The Battleworld Series

            Well everyone, Secret Wars is FINALLY over, only a mere three months after it was scheduled to end after countless delays and an additional issue produced to wrap everything up and by now the All New All Different Marvel lines are well underway.  But before we take a look at those series, I wanted to take a look back at all the Battleworld series that I had the chance to read and give some thoughts on each series as a whole.  I do have to warn whoever reads this, however, that there will be varying degrees of spoilers in this post.  I won’t give away the endings or any big act three twists but in order to properly talk about why some of these books do or don’t work some things that happen later in the series needs to be addressed.   So strap into your seats folks because this is going to be a long one.  These are my thoughts on the Battleworld Series.

Secret Wars

            I’ve gone over my distain of this series quite a few times but I do feel that some it bears repeating if for no other reason than maybe, just maybe, the writers will take their heads out of their asses and acknowledge that they screwed this one up and use it as a model for how not to do an event comic.  Yes, the art is great.  Yes, Issues 1, 2, and 9 are legitimately good and the covers by Alex Ross are some of the best artwork that I’ve ever seen for a superhero comic.  But this just doesn’t make up for the slog that was Issues 3 through 8, where actual storytelling and character development took a complete backseat to issue upon issue of exposition for exposition’s sake with no real plot or pacing that just decides to skip ahead a few months to the climax where people are rebelling against Doom for undefined reasons and where the Cabal that survived the destruction of the Ultimate Universe is working with the survivors of the main Marvel Universe for, again, undefined reasons.  Beyond that, there really isn’t much to say without digging deeper into each individual issue and pointing out everything that is wrong with it but that’s a series of post for another day.  It’s just a poorly written mess that completely botched what was a pretty good concept and is ultimately a poor way to start the new Marvel Multiverse.  Thank God the actual series resulting from this are on the whole pretty good.

Verdict

Burn

Future Imperfect

            A reoccurring thing you’re probably going to read in this post is that “this series started out really good but was undercut by a non-existent second act or a third act that had been almost completely cut out or both” and the Future Imperfect series is easily the obvious example of the latter.  The storyline in question takes place in a Battleworld territory where a third World War has more or less wiped out all of the major superheroes save for the Hulk, who now rules over his own city as a brutal dictator and calls himself The Maestro as a resistance force attempts liberate the city from his tyrannical rule.  At the start of the story, The Maestro is able to infiltrate the rebel’s base, take down many of its soldiers before encountering its leader; General Thunderbolt Ross who had been transformed into The Thing.  After a fight where the two cause a good amount of destruction to the city, the two decided to join forces in order to find a secret weapon that will give the Maestro the power to overthrow God Doom and allow him to become the ruler of Battleworld

            The premise is, as you read, very solid and offered up all kinds of possibilities.  Would the two bitter old enemies be able to keep their cool in order to achieve a common goal?  Would Ross be able keep control over his resistance army given his new partnership with The Maestro?  Does the Maestro really intend to honor his end of the deal when/if he has defeated Doom?  Will this secret weapon actually allow him the power to defeat a man who literally has the power of the Beyonders at his disposal?  Unfortunately none of these things are brought up or satisfyingly explored.  You have a few throwaway lines where some of Ross’s men question the wisdom of working with The Maestro and Ross himself making it clear that they aren’t friends but the whole thing just plays out like a treasure hunt road trip where at the end of each point on the map they have to fight a boss before reaching the final prize, lacking any real character development or elaborate storytelling that might have made this endeavor more interesting.  A lot of this has to do with the length of the story.  It’s very clear that this story was intended to be a much longer one and if I had to guess a lot of the questions I just brought up were probably plot points in the original drafts but were ultimately cut due to the restraints everyone had to put up with for a five issue series.

            Ultimately the comic is not poorly written or drawn by any means.  The twists are very well done, the initial world building is fantastic and the art work is nothing short of incredible but you do get the feeling that a lot is missing and when the series ended I found myself thinking about how great it could have been if it was allowed two or three more issues to flesh out its story a bit more.  As it is, the story is just okay and worth reading if you’re in-between issues but I wouldn’t exactly go out and hunt down every issue for it.

