REVIEW: Secret Wars, #5

[CBR News]

In "Secret Wars" #5, Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic establish a quiet, game-setting installment before everything goes to hell.


Full review here.

[jackolover]

Who is the character who made a major move in this issue?

You could say Doom obtaining Reeds clan around him gave Victor the stability to out strip Reed. Even surrounded by his family, Reed has made similar poor decisions in his history, like Invading Latveria and helping Civil War, so I can't criticise Doom for Battleworld at this stage.

Are we seeing Battleworld becoming unstable? I don't know. I would dearly have liked to find out where 616 Reed was on Battleworld and what he makes of it.

Black Swan being in Doomstadt makes the most sense, because the Black Swans wanted to help the Incursions, and now that the end result has been achieved, I would like to see the conversation between Swan and Doom, now, as an epilogue to the whole history of continual stabbing of Owen Reeces.

[hobo]

I wonder what happened to all of the other Black Swans. Are they all sitting around in that Library, wondering when Doom is coming back?

[Iron Maiden]

I always wondered why Doom chose females to be the tool to promote his "religion". I asked Hickman if there was a reason why the Black Swans were all female at C2E2 but he evaded and just joked that they all hate men. Now that we see Stephen sent Black Swan to Doomstadt, I hope we find out more about that. Was she the child we saw in NA #33, the first of the Black Swans?

[jackolover]

I always wondered why Doom chose females to be the tool to promote his "religion". I asked Hickman if there was a reason why the Black Swans were all female at C2E2 but he evaded and just joked that they all hate men. Now that we see Stephen sent Black Swan to Doomstadt, I hope we find out more about that. Was she the child we saw in NA #33, the first of the Black Swans?

I suppose one criterion of hiring a Black Swan could be they hate men. It makes it easier to stab so many men. Although I'd think another requirement would be they had to be homicidal sociopaths. You can't just kill so many people year after year and still not be traumatised.

[johnnyrocket]

This issue followed the same long drawn out exposition issue that is/was typical of other Marvel events (Bendis/Secret Wars in particular) with everyone standing around for pages and pages of conversation that fils in gaps that either A. should/could be accomplished in just a few panels or B. relegated to some sort of tie in issue. The only real revelation for the entire issue was what Molecule Man's role is.. I get it. i don't need 5 pages about it to pay off a sandwich joke.. We've already had panels that have more or less filled in what Doom and Strange did.. This was all unnecessary and the story really doesn't have time for it. And frankly, it should take Valeria all of 3 seconds to figure out who killed Strange.... Such is the modern formula for structuring stories for trades, I suppose. But after 4 issues of set up and world building, it never instills me with confidence seeing an issue like this starting the back half of the story or fear that the story's conclusion won't seem rushed or unsatisfying. We've got to see the wall come down, we have to see the repercussions of the wall coming down.. we've got to see Valeria and her crew find and confront both the rafters and the villains, we have to see the villains challenge Doom and the Rafters, we have to see the Rafters confront Doom and the Thors, we have to have the Fantastic family discover what a bastard Doom is, we have to have Doom confront Richards, and we have to tie up a climax that includes rebooting the entire universe. And you have 3 issues.... That'll be a trick.

[jackolover]

I wonder what happened to all of the other Black Swans. Are they all sitting around in that Library, wondering when Doom is coming back?

I originally thought everything died at the last Incursion, but Silver Surfer contradicts that, so maybe the Library survived as well. It seems odd that once the mission of the Black Swans comes to an end, do they seek out Doom, or just commit suicide because what's the point of living when nothing exists? It's been 8 years of nothing so far, so unless Doom went looking for the Swans, Doom has dispensed with their usefulness and forgot about them?