Welcome back to the MC2, Multiversity’s panel of noted Marvel experts. The three of us (MC3 sounded weird) are covering Marvel’s straight up CALVACADE of “Secret Wars” tie-ins! This week, we tackle “Ghost Racers″, “E Is For Extinction” and more whilst giving up our own thoughts! Feel free to join in the conversation in the comments and let us know what you think about Marvel’s latest crossover. Spoilers below!
Micro-Reviews
Hail Hydra #3
Written by Rick Remender
Illustrated by Roland Boschi
Reviewed by Alice W. Castle
I can’t believe I had to read “Hail Hydra”. I mean, sure, I feel like all three of us should have to suffer through at least one issue of this monstrosity just to share the pain, but I’m genuinely considering suing both Multiversity Comics and Marvel Comics for the emotional damages caused.
This whole comic is a mess. The first half is nothing but Nomad and Ellie standing about talking about what a basic level bad future this universe is and how there’s nothing they can do to stop Zola… before they immediately just walk up to the front door to try and stop Zola. The logic of this series is so impossible for me to figure out that at the point where Zola’s clone of Captain America steps out of nowhere with no explanation, I was actually kind of fine with it. Not to mention the fact that Ellie starts turning into Smallville’s Bizarro with zero explanation of why or what is even happening.
The art isn’t much better than the writing, either. The quality of panels are wildly inconsistent with the perspective seeming stretched out in some and the detail in the characters just disappearing in others. In a book where the vast majority of it is just dialogue scenes with no action, you would expect the art to at least be consistent in order to keep the engagement, but this issue fails even that.
Final Verdict: 1.0 – Don’t buy this. Don’t even read it. Forget this series ever happened.
E Is For Extinction #4
Written by Chris Burnham & Dennis Culver
Illustrated by Ramon Villalobos
Reviewed by Alice W. Castle
I’m… not sure what to make of this ending. On one hand, the art by Ramon Villalobos continues to be stellar and the giant mutant battles and surreal psychic landscapes he creates in this issue show that he’s just working on a whole other level from everyone else. On the other hand, I’m thinking maybe the attempt to continue Grant Morrison’s writing has lead to Burnham and Culver emulating his off-the-wall endings without really having the same kind of impact or depth.
Instead of the grand look at how the Phoenix Force is a stand-in for the force of life and how it binds the Marvel Universe together and the look into how the choices made in the face of tragedy can affect the entire world like how “New X-Men” ended, “E Is For Extinction” feels like a retread of that one moment every Phoenix story is remembered for: Wolverine killing Jean. Like, we get it. It’s sad that he has a major unrequited crush on Jean that never actually made sense and now he has to kill her. Again. This stopped being effective when X-Men 3 tried and failed to do.
This feeling that the writing is simply a retread of moments done better in previous comics is something that really kills the actual cool moments of this series like Xavier bonding with Wolverine’s mind or that final page which is probably the coolest moment in the entire series. It’s a shame, really, because the writing had a lot of promise to begin with, but it feels like it fell down the trap of trying to do hard to live up to the original instead of trying to be it own thing.
Final Verdict: 6.2 – Still, this series was worth reading for the art, at least.
M.O.D.O.K. Assassin #5
Written by Christopher Yost
Illustrated by Amilcar Pinna
Reviewed by Jess Camacho
So one of my pet peeves with comics is reading something just for it to go full circle without learning a damn thing. That’s what “M.O.D.O.K. Assassin” ended up being. There’s something meaningful in doing that but it only works when a lesson was trying to be taught. This miniseries was effectively M.O.D.O.K. killing people with Angela and both of them just go back to their own thing. M.O.D.O.K. isn’t a character I care that much about so it’s tough for me to have a lot of great things to say here when it read as just another M.O.D.O.K. story. To be fair, Yost does a much better job at trying to make you laugh and for the most part he succeeds. Pinna’s art is strong and I love the amount of frantic action there is. This is such a violent story but Pinna doesn’t go overboard and make it unreadable for people under a certain age.
Final Verdict: 6.5 – A fine story that altogether just didn’t click with me.
