Comics! Secret Wars Concludes!

It’s been a long time, and a lot of water has gone under the proverbial bridge since Marvel’s latest mega-event “Secret Wars” mini-series began its nine-issue run back in 2007. Writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Esad Ribic launched the event – in which some kind of universe-killing singularity wipes out the entire continuity of the Marvel universe, leaving the super-villain Doctor Doom in possession of a godlike amount of power and a little world to shape and rule with it – with a great deal of enthusiasm, promising fans huge, re-shaping changes in all the favorite comic book characters. And now, the descendants of those fans have the final issue of the mini-series before them at last.

I always go into an event-series like this one with high hopes, which is nuts, I realize. In “Secret Wars,” Doctor Doom possesses the power to re-shape reality, and with a plot like that, the most tempting brass ring at the end of the run will be the possibility that when the dust settles, Marvel can use the mini-series to make fundamental changes to their monthly comics – that is, to give themselves a “do-over” when it comes to boneheaded plot-mistakes editors have allowed their writers to make over the last few years. Marvel has made an ample, almost embarrassing number of such mistakes recently, so such a series would have plenty of work to do.

And this issue’s cover – a hyper-kinetic masterpiece by Alex Ross – certainly got my hopes up. At the center of the cover, Doctor Doom and Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four are grappling, and radiating outward from them are jagged shards showing iconic moment after iconic moment from the long history of Marvel Comics: we see the birth of Franklin Richards; we see the rebirth of Steve Rogers as Captain America; we see the death of Elektra; we see the first appearance of the Phoenix; we see the fabled realm of Asgard. It all seems to bode well – it seems to hint that when the drama of the issue is over, Hickman and his editors will re-set Marvel’s continuity along the traditional lines that served the company so well for sixty years. Thor will no longer be a woman. Professor X and Jean Grey will no longer be dead. There will be only one team of Avengers. Steve Rogers will still be Captain America. There will only be one team of X-Men. And so on and so on.

The issue itself finds action in full-tilt. The Black Panther and the Sub-Mariner have accessed a source of near-infinite power themselves and are using it to battle Doctor Doom – until Hickman decides to shift the fight abruptly to a one-on-one fight between Reed and Doom, with the winner getting the power of a god.

Reed wins, and there’s a gigantic white flash, and then? Then I was hoping things would go back to normal.

But no. Instead, after all these years of waiting, the end result is an unmitigated mess. When the white light fades, we find Reed and his family calmly going about the business of using their godlike power to shape entire universes. They’ve got no plans to return to Earth – they appear to be living on the “Battleworld” planet Doom first created. We get a couple of glimpses of the “new” Marvel Universe, but since “Secret Wars” was originally intended to conclude back in early 2008, Marvel’s various comic books have been publishing in full spate since then, showing fans the changes this mini-series was supposed to be the first to reveal.

Those changes are troubling. “Secret Wars” was the first Marvel mega-event ever that not only didn’t involve the X-Men but also scarcely mentioned mutants, for instance, and of course one of the biggest changes the mini-series brought about is the one I already alluded to: the Fantastic Four, the founding, flagship team of the Marvel renaissance, is no more. And in the larger, more money-driven world beyond Marvel’s comics, the company doesn’t own the cinematic rights to either the X-Men or the Fantastic Four – and in the wake of this reality-resetting mini-series, the X-Men have been reduced to one tiny splinter-group among many (with no iconic male Wolverine among their ranks), and the Fantastic Four has been eliminated altogether. The whole thing reeks not of a creative bullpen but of a corporate boardroom.

This particular issue had its strong points, as the entire mini-series has had: Hickman’s writing of these great, foundational Marvel characters crackles with life, and Esad Ribic’s artwork in these pages is the best stuff he’s ever done. But the plot makes little to no sense even by mega-event standards, and the end result is still a Marvel continuity in ass-over-tea kettle disarray. Maybe the next Secret Wars will have better luck.