deadpool comic. And "publishing another Deadpool comic" has been a pretty sound strategy for Marvel of late.

The book opens with the same explanatory page that all the Secret Wars tie-ins do, the one about the Multiverse having been destroyed, and all that remains is a patchwork planet ruled by Victor Von Doom and so on, only here all of that is crossed out, and the words "Wrong Secret Wars!!!" written there instead. This is the original Secret Wars, in which we learn "what really happened." Basically, it was all about Deadpool. Don't remember Deadpool, who wasn't even created until 1991, being there? There's a reason for that, which this book explains.

Writer Cullen Bunn and artist Matteo Lolli basically condense the 12-part original series down into a sort of highlight reel, inserting Deadpool into the action wherever possible, while also providing a story arc for the character that involves him getting good looks (after a 1984 fashion), having a fling with The Wasp and saving all of the heroes from death.

It's a pretty fun idea, really. I confess that I've never read Secret Wars, and have never felt any desire to go back and do so. I'm pretty weak on 1980s Marvel in general, but I've never got the impression that it was something that needed read the way that, say, the Mark Gruenwald-written Squadron Supreme or Frank Miller Daredevil stuff was important. So I can't tell exactly how accurate Bunn and Lolli's recreation of scenes from the original are...with a few exceptions. Marvel includes Secret Wars #1 in the back of this collection for filler context, and it's clear the creators lift whole chunks of dialogue and staging from the original and have Deadpool get involved.

Scenes from the original are presented and are apparently meant to be instantly recognizable–Deadpool finding a secret stash of those plastic shields the figures in the toy line came with, Deadpool trying on the Venom symbiote before Spidey gets his new, black costume, the mountain getting dropped on Hulk–but I can say from experience that having experienced them firsthand isn't important. Whether one has read the original or not, it's pretty clear that this is 21st century, meta-Deadpool interacting with old-school, 1980s Marvel characters.

Between the end of Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars and the reprint of Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, there's a "Bonus Round" by Bunn and artist Jacopo Camagni, which takes a similar approach to 1982's Marvel Super Heroes Contest of Champions...although here they've only got ten pages to work with. Basically, Deadpool convinces The Unknown and The Grandmaster to let some of the minor characters compete, and, to shut him up, they comply.

It's Deadpool, Doop, Howard The Duck and Pink Sphinx vs. Rocket Racer, She-Man-Thing, The Vile Tapeworm and Frog Man. I'm...pretty sure at least a few of those characters are original to this series, as I'm fairly certain I would know if there were a She-Man-Thing or not.

...

Dammit, now I've gotta know. I'll google She-Man-Thing, but that's where I draw the line here...Huh. Well, what do you know. You learn something new every day...even if it's only about super-obscure Marvel comics characters...

By the way, I wasn't fond of Tony Harris' covers for this series, and am kind of baffled why Marvel didn't opt to do "covers" of covers from the original, with Deadpool gratuitously added. I know the cover of Secret Wars #1 at least is pretty iconic, and, scanning them all on comics.org right now, it looks like the covers of #1, #4, #8 and #10 would have all made fine covers to Deadpool-ize for this series (Skottie Young does a variant, and Harris does a non-variant referencing the cover of #4 though).

Marvel Zombies: Battleworld

The fairly genius conception of the Marvel Zombies, first used in a 2005 Ultimate Fantastic Four story by writer Mark Millar but not given their popular, reader-magnet of a name until they earned a spin-off mini-series of their own in 2006, has long since run its relatively lucrative course. Marvel has seemingly done every thing they could with the idea of a zombified versions of their characters, and Arthur Suydam has "zombified" just about every single iconic Marvel Comics cover there is (The attempt is not even made for the covers of this particular series).

So it's no surprise then that there would naturally be a Secret Wars tie-in bearing the title of Marvel Zombies, and that the creators would have to focus on something other than the one-trick pony characters of that title.

The solution that writer Simon Spurrier, here working with Marvel Zombies vet Kev Walker, came up with is a pretty smart one. In the Battleworld setting of Secret Wars, the Marvel Zombies live in "The Deadlands," from which they lay more-or-less constant siege to the rest of the world. Standing between the super-powered zombie hordes and civilization is the wall, a gigantic wall referred to as the Shield. Among its defenders is Marvel's monster-hunter par excellence, Elsa Bloodstone.

I...don't recall Elsa Bloodstone playing a role in any previous Marvel Zombies series, even the one that featured members of her occasional Legion of Monsters running crew, so making a monster hunter a sort of general in a war against the undead seems inspired enough for a four-issue, limited, What If...? style series.

Things go pretty wrong for Elsa almost immediately, as a zombie version of a character with Nightcrawler powers grabs her and deposits her deep within the Deadlands. Together with a mysterious, amnesiac bald kid, she has to try and survive on the other side of the wall long enough to find safety. While most of the zombies mass at the wall, she finds a couple of stragglers–a still sentient piece of Doctor Octopus, a M.O.D.O.K.* stuck in a non-functioning floaty chair thingee, on his back like a tortoise–and a small gang of Marvel Zombies who have found "evermeat" in the form of a victim with a healing factor.

This Elsa is very much in the mold of the one from Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E., both in her design and in her personality, which is here extremely sarcastic and littered with swearwords (most of which are presented via grawlix, rather than the skulls and crossbones of Nextwave). Her swearing is integral in one of the better gags, as she unleashes a stream of invective at the teleporter who captures her, snippets of which escape between the BAMFs.

Throughout her journey she finds herself flashing back to her own very, very rough childhood and the cruel, brutal "training" she endured at the hands of her father Ulysses Bloodstone, generally whenever she finds herself having to play a paternal role to the child with her. There are a couple of "twists" in the plot, including the identities of a mysterious figure tracking them and of the child, which are pretty easy to see coming, particularly given the focus of Spurrier's script throughout.

As for the Marvel Zombies, they play a very small role in this, aside from being a sort of generalized threat but, again, there's not much left to be done with them. As a mix-and-match endeavor involving that concept and that of Nextwave's Elsa Bloodstone, it's fairly successful. In terms of Secret Wars, it's pretty skippable (actually, all of the tie-ins I've read so far have been pretty skippable; the zombies of The Deadlands do play a role in the climactic battle of Secret Wars, but then, so does everyone and everything, really). This is the first and only book I've read that has mentioned "the duplicate effect" of Battleworld, however, in which there will be more than one version of the same character (the topic first comes up when the little kid notices they are being circled by a pair of identical zombified Saurons).

Included in the back of this trade–as filler, really–is the first issue of the original, 2006 Marvel Zombies series by Robert Kirkman and Sean Phillips, complete with a tag instructing anyone interested to check out...



*Here, the acronym stands for Moribund Organism Designed Only for Cannibalism, or so Zombie M.O.D.O.K. tells Elsa.

Review: Ultimate End

Jonathan Hickman's years-long Secret Wars storyline involving a gradual-but-accelerating collapse of the multiverse reached its final act, the end of his two Avengers books and the beginning of the Secret Wars miniseries, with two remaining universes about to collapse into one another. These were, of course, the "real" Marvel Universe, the shared-setting of the vast majority of Marvel's comics, and the Ultimate Universe, the shared setting of the long-struggling Ultimate line of comics.

The five-issue Ultimate End miniseries, reuniting Ultimate Spider-Man's original creative team of Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley, was to be the final (one might even say "ultimate) story of the Ultimate Universe. I had assumed, completely incorrectly, as it turned out, that it would focus on how various characters in the Ultimate Unvierse were dealing with the multiversal "incursions" (Ultimate Reed Richards is a major player in Hickman's storyline), or, perhaps, it might detail the final battle between the Ultimate universe and the Marvel universe, or, at the very least, it might detail how the stars of the Ultimate universe spend their last days.

No dice, it turns out.

Instead, Ultimate End is just one more story of a "domain" of Battleworld, the patchwork, temporary Marvel universe created by Doctor Doom to save (and seize control over) what was left of the multiverse. If you've read any Secret Wars tie-ins, then you know what that means: It basically allows for an anything-goes, What If... story, generally using the title of a very popular past event as a title. Here the What If... is a particularly awkward one: What If...The Ultimate Universe and the Marvel Universe Characters All Lived In The Same City and Stopped Being Polite and Started Getting Real?

