Welcome back to The Man in the HYDRA Castle, Multiversity Comics’ ongoing recap of Marvel’s “Secret Empire” storyline. As always, spoilers abound.
Last time on “Secret Empire”, Steve Rogers is still a Nazi, Black Widow is raising her own army of child soldiers like she’s Nick Fury in “Secret Warriors”, and the Avengers are all yelling at each other because it’s not an event comic without inter-team conflict. Also, New York is covered by shadows, Captain Marvel and the Ultimates are stuck in space, and a bunch of other stuff that’s only going to matter to the tie-ins are going on.
In our recap-within-a-recap, Kingpin continues his operation of giving supplies to those trapped by the plague of shadows that have impacted New Yorkers. Now only if he could fix the dang MTA? That was this month’s New York joke.
I don’t know what purpose this whole segment serves since I don’t think Wilson Fisk will have a major impact on the conclusion to Nazi Cap’s saga but Matthew Rosenberg’s “Kingpin” is on sale now from Marvel Comics.
Speaking of things whose purpose I don’t entirely get, Hot Steve Rogers is still trapped in his own mind with Hot Red Skull.
I’m already there buddy. See you in a few issues where Honest Steve Rogers comes out and takes his body back from Nazi Steve. Sorry if this recap ends up being pretty skimpy. There’s a lot of telegraphed plot points running around here so I don’t feel like coming up with extraneous theories. What else could these dream sequences even be? Cap and Red Skull on a romantic retreat in the Savage Land? I have a lot of wishes for Marvel Comics at the moment but I know that one ain’t going to be answered anytime soon.
Over in child soldier land, Black Widow is having dissension in the ranks due to her work with Viper, who’s willing to sell out HYDRA in exchange for her immunity. Miles talks to Black Widow about their work and if the old guy they set free is going to be relevant.
Oh, uh cool. Not our concern. Great. Fewer words I have to write. Back in main plot land, the Avengers have been collecting shards of the cosmic cube because somewhere along the way the script for “Secret Empire” got replaced the fan wiki description of any Bioware fetch quest. Everyone yells at each other because AI Iron Man lied about having a Cosmic Cube detector for reasons I am still not clear on. Also, the screaming continues because someone is definitely a traitor, that someone being Scott Lang whose daughter has been kidnapped by HYDRA. When in doubt, always suspect the Nick Spencer pet character. Anywho, this all becomes redundant because CAPTAIN AMERICA REVIVED THE HULK?!
Last issue, Steve revealed that he had Bruce Banner in custody and there is no explanation as to how Bruce came back from getting an arrow in the head during “Civil War II.” It’s whatever tech HYDRA’s got that made them pass unopposed single payer. Steve convinces Hulk to go kill the Avengers for shooting him into space and subsequently shooting him with an arrow after space didn’t take. Hulk rampages through the Avengers base which leads to an army of Avengers duplicate robots getting released to combat Hulk. I don’t know. Hulk’s assault on the Avengers leading through leads to HYDRA swarming in and taking over the fight. A lot of incredible feats are performed during this fight, like Nick Spencer’s legit impressive feat of mental gymnastics below.
“THIS IS DEFINITELY TONY STARK. FORGET WHAT EVERYONE SAYS ABOUT THIS JUST BEING AN AI COPY! TONY STARK IS HERE AND HE IS HAVING AN EPIC FIGHT WITH HIS BEST FRIEND!”
It’s wild that Tony Stark can be in a coma, and he still has to appear as the centerpiece of a crossover that has little to do with him. Anyway, AI Tony says some junk about how Captain America has always been his hero and unleashes his ultimate countermeasure against Cap.
So this is definitely getting an “Age of Ultron” level retcon fixing right? There are news reports about how everyone’s dead in this blast and we’ve still got a cosmic cube in play around here somewhere. No matter what lays in store for the cosmic cube or all the heroes who probably survived that nuke in the first place, Black Widow promises Miles Morales and the rest of the Champions that they’ll be coming for Captain America, who got whisked away from the bomb by Madame Hydra. So here’s hoping that next issue is just that flashback from “Civil War II” where Miles merked Cap and got it all over with. See you next week when there’s hopefully more to write about.
