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 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?

[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.

[Omega Alpha]

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.

First of all, I'd like to present you a new idea: it's called paragraphs.

See?

Second, we who were reading Avengers and NA had some idea of what happened, but not exactly what and how. Now we know for sure. People who weren't reading Hickman's Avengers- and considering Secret Wars is selling about 4 times what his Avengers books were, it's the MAJORITY of the readers- didn't had any idea.

Also, the revelation that Molecule Man is still alive AND is the source of Doom's powers is new.

Valeria can't figure out that Doom killed Strange because:

A- She doesn't know any motive for that;
B- Doom is her father, and most people don't take 3 seconds to figure out their father murdered their best friend;
C- She's a freakin' child.

[Iron Maiden]

First of all, I'd like to present you a new idea: it's called paragraphs.

See?

Second, we who were reading Avengers and NA had some idea of what happened, but not exactly what and how. Now we know for sure. People who weren't reading Hickman's Avengers- and considering Secret Wars is selling about 4 times what his Avengers books were, it's the MAJORITY of the readers- didn't had any idea.

Also, the revelation that Molecule Man is still alive AND is the source of Doom's powers is new.

Valeria can't figure out that Doom killed Strange because:

A- She doesn't know any motive for that;
B- Doom is her father, and most people don't take 3 seconds to figure out their father murdered their best friend;
C- She's a freakin' child.

And Doom did come up with a believable ruse that the survivors of the old world are responsible. After all, she knows that when the Cabal emerged from their vessel, they put up a fight and killed one of the Thor corps.

[hulivar]

I'm a sci-fi nutter, so I loved this issue. I'm all about grand stories, and grand space opera, and big answers to life's questions.

I agree with Johnny though, some of this was overdone and some of it felt like a summary of all events up until now...but then again some of it was enlightening too, at least for me.

But ya, I totally forgot about Silver Surfer and that huge dead body that turned into a pocket universe or whatever....hopefully they can tie everything together at the end...I've been surprisingly impressed so far, so I have faith.

[Darth Kal-el]

All this talk of Silver Sufer concerns me because I haven't read his book and he hasn't been mentioned in SW. Please don't tell me something important for the conclusion is happening in a different book and will magically appear here in the end with zero explanation

[Iron Maiden]

All this talk of Silver Sufer concerns me because I haven't read his book and he hasn't been mentioned in SW. Please don't tell me something important for the conclusion is happening in a different book and will magically appear here in the end with zero explanation

I hope not. I haven't been reading that either. Just wasn't my cup of tea.

[johnnyrocket]

First of all, I'd like to present you a new idea: it's called paragraphs.

See?

Second, we who were reading Avengers and NA had some idea of what happened, but not exactly what and how. Now we know for sure. People who weren't reading Hickman's Avengers- and considering Secret Wars is selling about 4 times what his Avengers books were, it's the MAJORITY of the readers- didn't had any idea.

Also, the revelation that Molecule Man is still alive AND is the source of Doom's powers is new.

Valeria can't figure out that Doom killed Strange because:

A- She doesn't know any motive for that;
B- Doom is her father, and most people don't take 3 seconds to figure out their father murdered their best friend;
C- She's a freakin' child.

Wow, you just could not resist the urge to start the conversation by being a dick. Congratulations, you AM clever. I'm including the ¶ symbol for you below but I need to warn you that my paragraphs are longer than one sentence. So I hope you can still follow.

¶ Ya know, none of the reasons you site are wrong. But, perhaps because you're completely flustered by my lack of paragraphs, your focussing on the wrong point of my comment. Yes, all your considerations are worthy of taking into account. But my over all concern was how to wrap up so much story in just 4 issues when you dedicate an entire issue to one story reveal. Despite all the other comics exploring stories on this world, this event is largely self contained to this series. There's A LOT of ground to cover with just 3 issues left. And the next issue is likely going to focus on Reed making a battle plan. So now we've got 2 issues to warp all this up.

¶ I didn't read every Avengers comic leading up to this and I still understood how we got here. And if I didn't, I would have gotten everything except where Molecule Man is from Doom and Stephen's conversations for the last 4 issues. So again, I'm not criticizing the need here for the sake of the story to reveal Molecule Man's role, as much as spending so much of the issue on it.

¶ Sure, maybe it wasn't that much of the issue and it just seemed so compounded by cutting to another 3-4 pages of the Foundation team exposition talking about the mechanics of their detection equipment. But to quote Tesla and Pyscho Man to Valeria after 2 pages of exposition: "All of what your saying is exactly what would be expected..." "And such information bores us." Well, yeah, it kind of did.

¶ If you've read Hickman's runs on FF and Avengers Valeria is usually three steps ahead of Reed and Doom. No flies on that girl no matter how young she is (and looks to be even older in the timeline of this series) so it's uncharacteristic of her to have to talk this out to a committee. Strange was second only to Doom on Battleworld ergo who has the power to kill him? um.. Daddy? ... You can argue that Doom's influence clouds her reason. You can argue her frame of reference in this world precludes her making any leaps in that direction. And you can make the assumption she's focussed on the new unknown variables of the new arrivals. Fine, I'm good with that. Again, my only criticism is how necessary it was to slow the story down to have her walk everyone else through it.

[Braun Rodman]

I think it's possible all the black swans are Valerias from different worlds in the multiverse

[Iron Maiden]

I think it's possible all the black swans are Valerias from different worlds in the multiverse

Could be. For sure a lot of them are blonds as I recall. The one we met in NA #1 in Wakanda said her name was Yabbat. Then we saw the blinded ones who looked like the witches from MacBeth in the Library of Worlds.