It actually took me much of the first issue/chapter to understand that this labored construct of a premise was the premise, and even then, the longer one thinks about it, the less sense it makes, at least within the greater construct of Secret Wars. With the now god-like Doom having re-created the world in his image, in all of the other tie-ins (and Secret Wars itself, of course), the sometimes bizarre set-ups are the way it has always been as far as anyone other than Doom and Doctor Strange knows, but here the characters all seem to be aware of the merging of their universes from the very start (we literally see Marvel Tony Stark appearing out of nowhere before Ultimate Tony Stark)...but to also be inherently aware of the "rules" of Battleworld. Different characters show different levels of comfort and familiarity with the set-up, and it varies from scene to scene.

In short, I wasn't convinced that Bendis himself knew exactly how Secret Wars and Battleworld were supposed to work, which lead to a lot of shoulder shrugging and disbelief re-suspension while I was reading.

So all of the characters seem to be semi-organized into their own respective factions, and to be somewhere between confused and freaked out by their dopplegangers. They also all seem to remember their own past lives, and to be aware of the fact that they come from different universes. Marvel Universe Spider-Man, for example, remembers his interactions with Ultimate characters, and goes to visit Ultimate Aunt May and Ultimate Gwen Stacy, the three of them all aware that they don't belong to one another, but are very similar to the ones they do. When The Punishers meet, the Marvel Punisher is convinced the Ultimate Punisher is a Skrull, for some reason, despite the fact that there seems to be at least two of every other character running around. And so on.

The two Tony Starks, who are convinced that the other had something to do with the current state of affairs (due to the fact that Ultimate Tony bought a tear between the universes from Ultimate Amadeus Cho previously), eventually call a truce and start working together to figure out what the deal is, exactly.

Meanwhile, stuff happens! The All-New Ultimates get speaking parts! Ultimate Hulk fights Marvel Hulk! Ultimate Punisher escapes prison, and decides to kill all the super-people! Ultimate Nick Fury decides to arrest Marvel Bruce Banner, which annoys Marvel Tony Stark! Everyone fights!

As usual, Bendis is strong on scenes and weak on plot. There are a couple of neat running gags, like the fact that every one in the Ultimate Universe knows that Spider-Man is Peter Parker, and keeps saying it out loud, and I always like the way Bendis writes Spider-Man dialogue (I may have even snickered when he told the Sam Jackson-inspired Fury how good he was at yelling).

There seems to be a chapter missing in here, as the book's through line seems to involve the Ultimate Punisher, but it doesn't actually go anywhere. (By the way, Utlimate Punisher kills his own Marvel equivalent by throwing a knife into his heart faster than Marvel Punisher can pull a trigger, which I call bullshit on; surely the older, more experienced Punisher would come out on top of a Punisher vs. Punisher fight, right?) When the two factions of heroes go to war in the final chapters, they do so for the most spurious of reasons, and the decision to return to their respective corners and fight it out is missing. In one scene, the two Tony Starks come to different conclusions regarding what to do with their findings (One wants to present them to Doom, the other does not), in the next the two armies of superheroes are slugging it out, presumably over this very issue.

Ultimate Spider-Man II Miles Morales, missing througout most of the series, swings in, explains Secret Wars to the characters, and then they all go off to fight in the climax of Secret Wars, this "domain" fading to white and Miles waking up in the Marvel Universe.

And that's it.

Again, the individual scenes are all okay, but they don't really hold together, with certain things getting quite a bit of build-up and leading to nothing (The Punisher), while other things have no build-up and turn out to be important (Miles). Of all the Secret Wars tie-ins I've read so far, this seems to be the one that stands on its own the most poorly, for two contradictory reasons: First, it ties in fairly closely to the main Secret Wars series (at least in regards to the comings and goings of certain characters, and the resolution) and, secondly, it seems to be in complete violation of the "rules" of Secret War/Battleworld throughout.

As for a final farewell to the Ultimate Universe, it's extremely lacking. Aside from the characters from the Ultimate Universe I mentioned, none of the others really get speaking parts--I think Ultimate Cap may get a line or two--and none of them really get proper endings to their stories. That has been a major failing of the Ultimate line in general, though. Despite the fact that the limited nature (by sales as well as by conception, as after so many years it would begin to suffer the same problems that lead to its creation) of the line meant Marvel could have done Cerebus-style, beginning-to-end stories of the like that Spider-Man, The X-Men and The Fantastic Four will never, ever get in the "real" Marvel Universe, Bendis and his Ultimate handlers generally just "ended" various Utlimate characters' stories by suddenly and violently killing them.

Just looking at the cover of the trade (the cover of the first issue of the series) there are a large handful of characters I don't recognize at all, and they don't really appear in any greater depth within (there's a character referred to as "Ben" who looks Human Torch-ish, for example. Ultimate Ben Grimm? Ultimate Ben Urich? Ultimate Uncle Ben's ghost? I don't know!).

Nor do Bendis and Bagley even provide the most shallow, surface-level thrills one might want from a meeting between the two universes. Namely, who would win in a fight? The two Hulks fight, but mostly off-panel. The two Punishers fight, but that entire confrontation lasts for less than a page. If you've spent years wondering which Hulk was the strongest one there is, or who the better Iron Man is, or how badly "Do you think this A stands for France?" asshole Cap take out former Falcon Captain America, or whatever, you won't find out here (It occurs to me that this series really could have used the sort of nothing-but-fights Vs tie-in that Avengers Vs. X-Men got).

Ultimately a disappointment, I suppose this is actually a fitting final story for Marvel's Ultimate Universe, which became increasingly disappointing after the departure of Mark Millar, and the Ultimate line basically consisted of Brian Michael Bendis' Spider-Man book, and constant attempts to reinvent the other characters until the line reached the point that Marvel could do away with the whole thing by simply moving Bendis' Spider-Man into their main line.

Review: Ghost Racers

Writer Felipe Smith's All-New Ghost Rider, drawn first by Tradd Moore and then by Damion Scott (and a little by Smith himself), didn't last long, publishing just enough issues to fill just two slim trade collections. But Smith got to provide his co-creation Robbie Reyes, the young high school student/mechanic/street racer with the spirit of a serial killer fused to his own soul, with a spectacularly strange coda in this Secret Wars tie-in.

Smith is here paired with Juan Gedeon, and Ghost Rider editor Mark Paniccia is still onboard overseeing things and, apparently, suggesting some of the coolest elements. The premise of this four-issue miniseries includes a sort of Ghost Rider Corps, where all your favorite Ghost Riders from all eras are involved: Old West original Carter Slade, Johnny Blaze, Danny Ketch, Fear Itself's Alejandra and, of course, Reyes. There are also plenty of particularly obscure and/or new Ghost Riders, like a gorilla who rides around on a little train engine and a T-Rex that rides a tiny little fighter jet (in homage to Bill Watterson, I'm sure).

What, did you think I was joking...?

I was not joking.

In the new (and highly temporary) status quo of Secret Wars' Battleworld, the various Riders are all called "igniters," and are capable of setting their heads on fire and piloting flaming vehicles of various sorts. They are controlled by the angel Zadkiel, who can essentially turn them on and off at will.

In one of the most popular events of Arcade's Killisieum, these "Spirits of Ignition" compete as Ghost Racers. Each driving or piloting some sort of insane-looking, souped-up vehicle bristling with weaponry, they race around a trap-laden track while in a no holds barred competition that is a sort of NASCAR meets Death Race, or Mad Max meets Speed Racer maybe. But a little more dramatic than any of the previously mentioned, as all the competitors are immortal burning skeletons. The winner gets a trophy, the losers all get horribly tortured.

This hasn't been much of a concern for Reyes, who has been winning ever since he was first arrested and forced to race, but it gradually becomes one, particularly when he escapes and tries to rescue his little brother, who Arcade is holding hostage and forcing to compete in order to bring Reyes back.

As good as Smith's story is–and it's plenty good, capturing the over-the-top insanity of Jason Aaron's run on Ghost Rider and focusing on the same relationship between the Reyes brothers that drove his own All-New–it's Gedeon's accomplished but flat-out crazy artwork that makes this book such a blast to read.

Actually, I'd go a step farther and say that it isn't even the art–as cool as that is–but the designs. Sure, all of your favorite Ghost Riders are here, but none of them look like you remember.

The most dramatic redesign is that of the original, a Golden Age Western character who wore all-white and later had his name retconned into The Phantom Rider, so as not to be confused with the motorcylist Ghost Rider that emerged in the 1970s. Here he is a centaur in cowboy garb, wearing a blindfold and swaddled in mummy-like wrappings, from hoof to hat. His hands carry six-guns, and there are huge gatling mounted on his horse haunches.