Ghost Racers #4
Written by Felipe Smith
Illustrated by Juan Gedeon
Reviewed by James Johnston
Real talk: “Secret Wars” should end with all the Ghost Riders just rolling up and kicking everyone’s ass. Hand out MP3 downloads with each issue so readers can blast “X Gon’ Give It To Ya” for the whole issue.
“Ghost Racers” #4 wraps up Robbie Reyes’s latest adventure as hie finds his brother wrapped up in the Ghost Racing Tournament with the other Riders from other dimensions. One of them’s a dinosaur named T-Rider Rex. It’s all kinds of great, even if I’m ready for Robbie to have a story besides “Gabe is in trouble oh no.” The art itself is kind of blocky and cartoony, but works well when showing off massive chase scenes. And if I had to choose between giving Gabe a believable face and making the death races look rad, I’d choose the latter Despite the less than stellar art, “Ghost Racers” proved to be a stupidly fun series that tied into a rather simplistic story to add some major stakes to all the demon biker action you’d normally find in a Ghost Rider comic.
Final Verdict: 7.4 – A really fun tie-in that will be missed.
X-Men ’92 #4
Written by Chris Sims & Chad Bowers
Illustrated by Scott Koblish
Reviewed by James Johnston
Yeah, I don’t know what happened here either. “X-Men ’92” began as an homage to the 90’s cartoon that fell victim to its own self-indulgence. I think it’s interesting to compare to “E Is For Extinction”, another X-Men tie-in that focuses on a very specific period of the team’s history. Even if “E Is For Extinction” feels the need to include every single element of the “New X-Men” series, logic be damned, it at least feels like its own well-defined title. It’s got personality. The “X-Men ’92” universe, feels like a cardboard cut-out in comparison. Characters spout out constant jokes, that never really land while not having any believable sort of personalities. It chucks in throwback after throwback with no real thread connecting everything together.
That’s not to say the book can’t be funny. Gambit and Rogue getting vaporized elicited a genuine chuckle but I can’t tell how much of that was from my passionate apathy for the couple. Hell, the book would be way funnier if there wasn’t such a Claremontian overkill of dialogue. Half the time, “X-Men ’92” uses its source material in pretty clever ways. But the rest of the time it just feels incredibly indulgent. If the writing and art could feel a little less all over the place, “X-Men ’92” might have been the funny tie-in it was meant to be. Instead, it shows a few signs of promise before falling right on its face.
Final Verdict: 4.8 – Maybe I’m not the right age to enjoy a 90’s X-Men throwback, but “X-Men ’92” just doesn’t feel like the best comic it could be.
Inferno #5
Continued below
Written by Dennis Hopeless
Illustrated by Javier Garron
Reviewed by Jess Camacho
“Inferno” ends with this issue and unlike two X-Men centric miniseries that ended last week, this one provides a satisfying ending. What really works about this issue and all of “Inferno” is that Hopeless and Garron were aware that they were writing something temporary. They provided excellent character moments and some big, over the top moments like demon Nightcrawler being tamed like a wild horse. “Inferno” came into issue five without a lot to tie up. The big question that remained was whether or not Colossus would kill his sister who has been fully lost for quite some time. That question is answered and the ending is really a neat bow to close out our time here in the part of the Battleworld. It was a safe way to end the story but I found myself laughing at everything Boom Boom said and for once the X-Men worth a damn weren’t the same core five. Garron’s art was much better in the finale. The inconsistencies in character expressions was all but gone and the action sequences were stellar.
Final Verdict: 7.8 – This didn’t reinvent comics and it wasn’t really vital to the big picture but it was a ton of fun. More X-Men stories like this please.
Final Thoughts
Jess: I only read half the tie-ins this week and I wasn’t as disappointed as I was last week. I am ready for this to be over though. Bizarre that next week Multiversity Comics will feature reviews for All New All Different Whatever Marvel while we’re still doing this. That’s just bad planning on everyone’s part.
James: So much of my life has changed in the past twenty weeks that it’s kind of disconcerting to see how little my opinions for “Secret Wars” have. It’s pretty messed up that my almost universal reaction to book’s ending is a silent apathy, but I think that’s the only emotion I can sustain for the next fifty weeks this event’s going on for.
Alice: The fact that I had to read “Hail Hydra” this week makes me want to burn every comic I see.
