As we’ve seen tangentially over the years, Marvel had some events in the 80s called Secret Wars and Secret Wars II. Secret Wars was allegedly named thus because the toy company who asked for it to promote a toy line had done some market research and decided kids love those 2 words. I don’t know whose idea it was to do a mini called Secret War now, but here it is. As mentioned back in the Pulse 2 post, Bendis was a big booster for painter Gabriel Del’Otto, and this series was his first interior work at the publisher. As Bendis’ star continued to rise, he was given this pretty big deal gig, a heavily promoted, capital “E” Event that was not to be missed. It was originally published on a very odd quarterly schedule. Presumably to give Del’Otto time to churn out fully painted, oversized issues. It was not enough, with the last 2 issues of the book slipping way off schedule and issue 5 publishing more than a year and a half after issue 1. Whoops. This sort of catastrophic delay would become not uncommon in 2000s Marvel, as it was decided some things were too important for fill-ins or replacement creatives when things went wrong. It was a weird time. I don’t think that could happen today, I think they had more leeway before they were owned by Disney, and during the vulnerable years after bankruptcy when they were somehow the biggest comics publisher and a scrappy underdog at the same time. At any rate, here we go. “Secret Wars” was a title that didn’t make a whole lot of sense applied to the story it contained, and there was nothing at all secret about the events of Secret Wars II. and it also didn’t really feature a war. Will Secret War actually be a secret, or deal with a war? Well… “kind of” on both fronts.
We are firmly in the Bendis corner of the Marvel U. I think it’s kind of interesting how he created his own little address. DD, Alias/Pulse and now this all working closely together, but not really touching other books. He made Cage a player in Alias. When that book proved a success, he crossed it over with DD, making Matt hire Jessica and Luke as bodyguards to throw people off the scent of his exposed secret. The first arc of Pulse kinda pulled the Daily Bugle into Bendis’ world rather than pushing Jessica out into the wider Marvel U. Now we’re making the Bendis-verse bigger. But to really drive the point home, the 2nd arc of Pulse is a tie-in to this. The only tie-in to this. And that’s mad weird, because this and Pulse 1 came out the same month. The two titles having unusual, longer-than-a-month gaps between issues, but pens that don’t match, means the first issue of the Pulse tie-in arc came out after the 3rd issue of this, which is supremely weird, but… I dunno, scheduling is obviously a problem right now.
Hey, that looks bad. We cut to Nick Fury being briefed on all the crazy things going on in the world, seemingly not paying much attention, but when they get to Luke Cage being in a coma, he wants to know more, and then…
Then we flashback from that uncomfortable silence to one year ago, to Iron Man fighting Killer Shrike, specifically. Remember that guy? But it’s actually footage of them fighting, being shown to Killer Shrike by SHIELD interrogators. Specifically, classic SHIELD agents Jasper Sitwell and Jimmy Woo (The latter of whom Bendis has using Yiddish, because… I don’t really know why he insists on making literally everyone sprinkle Yiddish into their dialogue, but it becomes sort of distracting sometimes. Jimmy Woo? Really? Peter Parker, ok, sure, but…), and they’re really messing with him while drilling down on the question of how he can possibly afford all his tech.
So, Woo and Sitwell send Killer here to Mason, wired, but he’s a bad actor and Mason fries him with a trap on the front door. Mason escapes before the small army of undercover SHIELD agents can get inside. But, “later,” we’re told, Black Widow calls to say he’s at Latveria International Airport, and she’s tailing him. How much later is “later?”
Jason PHILIP Macendale, Jr., is dead. He died in Hobgoblin Lives #1, as we may recall. He was dead before this issue, and will continue to be dead after, everyone else ignoring Bendis revealing him to be alive the same way Bendis ignored his death. It’s the 2000s, and no one cares anymore. Bendis, in particular, gets caught doing this A LOT. But it’s not his job to know who’s alive and who’s dead in the Marvel U. It’s his editor’s. His editor, Andy Schmidt, should say “Hey, that guy’s dead, pick a different guy.” But in the 21st Century, no one ever does. Why? It’s so frustrating. Any random mook could’ve been on that screen, this story doesn’t require Macendale to work, why pick a dead guy? Even the extremely anal retentive Marvel fan Wiki that normally catalogs every single appearance of a character, even in dreams or flashbacks, pretends this didn’t happen.
Grim Reaper: Also dead.
I don’t really get the timeline on this. Dr. Doom was deposed as ruler of Latveria for like the 10th time in the FF stories that preceded the issues we looked at recently. But this is meant to have been a year ago. Doesn’t really line up.
Nick left that meeting rattled, presumably because of 9/11. The Countess is there, as she so often is, wanting to know what happened, and he says he can’t let it happen again. That they have all the info and they’re just going to sit on it and people are going to die (You know, 9/11, how we learned various agencies more or less knew it was coming, but because they didn’t coordinate, nothing was done), and he can’t let it happen again.
Well, it doesn’t seem like that went well! These were very oversized comics, and for you money, in addition to a few more story pages than usual, you also got a bunch of back matter. First, you get a transcript of Sitwell and Woo doing their shtick while interrogating Macendale, the dead man. Astoundingly, the SHIELD file presented before mentions he is dead! Probably pasted out of a Marvel Handbook somewhere. After that, there’s a small gallery of Del’Otto’s art form when he was just a fan, and a text page from Bendis promising more fun stuff in future issues. The list of comics that don’t have Spider-Man in them on my Spider-Man blog just keeps getting longer, but don’t worry, he shows up next issue.
I thought about covering the Pulse issues, too, mostly just so I could re-read them, but it wouldn’t make any sense, there’s no Spider-Man in it. Suffice it to say, after this explosion, Luke & Jessica were rushed to a hospital, but then Luke disappeared, and Jessica went on a frantic hunt for Luke, helped by Ben Urich, until Ben realized Luke most be with the Night Nurse, as seen in those Daredevils we looked at (“The Bendisverse”). Danny Rand didn’t trust Jessica and tried to send her away, which caused a rift between them, but she found her man eventually.