This version of Slade was "100% Mark's idea," Gedeon wrote in the generous sketchbook section at the end of the trade, saying the character was originally described to him as "A cowboy-centaur with gatling guns on the sides." Gedeon obviously tinkered with the character quite a bit to give him an extremely distinctive look that honored the character's past without looking all that much like it. He's one of the most interesting characters among the Racers, as he gets by on actual horse power (but can keep pace with all the flaming vehicles), and is not on fire, but emanates his own dust clouds instead. (I'm assuming Slade didn't survive the rejiggerings of the Secret Wars and make it into the All-New, All-Different Marvel Universe that emerged, which doesn't have a Ghost Rider monthly, but I kinda hope he did; he'd certainly fit in over in 1872 spin-off Red Wolf, for example).

Ketch and Blaze also get pretty thoroughly redesigned; in the case of Ketch, Gedeon simply tried to make him look slightly more realistic, while keeping a heavy metal/biker aesthetic, while his Blaze now looks like an evil, undead Evil Knievel, appropriate for the character.

All the vehicles, like the Riders/Racers, have been revamped too, so that Ketch and Blaze don't drive motorcycles with mean skull-faces, but the latter does have a fucking cannon in the front of his and smaller ones in the back, and the latter has a chainsaw mounted on the front of his bike and a grenade launcher in the back.

As this was another Secret Wars tie-in that wasn't actually long enough to fill a whole trade collection by itself, Marvel included a couple of extras. In addition to the Gedeon's sketches and discussion of 'em, there's the six-page "Fan of a Fan" story from Secret Love and a classic Ghost Rider story involving racing.

The former was a Robbie Reyes/Ms. Marvel team-up set in the Killiseum (where Kamala, her father and Bruno sell concessions), and which was (completely randomly) collected along with the entirety of the Secret Love one-shot in the Runaways trade. The latter, by Jim Starlin, Steve Leialoha "and friends" is...well, it's very much a product of its time, and despite being a comic about a flaming skeleton on a fiery motorcycle, it seemed downright pedestrian compared to all the insanity of the main event.

But then, how do you top undead cowboy centaur Carter Slade? I'm pretty sure that character's existence and design alone justified Marvel doing Secret Wars in the first place.

Review: Planet Hulk: Warzones!

One savvy marketing element of Marvel's one million or so Secret Wars tie-ins, the various miniseries they published while they suspended the publication of all of their regular Marvel Universe tie-ins during the Secret Wars event series, was that many of them bore the titles of Marvel's past event series. (The publisher certainly had fun marketing Secret Wars, releasing images with the titles of their many past event series, and the recycling of those titles made a certain sense, given that Secret Wars itself was recycling the title of Marvel's first big event series.)

For some of these mini-series with familiar titles, the stories are set in slightly re-jiggered versions of the settings of those stories, but in others they simply seem to be attaching themselves to the titles, but otherwise having little to nothing to do with source material. Planet Hulk is one of the latter sorts. That doesn't make it a bad comic, of course, but it perhaps makes it a poor comic book to bear the title Planet Hulk.

In fact, it's just as much a Captain America or a Devil Dinosaur comic book as it is a Hulk comic, which, incidentally, gets to a key to the appeal to many of the better Secret Wars tie-ins: The publisher and its creative teams took the temporary status quo as an opportunity to tell stories featuring as unlikely combinations as, say, Captain America, Devil Dinosaur and Hulks.

The original "Planet Hulk" was a 2006-2007 Incredible Hulk storyline by Greg Pak. It involved The Hulk being tricked and shot into space by some of Bruce Banner's besties, and crashlanding on a planet of monsters and super-strong folks where he was forced into gladiatorial combat.

What does the Sam Humphries-written, Marc Laming-drawn Secret Wars version of Planet Hulk share in common with "Planet Hulk"...?

Well, let's see. There's a character called "The Red King," Captain America uses the term "Warbound" a few times (that is what The Hulk called his gladiator pals in the original), there's at least one scene and a back-story involving gladiatorial combat and...well, I think that's about it. There's a bunch of Hulks in it, but, oddly, none of Marvel's many Hulks, with the exception of a new and different version of a smart Hulk that goes by the name "Doc Green" (but he's not the Doc Green from the Hulk comics, though).

The most difficult difference between the two to get around is the fact that the miniseries is naturally set in a "domain" of Battleworld, one of the alternate reality-based nations that form the new, Doctor Doom-created and controlled patchwork version of Earth and not, you know, on its own planet. I guess Domain Hulk or Land o' Hulks just didn't have the same marketing cachet as Planet Hulk, and they must have thought better of using the actual name of the domain as the name of the series.

See, the domain in which Planet Hulk is set in is called...wait for it...Greenland.

So our hero is not a Hulk at all, but a version of Steve Rogers, who is here to Devil Dinosaur as Moonboy was to the original Devil Dinosaur in Devil Dinosaur. Dressed in a barbarian version of his star-spangled costume, Rogers and his "warbound" DD have just defeated a half-dozen Wolverines in Arcade's Killisieum, where Doom provides the bread and circuses for the citizens of Doomstadt. This is also where Ghost Racers is set, but apparently the Killisieum has room for more than one kind of bloodsport.

A rather big deal is made out of how awesome "The Captain and The Devil" are for winning their latest match, but I don't know; I think if you're partner is a Tyrannosaurus Rex, you're usually going to have the advantage in most bouts of hand-to-hand combat. (Don't bring bone-claws to a T-Rex fight, I believe the old saying goes.)

The Captain and Devil have a pretty awesome plan for capturing Arcade and forcing some information out of him–where their pal Bucky is–but their attempted revolt is thwarted, and Cap ends up before a silent god-king Doom and his mouthpiece, Sheriff Strange. (I really wish they had given Doctor Strange a badge in Secret Wars, maybe even a whole sheriff's uniform.) They give Cap the precise information he tried to scare out of Arcade, and then send Cap and DD on a mission into Greenland: They are to kill The Red King, who is keeping Bucky captive there.

That's the first issue, which ends with Cap meeting his contact and guide in Greenland, Doc Green. From there, the trio make their way through a harsh, sword-and-sorcery inspired world where everything is saturated by gamma rays, so there are deadly forms of Hulk flora and Hulk fauna everywhere, and even a battle axe-wielding Captain America and a fucking T-Rex occasionally find themselves in deadly danger. Genre-wise, this is actually fairly close to Weirdworld, the other barbarian comic that was part of the suite Secret Wars tie-ins. It's a comparison emphasized by the fact that Weirdworld artist Mike del Mundo drew the excellent covers for this series.

Among the various battles are flashbacks to this Steve Rogers' past, detailing his relationship with Bucky, and debates between The Captain and Doc Green about the true nature of all living things, and how the gamma of Greenland informs every aspect of the world, changing it for, if not the better, than at least the truer.

There are a few twists at the end, one more predictable than the other, but like many of the less-ambitious Secret Wars tie-ins, it is basically an exercise in time-killing, a simple Point A-to-Point B plot, with an unusual cast of characters taking readers through the sights of an unusual alternate reality, with the creative team trying to pack in as much cool shit as they can. They succeed; it is cool, but there's not much to it.

"Hulks and dinosaurs," the back cover reads. "What more do you want?"

It's a very honest assessment of the contents, because that's pretty much all there is here, but, let's be honest, for most of us, that's enough...provided the hulks and dinosaurs are drawn well (they are) and the writing isn't bad (it isn't).

Stuck almost at random in the story is an eight-page "back-up" story that appears to have been a back-up for the first issue of the series, so it appears after the first 20 or so pages. Entitled "Phoenix Burning," because it's set in Phoenix, Arizona, it's the origin of Greenland. It stars Bruce Banner and Amadeus Cho (neither of whom appear in the main storyline), as they find Phoenix being targeted by gamma bomb-carrying missiles. Cho makes a daring attempt to save the city and all its people amd sicceeds, but only by saturating them all with gamma and essentially Hulking out the whole city and the surrounding environs. This is written by Pak, providing another little link to the original "Planet Hulk," and drawn by Takeshi Miyazawa, whose are is as great as always, but a strange page-neighbor for that of Laming.

Review: Marvel 1872

There’s a blurb on the back of this trade, which collects the four-issue 1872 miniseries, that cracked me up: “I’m not a fan of Westerns, but this comic book may have just changed my opinion of them.”

I didn’t read the entire review the quote is pulled from, and am unfamiliar with the website it’s attributed to, but the sentiment it implies amuses me. That all it takes to get a superhero comic fan to become a fan of the Western is to set a superhero comic in the Old West, and put cowboy hats on the fan’s favorite superheroes.

