[Kinda Book Review] Secret Wars by Marvel Comics

When I got into secondary school (roughly middle school), I met a guy named Clint-G and we hit it off. He was big into comics and got me back into the hobby. He would tell me about some really awesome storylines I'd miss in the years between my switching between the French comics and the English version (about 10 years difference). I was hooked. One of the stories he told me about was that of Marvel's Secret Wars. From listening to him, this was just crazy-awesome and that idea stayed with me for years.

I bought myself a copy of the Marvel Super Heroes adventure/campaign for the Secret Wars and the scope was just crazy. Of course, I never got to PLAY that. And looking at that adventure book today, I find that it is extremely bad. I mean, the only "plot" is to replay what the comic did. You know... super-railroading the players... There is just no chance it would turn out remotely well.

Last year, I managed to find a really cheap copy of the mini-series on Amazon and nabbed it. I placed it on my stash of things to read with great interest. I placed it under my copy of DC's Crisis on Infinite Earth to savor later. I am a big fan of Jim Shooter's work and could not wait to delve into it.

Well... the actual story did not match the decades of anticipation. Thinking back to 1984, it may have been absolutely great and fantastic, but I kept finding the holes in the plot: distances and locations unclear, no one caring that blocks of Denver came to Battleworld, no one worries about why and how some aliens live on the planet. It is just... bad. I mean the plot crawls forward as the heroes try to understand what the Beyonder means and how they can get out of their current predicament. Add to this the mutant/racist subplot that was big in the 80s.

Everything feels shoehorned into the plot. They need a healer? Oh there's an alien! The villains find themselves fewer than the heroes? Look we pick up randos from "Denver". The story is completely resolved and explained in the final issue rather than doing so gradually where we are just unsure of whatever is going on.

So I'm left with a clear disappointment. I wanted for it to be great, and all I got was good. Trying to think back to the original release, this would have been pretty important. From the Secret Wars, we got Spider-man's black costume. She-Hulk in the Fantastic Four. And Magneto in a truce with the X-men. So the outcome was more important than the story itself.

The art is good, the writing is "fine", so my rating will land on a 3/5. I expected to rate this well above Crisis on Infinite Earth but DC's book was just leaps and bounds better.