“Secret Wars” #5 is back and so is Secret Wars Service. Join us as we recap the latest going ons in Marvel’s multiverse-ending extravaganza and wonder if it’s a good thing to turn Doctor Doom into an inter dimensional Walter White. As always we’ll do a spoiler-free review followed by a spoiler-filled recap.
Review
Written by Jason Aaron
Illustrated by Esad RibicOWEN REECE DIED FOR OUR SINS!
“Secret Wars” #5 is probably my least favorite issue of the series thus far. That’s not to say it’s bad. Hickman and Ribic are still at the top of their game and taking the time to make Doctor Doom one of the most interesting characters in this whole shebang, but that’s at the cost of everything else. Last issue seemed like the perfect point to hop off of Doom’s godly lap and really explore what’s going on between the Cabal, the MCU Dream Team, and Doom’s own forces. But this issue is more focused on vaguely explaining what happened to make Doom god. And all of the new info is, truthfully, kind of redundant. While that type of issue is one that could be of use to everyone who didn’t read “New Avengers/Avengers”, it probably could have been released before the momentum rose up last issue. For the hardcover, this issue is going to be replaced with twenty-two pages of “the sentence “Doom is great!” in Hickman’s handwriting.
Final Verdict: 4.5 – On pure technical merits “Secret Wars” #5 is not a bad comic. But, it does kill the momentum of an event that was really picking up steam. Now let’s discuss this more throughly in the spoiler-filled recap.
Recap
Last time on “Secret Wars”, the inferior Reed Richards and Marvel Studios’ 2017 schedule told Doom and the Cabal to stuff it. Doctor Strange, trying to restore the reality where he doesn’t look and act like Aiden Gillen, sent everyone across Battleworld to save them from Doom. Unfortunately, Victor wasn’t exactly pleased and destroyed Strange harder than social media destroyed Fant4stic. Now, with the secrets of his godhood loose in the world, Doom has everything to lose from these interlopers and everything to keep by gutting each and everyone one of them.
Unfortunately, before he can get to any of the godly tyrant stuff, Doom has to do something he’s never done before. Feel bad for killing a traitor. I mean, I get that Doom’s friendship with Strange is one of the things that kept him going as GOD-FATHER OF DOOMSTADT so I’d understand why he would honor him with a funeral. I don’t get why he has to hide it from everyone else. You’re fucking Doom. Just say that Strange betrayed you to some rebel morons and have everyone go after them too. If everyone can buy the idea that one section of their planet is in the year 2099 and the other is in 1872, why wouldn’t they trust that you killed a traitor? You’re Doom, why do they have a choice?
Strange’s funeral, and the conversations Doom has with Valeria and Franklin go exactly some of the early parts of Breaking Bad. In that series, whenever Walter White’s meth-cooking caused him to do something unspeakable, it would affect everybody, no matter how little they were connected to said crime. He would cause a lab explosion and his DEA brother-in-law would march into Walt’s house the next day and shout out something ironic like “YEAH, HOMBRE I’M GOING TO CATCH THIS COCK-SUCK METH COOK IF IT’S THE LAST THING I DO!” Walt would kill a cartel lord and the next day Walt Jr. would get picked up from school and be like “ON MY FAMILY’S HONOR, I’LL AVENGE EL HIJO’S MURDER IF I HAVE TO CUT A THOUSAND MEN!” That same thing is happening here where dramatic irony is causing everyone to swear vengeance Strange while Doom’s just making nervous faces. Except you’re not a chemistry teacher, Vic. You’re a god tyrant. Just tell everyone Strange ate your lunch and be done with it. Don’t grow a conscience just because this series was supposed to be seven issues instead of eight.
Continued belowAfter everyone has sworn their appropriate vengeance and Doom has made enough uh-oh baby faces to the camera, he goes underneath Molecule Man’s memorial to find, uh, Molecule Man. Strange’s statue contains a room where the the new redesigned Strange sits, waiting for his October relaunch. He also looks like Benedict Cumberbatch. He must not be freed.
Doom tells Molecule Man that Strange died in the most not-even-trying-to-hide-it-way.
Imagine if this were a police procedural show. If Doom said that, Ice-T would have shot him on the spot. Thankfully, Molecule Man has more pressing matters to attend to. And those matters are re-capping the hastily thrown together conclusion to the Incursion storyline. If you’ve somehow kept up with “Secret Wars” and didn’t google anything about the Illuminati storyline beforehand, The Beyonders (not the Jheri curled ones, actual alien ones) wanted to blow up the multiverse because DC’s Beyonders do that like every five years and they figured it was their turn. To do so, they created Molecule Man (real name Owen) who was really just a bomb scattered across the multiverse (don’t ask). Owen decided to give Doctor Doom the heads up, because the Avengers, West Coast Avengers, New Avengers, Secret Avengers, Young Avengers, Avengers A.I., and Defenders were all busy. They both rigged the system so other Molecule Men from other worlds would die first, leaving the 616 as the final Earth. That’s when the Beyonders showed up, everyone exploded, and Doctor Doom woke up in a George R.R. Martin wet dream.
If you read the comics leading up to “Secret Wars”, you knew all that. If you didn’t, then you probably threw this book into a dumpster fire by issue #3. I can’t imagine the poor soul who started with “Secret wars:, was hooked on the mystery of how Doom got his new powers, and then found out that answer came out like six months ago. at least they didn’t wait three years for it.
Over at the Future Foundation’s headquarters, Valeria Richards is telling an assemblage of Dragon Man, Franklin Richards, Bentley, Alex Powers, some other people I don’t know, and Nikola Tesla in a gimp suit to look out for the 616 heroes. They do so by tracking down similar energy sequences to Doom’s and blah blah blah.
We then cut to where everyone was scattered after Doom’s attack last issue. Captain Marvel has been brought before Baron Sinister. The Thors just get drunk and Black Swan approaches Doomstadt. Namor attacks Black Panther, entering their third consecutive year of trying to kick each other’s skulls in. This is all one page. One page in a comic that had four about how the Beyonders thing totally makes sense. I hope that’s the pace of this series from now on. Twenty pages of Doom moping and one page of characters progressing the plot. Hey, Hickman found the way to make me root against Doom, after all. I am sad that there’s not a page of Corvus Glaive just slaughtering the Skottie Young section of Battleworld, though.
Before we wrap up, the final page shows the most promise for next issue. Thanks approaches the Sheild, the wall separating Battleworld from Ultrons, Marvel Zombies™, and White Walkers. Most importantly, it’s where we see the long-awaited return of Thanos face.
This column is just going to become Twitter avatars by issue #7. Check back in later today for Secret Warriors. See you next month.