For that’s basically all 1872 does; I suppose you could call it a Western, but it’s more of a superhero comic in Western drag. One of the many, many highly tangential Secret Wars tie-ins, the series is more of a DC-style Elseworlds comic than a traditional Marvel What If…? comic. That is, rather than taking a particular moment in Marvel Comics history as a starting point and asking what if someone zagged instead of zigging, it simply transposes the modern Marvel superheroes to a different setting, and plops a simple, A-to-B storyline in the middle of that setting, letting the variants of the familiar characters do most of the heavy-lifting in terms of entertaining the readers.

The closest relative I can think of in an alternate universe Marvel comic is probably Marvel 1602, which the slightly re-titled trade collection at least seems to be trying to echo.

None of which is to imply that 1872 is bad, of course. It is, in fact, quite well-made, and I found it to be an extremely entertaining, even rip-roaring super-comic. It’s just not much of a Western, really, as that blurb implies (and Marvel's choice to use that blurb makes it all the more amusing), nor is much of a Secret Wars tie-in, despite the big “Warzones” logo emblazoned across the top and the smaller Secret Wars slug in the lower right corner.

One can, of course, roll one’s eyes at the tenuous rationale that Marvel had for publishing many of their Secret Wars miniseries while still being glad of the fact that they published them. And this is a good example. It’s got nothing to do with Secret Wars, really (other than the fact that Doctor Doom temporarily scrambled the world into a sort of Epcot Center of alternate realities, and this is one of ‘em). The flip side of that is, of course, one need not know anything at all about Secret Wars to be able to enjoy 1872.

The hero of the series, written by Gerry Duggan and drawn by Nick Virella, is Red Wolf, a reimagined version of the old, minor Marvel hero, who recently earned his own ongoing title, Marvel’s first to star a Native American character, for whatever that’s worth (after the publisher used this series as a means to reintroduce the character).

He is caught trying to blow up a dam that Governor Roxxon erected and that, incidentally, denies his people of water. The boys that caught him work for Mayor Fisk, and they are intent on lynching him, but Sheriff Steve Rogers intervenes, insisting that Red Wolf get a fair trial before a judge. Rogers is, of course, willing to shoot it out with anyone who insists on taking the law into their own hands.

Rogers is naturally killed by Fisk and Roxxon’s hired guns, but not before thoroughly inspiring the hell out of Red Wolf, who picks up Captain America Sheriff Rogers’ star by the end of the series.

With the help of various late 19th-century, American frontier variants of the Avengers, Red Wolf is intent on cleaning up the town of Timely (get it?) once and for all.

These include drunken, guilt-ridden arms dealer Tony Stark, inventor of a sort of hand-held Gatling gun; timid Timely apothecary owner Dr. Bruce Banner; and the late Deputy Bucky Barnes’ widow, Natasha (Get it? Black Widow is literally a widow here!).

The most easily Western-ized villains show up here, including sharp-shooting card shark Bullseye, mountain man Grizzly and exotic-looking Asian assassin Elektra. As well, as, rather randomly, Otto Octavius, who has six six-guns, four of which are mounted on spring-loaded mechanical arms mounted under his coat.

It’s interesting to see where Duggan finds room for various characters, like The Vision being a mechanical fortune-telling machine called Stark’s Vision of The Future, or Carol Danvers as a frontier suffragette (who’s movement includes Misty Knight, here with a brace on her arm instead of having an actual robot arm), or Simon Williams as a douche-bag Roxxon enforcer.

Duggan likely goes overboard with Marvel-izing Timely, so that Stark must naturally build an Iron Man suit to don instead of any more practical invention simply because he’s Iron Man in the regular Marvel Universe, and Banner isn’t merely forced to drink the luminescent, green liquid bombs he’s created to blow up the dam by the sinister Williams, but he eventually transforms into a monster because of it…if only off-panel, and in the epilogue.

Duggan seems to have been consciously setting up the upcoming Red Wolf title (which is written not by Duggan, but instead by Nathan Edmondson), or at least wanted to get all his ideas on the page, as the rather lengthy epilogue features a suggestion of an 1872 Spider-Man, as well as giving a few panels to 1872 Deadpool and 1872 Punisher, before the rather elegant reveal of the Red Wolf’s Avengers team.

“Rogers may not have lived to see his revolution take hold in Timely, but…” narrator newspaperman Ben Urich writes in the last panels, “…his Avengers are protecting Timely from within and without.”

Virella is probably the real star here. Sure, Duggan does a fine job of translating the current heroes of the Marvel Universe into Western version of themselves, but the art is extremely accomplished. The acting and figure-work are great, and there’s just enough scratchiness to the line-work to give it a sense of urgency.

Aesthetically, this isn’t my favorite art of the half-dozen or so Secret Wars books I’ve read so far, but I will admit this is probably the best-drawn of the half-dozen Secret Wars books I’ve read so far.

The last panel includes the words “THE AVENGERS OF THE WEST will return…”, and that is perhaps a reference to the Red Wolf ongoing, although it's kind of strange they don't just say as much there. Red Wolf is apparently set in this alternate Marvel Universe, which somehow survived the end of Secret Wars and the de-scrambling of Battleworld, I guess.

Because a four-issue miniseries does not a $15.99 trade make, so Marvel includes two bonus stories, both of which star Red Wolf. The first of these is a reprint of 1970's Avengers #80, by Roy Thomas and John Buscema, featuring the first appearance and origin of the character they created. It ends with a cliffhanger, which seems an odd choice to include, as we don't exactly get to see how Red Wolf's first act as a superhero turns out. The second is a short, 8-page Red Wolf solo story from 1994's Marvel Comics Presents #170, featuring a story by Alan Cowsill and art by Jimmy Chung and Martin Giffiths. It's an extremely '90s story of Red Wolf being an extremely '90s grim and gritty superhero, but props to Cowsill for fitting an entire story into so few pages, even if it is a derivative and ultimately uninteresting one. I like the way Chung draws Red Wolf's new pet wolf Lobo, who is here still an adorable little puppy that looks more pomeranian than wolf.

Review: A-Force Vol. 0: Warzones!

I read the first issue of writers G. Willow Wilson and Marguerite Bennett and pencil artist Jorge Molina's five-issue A-Force miniseries shortly after it was first released, and had summed it up thusly: "It's not very good, but it's not bad either; it's well-crafted, What If..?-style continuity gobbledygook." The series has since ended and been collected and published as A-Force Vol. 0, and I'm afraid reading the other four-fifths of the series didn't alter that assessment any.

If anything, I disliked the trade more than I disliked that first single issue, as with so much of the story yet-to-be-published, one could at least hope it would get better in the following four issues.

It did not.

Unlike the handful of Secret Wars-related collections I've read so far (Runaways, Weirdworld, 1872), A-Force is quite deeply rooted in the particulars of the main series' "Battleworld" setting, and completely lacking in any sort of premise, or even organizing principle, of its own. So on the one hand, it seems overly concerned with the specifics of Secret Wars and Battleworld, but, on the other hand, it seems completely random in its construction and narrative.

This particular region/domain of Battleworld is a tiny, Mediterranean-style island home to versions of just about every superhero in the Marvel Universe, plenty of civilians and zero supervillains. It's unclear what the super-people do all day, or why they even bother with costumes and codenames. She-Hulk is the domain's "Baroness," which is the local ruler who answers to Victor Von Doom, god-king of Battleworld. The borders of Battleworld are strictly patrolled and enforced by The Thors, which are various Marvel heroes who have been Thor-ized. There are a lot of rules and politics involved in administration and borders, which drive the plot of this mini in a way that is unusual among the few books I've read so far. In fact, the central conflict of A-Force involves a bad actor gaming the rules of Battleworld for political gain. So not the most exciting of plotlines, if you're not really, really into that aspect of Secret Wars.

As for the premise of the series, it seems like it was decided on some meta, macro level well ahead of the first draft of the script. The idea was apparently What If...All The Avengers Were Women?, loudly declared on the cover of the first issue (and the trade collection) in which Jim Cheung draws pretty much every Marvel heroine he can fit in a single image, even those who don't get so much as a cameo inside the book (Snowbird? Moondragon?). Marvel quickly adopted "A-Force" as a way to brand comics starring their female heroes, too, as they launched those A-Force Presents anthology collections of early issues of Thor, She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel and so on.

But the story within never addresses the fact that Arcadia's completely unnecessary superhero team–again, no super-villains, no street crime and a population that seems to be about 75% superhero–consists only of female super-people (Luke Cage, Black Bolt and Namor cameo in the first issue; by the last issue, we'll also see that Black Panther, Commander Rogers, The Winter Soldier, Colossus, Gambit and other male heroes make their homes in Arcadia too). And the particular female characters who make up the team are pretty random: She-Hulk, Medusa, Dazzler, Captain Marvel, Loki, Nico Minoru and America "Miss America" Chavez (Spider-Woman and Pixie are among the characters who seem to be on the team too, but don't get much panel-time). Apparently these are just the characters Bennett and/or Wilson and/or Molina wanted to write about and/or draw for five issues (Molina's preferences might indicate why they chose to use the disco-era version of Dazzler, roller skates and all; I'm assuming he just really liked drawing her plunging neckline in that particular costume, given how often it's in the book; in terms of characterization, the characters are all completely interchangeable, and any handful of characters could fill the roles this handful play).

Adding to the shoulder-shrugging randomness of a core super-team consisting of a pair of Avengers, an Inhumans/Fantastic Four character, a member of the X-Men, one of The Runaways and the trans-feminated version of Thor's archenemy is the fact that everyone's powers seem weird and random. Miss America and Dazzler can fly now, for example, and Nico's magic powers don't work like they did in Runaways. Oh, and the relationships are all kinda weird. Like Loki is the mother figure of Nico and America, who are the best friends in the world here, despite the fact that I don't think they've ever even met prior to this comic...?

So, what have we got? A-Force is on a routine patrol when suddenly they are attacked by a Megaladon. America throws it so hard that it lands outside of Arcadia's domain, and so a Thor version of The Falcon shows up to arrest her, and exile her to somewhere. Everyone's mad that She-Hulk was unable to stop this from happening (Despite arguing with Dr. Strange, who is Dr. Doom's "sherrif"...?), but, when she investigates, she finds that the prehistoric monster shark was imported via a magical portal.

Later, a little girl who looks like a night sky falls to the Earth and befriends Nico. This is a new character named Singularity. And another portal opens, this one dropping a Sentinel on Arcadia, and when Shulkie and company follow it back to where it came from, more members of the Thor Coprs–Valkyrie, Gamorra and Sif–show up to make more arrests. It's quickly determined that the person opening the portals is using Asgardian magic, and thus the person causing all of the trouble turns out to be the one who is literally the only supervillain in the whole domain.

When she's busted, Loki plans to take Arcadia down with her, knocking down a wall separating their domain from the next one over, which is apparently that of the Marvel Zombies. That, at least, leads to a fifth issue that consists mostly of Marvel heroes fighting zombies, and cameos aplenty. This is actually a lot of fun, if only in a spot-the-character kind of way, as a reader can wait to see if their favorites show up in a panel, several of which aim for cute little pairings, like Spider-Gwen rescuing MJ, or Jessica Jones protecting Luke and Danielle or living light-show characters Dazzler, Jubilee and Karolina side by side. I liked seeing that Nico wasn't the only Runaway on Arcadia, at least; Gert shows up atop Old Lace, and Molly shares a panel with Colossus.

Like the Weirdworld collection, this one is labeled "Vol. 0" because it's leading to a new ongoing series, set in the "real" (and post-Secret Wars) Marvel Universe. Presumably that will have a clearly defined premise of some sort, beyond "The Creators Liked These Characters And Had 100 Pages To Kill On A Secret Wars Tie-In."

Review: Weirdworld Vol. 0: Warzones!

Weird? Yes. A world? Well, that might be over-stating the scale of this actually rather small and intimate five-issue Secret Wars tie-in series, but the title certainly suits the story it's attached to.

It comes from a strange sword-and-sorcery concept created by Doug Moench and Mike Ploog that first appeared in a 1977 issue of Marvel Super Action, and popped up occasionally in other anthologies in the late seventies and early eighties: Marvel Premiere, Marvel Comics Super Special and Epic Illustrated. The 2015 series, which does not feature "created by" credits, kept the name and floating island concept, but also featured a grab-bag of various Marvel characters and concepts from the seventies, some of which are, if not as obscure as "Weirdworld" itself, then at least about at least half as forgotten: Roy Thomas and John Buscema's Avengers character Arkon, Marv Wolfman and Steve Gan's Skull The Slayer, Steve Gerber and Rich Buckler's Man-Thing supporting character Jennifer Kale, as well as a "Forest of The Man-Things," characters from the toy line-based comic The Saga of Crystar, Crystal Warrior and the Marvel version of Morgan Le Fay.

Stitching all of these disparate elements together, along with plenty of off-the-cuff weirdness–Apelantis, Eyemazons, Hawksquatches–is the creative team of Jason Aaron and Mike Del Mundo.

It seems am awfully low-profile gig for a creator of Jason Aaron's current caliber, but a story-shaped series taking place in a weird setting where a bunch of weird shit happens is actually well within Aaron's wheelhouse. If there's anything unusual about this story, is that he's allowed to indulge his zany side, but to not have to balance it with superhero genre conventions or to include any "funny" characters at all to comment on just how unusual the zaniness might be, or to try to rationalize it. The delivery is as deadpan as possible; protagonist and narrator Arkon is as humorless can be, and the closest he comes to commentary on the bizarre setting and circumstances is to constantly wonder if he's going mad, and if some of those around him have already gone mad.

Del Mundo is both a highly-stylized stylist and a master of many styles, as his abundant cover work for the publisher to date has demonstrated, and here he works in a highly-detailed, rather realistic style that is somewhat evocative of the source era's fascination with fantasy art (think painted paperback covers, Dungeons & Dragons, the sides of certain vans) and even, to a certain extent, Dark Horse's millennial revival of Conan (and other Robert E. Howard creations). There are no real panel borders, the art in each just disappears into white gutters, and if the artwork is a pastiche of 1970s sword-and-sorcery pop art, it's differentiated by the bright, sometimes ridiculously so, colors, provided by Marco D'Alfonso Del Mundo himself. There is a lot of flourescent-looking pinks and greens, and, perhaps the best example of the incongruity of coloring and art, comes with Del Mundo's cover to the fifth issue. On it, his very Conan-esque Arkon stands crouched with his sword in hand, atop a pile of slain foes. He's splattered with and positively dripping with blood, but that blood isn't red. It's a bunch of primary colors. The corpses at his feet may be those of orcs, apes and robot monsters, but it looks like Arkon just finished a particularly hard fought battle with Jackson Pollock.

The story, such as it is, is that of Arkon, "Lord of the Warlords," as he battles his way through Weirdworld in search of his lost kingdom of Polemachus. Despite wondering for he knows not how long, he's been making a map, and it's a particularly child-like one. Along the way, he gets involved in a war between two witches: Le Fay, the "baroness of Weirdworld," and Kale, The Swamp Witch who lives in the Forest of The Man-Things (and whose design here is, by the way, infinitely better than what she was wearing when I saw her in that Marvel Zombies series). He teams up with a one of Crystar's surviving warriors, and is pursued by Skull.

The final battle is nuts:

That two page spread reminds me of a scene from Alex Ross' Kingdom Come, if Kingdom Come had starred the more obscure late-70s and early-80s Marvel characters and concepts making war on one another, rather than DC's stalwarts vs. Ross-designed upstarts.

The book's relationship to Secret Wars is practically non-existent...until it comes to the fore and sort of spoils the fun. For the bulk of the series, the tie-in elements are completely negligible. Le Fay calls herself the baroness of Weirdworld, which only means something if you're paying attention to the structure of Secret Wars's Battleworld (god-king Doom has apparently appointed barons and baronesses to rule over the various domains, of which Weirdworld is one), and the word "god" has been replaced by "Doom," so that when Arkon swears on a few occasions, it sounds funny: " Good Doomdamned riddance," for example. But at the climax of the battle in the last issue, the end of Secret Wars occurs. Arkon is, of course, ignorant of what exactly happened (as were readers when this was first published, and perhaps Aaron was himself when writing it), but basically the scrambled, "patchwork planet" of the Marvel Universe's Earth was de-rebooted from Doom's Battleworld back to the "real" world.

It doesn't quite undo the entire story, but it does cut it off from a proper climax, emphasizing a reading in which everything we just went through–including Arkon's revelations–were just part of an endless cycle of wandering, warring and weirdness, the storyline appearing to reset itself in its last pages, and we end pretty much where we began.

The series apparently did well enough for Marvel that they launched an ongoing series of the same name in their post-Secret Wars line...with Sam Humprhies replacing Aaron on the creative team. That is why this collected volume is being labeled with a "0" instead of a "1," in case you're wondering. Me I wonder if they're going to collect and release the original, Moench-written Weirdworld comics and, if so, how they'll number that: Weirdworld Vol. -1, perhaps...?

Review: Runaways: Battleworld

Each issue of each series tying into Marvel's massive, months-long Secret Wars event contained a pretty simple and straightforward one-page, four-sentence explanation of the premise behind it all. To make that short story long, essentially the entire Multiverse was gradually collapsing, and the superheroes who knew of the oncoming cosmic catacylsm were powerless to stop it. Dr. Doom seized the opportunity to do something (I haven't read the main Secret Wars series yet, sorry) that collapsed the remaining universes into a single, hodge-podge "patchwork" planet consisting of various "domains" that are, for all intents and purposes, their own little continuities. Relatively few people living in the various domains seem to realize they are part of a bigger, stranger world, and fewer still are able to move between those domains.

This was such a big deal that Marvel suspended the publication of pretty much their entire superhero line for months while Secret Wars played out, temporarily canceling all of their books (and therefore allowing for new #1s and relaunches afterwards) and replacing them on the schedule with a bunch of temporary miniseries and one-shots, the fact that the status quo would be both temporary and anything-goes giving the creators involved a welcome set of two-word directions: "Go nuts."

For a significant portion of 2015, then, the Marvel comics line reflected the nature of the Marvel Universe in-story, with sometimes seemingly randomly rebooted and remixed characters and concepts filling up just about everything outside of the main Secret Wars book. Marvel rather shrewdly launched many series bearing the titles of their most popular events and franchise-specific crossovers (Civil War, Planet Hulk, Age of Ultron Vs. Marvel Zombies, pretty much every X-Men crossover story since "Days of Future Past," etc); a pretty great bit of marketing, really.

It also allowed for the kinda-sorta revival of more off-beat and fan-favorite books missing from the publishing schedule for a long-time, like Runaways, the 2003-laumched, Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona-created series that did a few remarkable things for the Marvel Universe and line back then, including introducing a group of young and diverse characters long before that seemed to be a major priority for the publisher, and introducing a concept or characters that were actually new and were able to gain at least a little traction, something direct market readers don't really seem to want, and that the Big Two are set-up to discourage (If you're an inspired comics creator, why create a potentially profitable new character or team to gift to Marvel or DC, when you could retain the rights yourself by publishing your great new superhero concept elsewhere?).

The title had plenty of ups and downs over the past decade and change, and had cycled through several creative teams of varying levels of popularity and ability before being MIA for a few years (a few of the characters being dispersed to cameo here, or appear in a short-lived series there). Secret War now gave Marvel a good excuse to publish a new version of Runaways, and, perhaps most importantly, to assign it to some particularly gifted creators, at least one of whom seems like one of the last folks you'd expect to find writing a Marvel event series.

That would be Noelle Stevenson, co-creator of Boom's successful Lumberjanes series (and co-writer of its earlier issues) and the creator of Nimona (one of my favorite books of 2015). Honestly, considering her resume, this seems a little like a waste of her time and talents, at least from the perspective of a reader and fan of hers (From her point-of-view, however, it might actually be incredibly lucrative; if she's got a good royalty deal and these various Secret Wars collections do as well in trade as, say, the Civil War collections have, she could be making checks off this thing for a good long time).

Stevenson is, sadly, just writing, rather than writing and drawing (I'd love to see what her version of most of these characters look like), and her artistic contribution seems to have been limited to a single variant cover. She's paired with an incredibly talented artist, though, one of my favorites in the superhero business, Sandford Greene. His is a very loose, very dynamic style featuring slightly cartoony character designs and an incredible amount of energy in his line-work. His work is in the same arena as that of creator Alphona, and he is therefore a perfect match for this group of characters, this particular story and a team-up with Stevenson.

Just as so much else about Secret Wars' "Battleworld" setting is remixed and rejiggered, so too is the line-up and premise of Runaways. The originals were a small group of teens, each the children of supervillain parents who, upon realizing that their parents were actually evil, decided to runaway together. Of those characters, only one appears in the Secret Wars incarnation: Molly Hayes/Bruiser (Karolina Dean/Lucy In The Sky and Nico Minoru/Sister Grimm were both appearing in the pages of A-Force while this was being published, if you're wondering where some other original Runaways might have run off to).

The rest of the cast is pulled from all over the Marvel universe, but what they share in commons is that they are all super-teens and all have some form of a rebellious streak: The X-Men's Jubilee, Hulk/Herc supporting character Amadeus Cho, Cho's fellow Incredible Hercules cast-mate Delphyne Gorgon, Hulk character Skaar, Cloak and Dagger and Sanna Strand/Frostbite, who is apparently from something called X-Men 2099. Also appearing in fairly prominent roles are X-Man Pixie, Marvel's original teenage sidekick Bucky Barnes and Valeria Richards.

Almost all of the characters are reimagined in one way or another, generally in minor ways that don't affect their personalities much, like having the grown-up teens like Bucky, Cloak, Dagger and Skaar being contemporaries of the others, for example. Some of the reimaginings just seem random (like Cloak having Dagger's powers and Dagger having Cloak's powers*), but the most pervasive form of reimagination being asesthetic and, again, mostly minor (Amadeus wearing glasses, Dagger with dreads and a billowing white coat, etc). I particularly liked this version of Bucky, who has the smokey, make-up smeared eyes of the Captain America: The Winter Soldier version of the character.

Though only four issues long, Stevenson plotted the series as if it could rather easily have been a six, eight or 12 issue series; hell, it could have been an ongoing series. It takes about an issue and a half to set everything up, and about an issue to resolve everything. The actual running away part of Runaways is really only about 20-25 pages long, but set-up so that Stevenson and Greene could have inserted as many issues as they wanted to make/Marvel wanted to publish between #3 and #4. Given the simplicity of the premise, the richness of the "Battleworld" setting and the strength of the characters–the cast is almost exclusively fan-favorite characters, with clearly defined personalities–it's really kind of a shame this is such a short series.

It opens in The Victor Von Doom Institute for Gifted Youths, the Secret Wars answer to the sorts of super-schools that have proliferated in the Marvel Universe over the past few years (The Jean Grey Institute, Avengers Academy, The Future Foundation). Our heroes are a Breakfast Club of various types, who, due to an elaborate set of misunderstandings, all end up in detention together. That also means they all end up on the same "team" for some sort of weird final exam at the Institute. Thanks to Cho's gaming of the system, they learn that what appears to be a big Tron game is more of a Battle Royale, and that Valeria and Doom have been tricking the super-kids into killing one another until they winnow the school body down to the cream of the crop.

Our heroes do what the original Runaways did when they learned a terrible secret about their own lives: They run away.

That takes us to the running-away portion, where our heroes visit a few of the other regions/domains of Battleworld, like The Valley of Doom from the pages of 1872 and Weirdworld from Weirdworld. Eventually they realize they have to go back and set things right at the school, which they do. You can see then how easy it would have been to stretch this series, as there are a lot of domains on Battleworld, and these new Runaways could have ran to and through all of 'em, with the Bucky-lead upperclassmen of the Institute hot on their heels.

Instead, the story ends somewhat abruptly, but even still, it seems to promise continuing adventures, as a final form of the team–which lost and gained members due to deaths and changes in sides–all posing in a further adventures group-shot panel that practically promises a sequel. Given the temporary nature of Battleworld, though, it's hard to imagine how they would do that, although looking at that cast, I think Cho is the only one currently appearing in a post-Secret Wars series (The Totally Awesome Hulk), although I wouldn't be surprised if Jubilee pops up in one of the X-books.

To my surprise, this collection ends with Secret Love #1, the all-around excellent anthology one-shot that I originally wondered how and where Marvel would collect. Featuring five short stories, I assumed they would be divvied up between the titles featuring characters they are associated with. For example, the six-page story featuring the Battleworld version of Ghost Rider Robbie Reyes meeting the Battleworld version of Kamala Khan would seem to belong in the Ghost Racers collection, the three-page Squirrel Girl comic would belong in the first post-Secret Wars collection of Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, and so on.

Secret Love's inclusion here just seems completely random, like they weren't sure where else to stick it. None of the original Runaways characters appear in any of the stories, nor do any of the characters featured in the Secret Wars version of Runaways. (It's worth noting that there's no indication on the cover or the back-cover copy that Secret Love is even in this collection, just a bit of fine print in the corner of the back cover noting that that the book is "Collecting Runaways (2015) #1-4, written by Noelle Stevenson and illustrated by Snadford Greene, plus Secret Wars: Secret Love #1."

And it's not very big fine print, either.

See?

Regardless, both Runaways and Secret Love are fantastic superhero comics, evincing a great sense of humor, likable characters being generally likable and all-around great art. It's a pretty good way to spend $15.99 of your comic book budget.



*Scratch that. Apparently Cloak and Dagger somehow switched powers in the "real" Marvel Universe prior to Secret Wars. See the first comment for the correction.

"In a perfect world, this was how it was always meant to be": Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #1

While many of Marvel's Secret Wars tie-ins have taken their titles and parts of their plots from past stories set in different realities or alternate futures and timelines, Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows is one of the few that is based on a previous status quo. And, it's worth mentioning, a pretty popular status quo that many fans were unhappy that Marvel changed on what amounted to an editorial whim.

Without getting too deep into the death of the Spider-Marriage, here's the short-ish version. Previous Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada didn't like the fact that Spider-Man Peter Parker was happily married to Mary Jane Watson, as he felt it unnecessarily aged the character, but un-marrying him didn't really solve the problem, as making Peter Parker a widower or a divorcee wouldn't exactly make him younger. This was one of three "genies" in the Marvel Universe that Quesada wanted to find a way to re-bottle.

He found a way, but it was a terrible, terrible way: A soft reboot that only affected Spider-Man continuity. When perpetually dying old lady Aunt May was on her deathbed yet again, Mephisto–i.e. Satan himself, essentially–appeared to Peter Parker and told him he would restore his beloved aunt to health in exchange for his soul. No, not his soul! Don't be silly! Why would you think the devil would want to render services to someone willing to sell their soul to him? No, Mephisto wanted Spider-Man's marriage. As in, he wanted to manipulate the time-stream to make it so that Peter and Mary Jane were never married.

This was really cool of the devil, and worked out pretty great for all involved. Because while he claimed that he wanted Spider-Man's marriage because it represented Spider-Man's happiness, the devil was also going to strip away all memory of the marriage from Peter Parker, so he won't have any reason to be sad about losing the marriage. What a nice guy, that devil is!

Now, this was problematic for a lot of reasons, the fact that Spider-Man did a deal with the devil to supernaturally extend the life of his elderly aunt being just one of them. (Why would the devil do that, anyway? Why would the devil want that? Would Spider-Man really want that? Would Aunt May have wanted Peter to make that decision? Isn't death a natural part of life? Is Spider-Man going to put together the Infinity Gauntlet and challenge the entire Marvel Universe the next time Aunt May gets cancer? Why does having an unmarried 30-something Peter Parker matter, anyway–issn't that why Marvel created the Ultimate line?).

In addition to undoing the marriage, the devil basically just did a random reboot of Spider-Man continuity, rebuilding Aunt May's house, seemingly brining Peter Parker's dead best friend back to life, that sort of thing–it was bad enough a story that J. Michael Straczynski (who has, remember, wrote some real stinkers in his career), argued with Quesada about the scripting of the One More Day miniseries in which this nonsense occurred, ultimately asking to have his name removed from the issues and publicly disavowing it as it was being released).

I guess people got over it pretty quickly, though. I quit reading Amazing Spider-Man at that point, but I would have quit not long after, when they jacked the price up. Marvel started publishing ASM about three times a month, and they hired a slew of great writers and artists to work on it. One of them was Dan Slott, pretty much the idea Spider-Man writer, and that guy is still writing Spider-Man. Hell, he's writing this very comic.

I'm not a fan of reboots, myself, and I hate these sort of soft reboots the most, as they don't work well in a shared universe; they essentially punish fans for knowing too much about the setting and history. DC's increasingly frequent re-settings of their continuity are annoying too, but at least those have been across the board, and generally done in-story in a way that makes a modicum of sense. The devil didn't cosmically annul Superman's marriage at any point; rather time itself was disrupted so badly by The Flash and Reverse Flash's attempts to alter it in Flashpoint (and Pandora's still un-explained attempt to strengthen the universe by blending it with two different alternate realities) that it completely changed all of history, not just a marriage (DC has done its share of dumb soft reboots too, including a John Byrne-lead one of The Doom Patrol and a Jeph Loeb/Michael Turner-lead one of Supergirl, but both were made irrelevant quickly by people either not reading/caring or later, universe-wide reboots.

Anyway, let's read Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #1, the first issue in a comic book set in an alternate reality where Joe Quesada never managed to convince anyone to reboot the Spider-Man franchise, an alternate reality that is now part of "Battleworld: A massive, patchwork planet composed of the fragments of worlds that no longer exist, maintained by the iron will of its god and master, Victor Von Doom!"

THE COVER

There's a lot of verbal information on this cover, but if you take a quick glance around it, you'll note how important Marvel apparently thinks the Spider-Man and marriage parts are compared to the Secret Wars-iness of it.

The ASM logo is at the top, the same size as it usually would be, long with the sub-ttile and an oversized "#1." The Secret Wars logo, in contrast, is tiny, about the size of the creator credits or the tag letting us know that this is a Marvle comic book and that we get a "bonus" digital edition because we are over-paying for this $3.99, 21-page comic.

The image is by Adam Kubert, as the large pink "Adam Kubert" signature next to it makes clear. It features an unmasked Spider-Man standing next to Mary Jane, a little girl that looks more like MJ than Peter sitting on his shoulders. Is this the long-lost Parker baby, grown up? Yes, yes it is.

Behind them is an oddly elongated version of the Spider-Heart that appeared on the wedding issue. I'm not sure why Kubert would have drawn it in that particular shape, as drawing it out like that obscures it so much behind the logo. I have to assume it was simply because there was some miscommunication between artist and publisher regarding the final lay-out of the cover, or because Kubert screwed it up but didn't want to or have time to go back and change it.

I like Adam Kubert's art okay, but like his brother, he's not really the sort who handles deadline pressure well. Or at all.

TITLE PAGE

The spiel about Secret Wars is repeated here: "The Multiverse Was Destroyed! The Heroes of Earth-616 and Earth-1610 were powerless to save it!" and so on. The page ends with a big "The Amazing Spider-Man" logo (sans the "Renew Your Vows" subtitle), and some of the credits, starting with the letterer and ending with the executive producer.

PAGES 1-3

The first page opens with a narration box designated by a Spider-symbol as Peter Parker's: IN a perfect world, this was how it was always meant to be." Oh, snap!

Behind it are framed photos hanging on the wall, including one of the Parkers on their wedding day and another in the hospital, MJ and Peter posing with what looks like a tiny Wilson Fisk swaddled in a pink blanket.

"Renew Your Vows Part 1: Why We Can't Have Nice Things" fills the over-sized gutter between the page's two panels, along with the missing credits from the first page: Writer Dan Slott, pencil artist Adam Kubert, inker John Dell and colorist Justin Ponsor.

At a cramped table in a cramped-looking kitchen, a shirtless Peter Parker tinkers with his web-shooters, while MJ feeds their poorly drawn daughter, whose age seems to change from panel to panel. Kubert may draw great superheroes, but toddlers are not his strong suit.

It appears to be sometime in the late 1980s, maybe early '90s. The Parkers trade jokes a bit, and Peter mentions that he seems to be picking up the slack of other New York City costumed vigilantes, as it seems he's been fighting his villains and there's lately.

PAGE 4

Peter rushes into the Daily Bugle office to sell some photos, where he learns that some superheroes have been showing up dead ("Punisher, Moon Knight, a boy going by the name Night Thrasher") and others with powers have gone missing ("Daredevil, Iron Fist").

Is it weird that any time a creative team gets the opportunity to do an alternate reality story of any kind, they almost always resort to killing everyone off? I mean, it makes some degree of sense, given the fact that killing everyone off is something they can't normally do, so maybe they just have some pent-up bloodlust for superheroes they need to release somewhere, but you never read an alternate reality story where some of the good guys just retire or something...

SPECIAL PULL-OUT ADS SECTION

This being a modern Marvel comic book, there have already been two ads, but here we get the first pull-out section of house ads. There are four ads for four different Secret Wars tie-in comics, all printed on a glossy, heavier paper stock, and which a reader can unfold as if they were going to be a poster or something cool.

Nope, just ads. One for Secret Wars #5, one for Spider-Island #1, one for Age of Apocalypse #1 and one for Hail HYDRA #1.

PAGES 5-7

Spidey makes all haste to Avengers mansion, where Jarvis lets him in and lets him know they've been expecting him–"and anoyne else left standing."

Inside, he finds "The Avengers, New Warriors, Hulk and Namor." We can tell this is an alternate timeline because Captain America has a star on his forehead and an A on his chest. Totally different. Also, I think The Vision is wearing an all-white costume with just a yellow diamond shape on his chest, and thus look 98% less stupid than usual.

Cap is in the middle of a debrief, explaining that many superheroes have gone missing lately, including all of the X-Men. Iron Man and Spider-Man gossip in the corner, ignoring Captain America, while Shellhead offers to move Spidey and his family into the Mansion for safety's sake. Peter calls home on a very, very large phone to ask MJ about this, while in the background Cap reveals their best lead, the CEO of a company researching "super-human abilities and bio-technologies" with the perfectly villainous-sounding name of Augusts Roman Then Hawkeye reports in from the field, noting that there's a full-scale prison break at Ryker's and that "Everyone's broken out!"

Cap's just all like whatever.

"Sorry Clint," he says. "But I'm calling it. Roman's an omega-level threat. We need all hands!"

MJ told Spidey to hold on, as someone was at the door, and then she didn't answer again. Could the two things have something to do with one another?

Yes!

PAGE 8

Master tactician Captain America is in the process of loading every single superhero left into a single Quinjet with which to launch an assault on Roman, when Spidey bugs out of there, jumping through his own apartment window with a KSHHHH.

"Well, look at this..." says someone off-panel in a white on black dialogue balloon that either represents a slightly drunk Morpheus or...

PAGE 9

...Venom! He's sitting comfortably on Peter's busted love seat, holding the baby in one hand (and one tentacle, his other arm (and several tentacles) around MJ.

Now I believe this is a reference to an earlier story in which something, for lack of a better term, rapey either happened, or at least was strongly implied as having happened. (I actually tried reading that part of Todd McFarlane run in a library-borrowed trade in the very early '00s, and I just couldn't do it; like the Chris Claremont/Jim Lee X-Men, they were just too bad for me to force myself to read them; spending a few minutes online researching, the official line is apparently that Venom "terrorized" Mary Jane. Those of you who lived through Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man run can feel free to set the record straight in the comments section.)

Scanning the full-page splash for clues, there's no real strong implication of that here. MJ's no more naked than she was previously, the rips in her jeans all in the same places they were during the dinner scene. Aside from Venom's long, dripping tongue curling in her direction, there's nothing terribly suggestive going on here.

I do like the fact taht Kubert drew a stuffed Hulk doll with its arms ripped off. Venom clearly smashed the door in, tore up a pillow and part of the couch and ripped the arms off of Annie's toy.

What a jerk!

PAGE 10

Venom starts talking to Spidey, but he doesn't listen, punching him so hard in the face that he breaks bones in his hand while Venom's in mid-sentence. Why Venom didn't bite his own tongue off, I don't know. Just like I don't know why Venom's voice is so clear, despite talking with his tongue out of his mouth all the time. Shouldn't he sound more like Daffy Duck...?

Peter tells MJ to get the baby out of there, while he punches the hell out of Venom.

PAGES 11-12

MJ runs out to the street, and see the Avengers fly over head, attempting to hail them, but they're busy, flying straight at Roman's headquarters, Empire Unlimited. He has been expecting them, as he has "telepathy, like Professor X," and introduces himself. He's a big, robotic-looking Darkseid type, with his company logo as a chest emblem, pink energy emanating from his flying form.

"From this day on, call me REGENT," says Augustus Roman, CEO of Empire Unlimited. See, he did indeed capture all the missing superheroes, and he's managed to extract their powers and put them into his own body, and now he's ready to fuck up The Avengers.

PAGES 13-14

MJ thinks about Venom's powers and weaknesses out loud, and then she jumps on to the back of a speeding fires engine, hanging on with one hand while holding her baby in teh other.

Venom jumps out the window, in pursuit, followed by Spidey.

Spider-Man looks briefly in the direction of the glowing pink explosions around the Empire Unlimited skyscraper, but heads off to save his family.

"The Avengers..." he rationalizes "...will be just fine."

Will they?

Regent is boasting, telling Cap that this is "literally a show of force" and that he can evade and counter anything they can throw at them. And then The Hulk jumps at him.

PAGE 15

I'm not 100% sure what happens here. The art's a bit murky. Regent grabs Hulk's arm, shoots Cyclops' energy beam and then BAMFs away, clutching The Hulk's severed arm.

It's unclear if he cut it off with eyebeam and then teleported away with the severed arm, or if he severed it via teleportation.

Either way, I don't think Hulk's, Cyclops' or Nightcrawler's powers should work like that, but whatever, this isn't a Hulk or X-Men comic, it's a Spider-Man one.

...

...Oh! Hey! Remember a few pages ago, when Kubert drew a stuffed Hulk doll with its arms torn off? Maybe that wasn't a little clue that Vemon was a big mean bully and jerk; maybe it was foreshadowing this very moment.

PAGE 16

The firemen notice MJ on teh back of their truck with a baby as they pull up to a burning building. They start to give her grief, but are soon distracted by the giant black tongue monster rushing them. MJ lifts a line from what has to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 different comic books and movies (Venom: There's nowhere left to go! And notheing left to do... ...except scream!" MJ: Yeah? You first.")

MORE PULL-OUT ADS

A turn of the page brings us a half-page ad for Secret Wars: Civil War and a half of a page explaining how to redeem your code for a free digital copy of the paper comic you over-paid for. Next to it is a second pull-out section of house ads, including one for the third issue of this series, showing Spider-Man in his black costume and the tag "The Most COntroversial Spider-Man Story of The Year Continues!", plus ads for Old Man Logan #3, The Infinity Gauntlet #3 and Star Wars: Lando #1, which is not a Secret Wars tie-in, but man, if they were collapsing the whole Multiverse into Battleworld, there really should be a Star Wars tie-in. Maybe ones featuring the characters from Castle, Once Upon a Tim, those Oz comics and the Jane Austen adaptations as well.

PAGES 17-20

The sirens do indeed cause Venom to scream–"AAARGHHH!"–as sound is one of his weaknesses. Then Spider-Man arrives and starts wailing on Venom, each blow pushing him back further and further until they're within the burning building.

MJ asks a fireman if there's anyone left in the building aside from the two spider-themed super-people, and when she learns that it is, MJ shouts that the building is empty, "You're the only ones in there! Do you understand?!"

He does. God help him, he does. He pulls down a support column and brings the whole burning building down on top of them. OMG! Spider-Man just killed one of his villains!

As you can see, Spider-Man emerges from the burning rubble, but Venom? Not so much. He is apparently dead. Or maybe just "dead." I guess we'll find out.


PAGE 21

It's sometime later, and Peter Parker is helping his now much older-looking daughter–she has long red hair as she does on the cover–cross the street. Off-panel, someone shouts, "Help! My purse! That man's flying away with my purse!" And, behind an oblivious Peter Parker, we see The Vulture successfully flying away with a purse.

"It's not a perfect world," Peter narrates over the last panel, where billboards and bus signs indicate that REgent has taken over the city/Battleworld domain, "But, I look after me and mine. And that's...good enough."

This makes for a nice, parallel to Spider-Man's origin story. You'll recall that he decided to use his super-powers to fight for good after choosing not to help stop a criminal, a criminal who then went on to murder his beloved uncle shortly afterwards. In the course of this story, he finds that by using his super-powers to fight for good, he was actively endangering his family members, and must now make the opposite choice–to selfishly not fight crime to keep his family members alive.

This story, then, shows the Spider-Man story coming full-circle. Now, we already know Spidey probably isn't going to not be Spider-Man for too long–that ad for ASM: RYV #3 in this very issue appeared to show Spider-Man in a Spider-Man costume, Spider-Manning, but it's interesting to see Slott doing something interesting with the opportunity to do an out-of-continuity Spider-Man story.

I made much of the first line of the book, the bit about in a perfect world, Spider-Man and Mary Jane would have been married, but I suppose that could be read as an ironic statement, rather than Slott meta-endorsing the previous, pre-devil deal continuity. After all, how "perfect" is this world...? Every superhero except Spider-Man is apparently dead, Spider-Man is retired, a super-villain rules the city/world/Battleworld domain and animal-themed super-villains are free to snatch purses with impunity (Although, there are flying cars and hover buses in Regent's New York City, so it's not all bad).

I've only read four Secret Wars tie-in books yet–I haven't written about the fourth one, X-Men '92 yet–but this was certainly the best of those four.