Verdict

Browse

Secret Wars: Battleworld and Secret Wars Journal

            There really isn’t a whole lot to say about these two series as they are both anthology comics that’s quality in both writing and artwork vary from story to story.  It’s worth reading for the good stuff and you will always get a good story out of it one way or another.

Verdict

Read

Thors

            What do you get when you have various Thors of parallel dimensions working as cops trying to solve a murder mystery?  An otherwise pretty solid comic that was only bogged down by things that was out of the creative team’s control.  The story in question follows a number of Thors, mainly Ultimate Thor and Thor the Unworthy, (the Thor of the main Marvel Universe who lost his ability to hold his hammer), as they attempt to solve the murder of a number of women who all happen to be the same person over the various dimensions.  What follows is a solid murder mystery full of twists, betrayals, red herrings, and a surprisingly deep reasoning behind the murders, all backed by solid artwork that is visually appealing, drawing upon inspirations from both Film Noir and the more traditional Asgardian aesthetics of the comics.

If Thors is the victim of anything, it’s the victim of a release date that was obviously meant to run parallel with that of Secret Wars and was constantly delayed as a result, killing a lot of the series’ thunder, (no pun intended).  It’s not at all helped by the fact that the second half of the last issue literally ties into Issue #7 of Secret Wars and seems to do so out of the blue without any real build up to it.

In the end, despite its release problem, it’s a solid comic.  The mystery is good, the interactions between the Thors is solid, all the characters have real depth to them and is backed by very solid artwork and I recommend giving it a read.

Verdict

Read

Deadpool’s Secret Wars

            Out of all the Battleworld Series, this one was the most surprising, especially given that the premise of the series wasn’t all that appealing to me.  As I’ve stated before, I wasn’t that big of a fan of the original Secret Wars and to be honest Deadpool has never been all that appealing to me as he comes off more as that annoying friend everyone seems to have who constantly makes bad puns and pop culture references to the point that you want to smack him.  But, surprisingly, it works in this series.

            Taking place during the original Secret Wars, this series focuses on Deadpool as the main protagonist as he fights, puns, and sleeps his way through the highlights of the Secret Wars series, offering new twists and perceptions as to what happened in the crossover event.  Beyond that, however, there really isn’t a whole lot to say about it.  The art work is really good and is vastly superior to the original while staying true to its original designs and the humor is fantastic with every pun hitting at just the right moment with the art work to complement it.  It’s a ton of fun and I could not recommend it highly enough.  Give it a read.

Verdict

Read

Old Man Logan

            Oh dear lord, this comic.  If there was one enormous disappointment in the Battleworld series, it was easily the Old Man Logan series.  Apparently taking place after the events of the original Old Man Logan story arc by Mark Millar the series started off promising when it seemed to follow up on the events from that fantastic story.  But then he discovers a head of an Ultron unit and then the thing turns into a road trip comic as he travels through the various realms of Battleworld.  Unfortunately, that’s really all it is.  Wolverine gets thrown from one realm to the next, enouncing various versions of characters in the Marvel Universe that either want to kill him, imprison him or tell him that he is destined for some bigger journey, all the while just kind of taking everything in with an indifferent disposition.

            I get the impression that this was intended to be a road trip story of self-discover for Wolverine; where he finally lets go of the horrible things that he did before the events of the original Old Man Logan arc as well as discovering more of Battleworld’s secrets and the fact that he has a greater journey ahead of him.  This all good in concept but it forgets that this was quite literally his entire arc in the original story making everything that happened in this story feel redundant and repetitive.  It also doesn’t help at all that the comic itself doesn’t really have much in the way of a story arc.  At the start of Issue #2, he’s wondering around the various realms of Battleworld without any real purpose and that’s how it ends as well.  There aren’t any reoccurring antagonists, plot points or supporting characters to help Wolverine along the way, making the entire series, quite literally, a plot-less road trip full of characters that we encounter once and are never mentioned again. 

            It’s not at all helped by the fact that the artwork is an eyesore.  I generally try not to call out particular styles of art as negatives, (different strokes for different folks), but this one just asks for it.  While the artwork does do its job of keeping events in a coherent order, the art itself can only be described as distorted.  It tends to change from setting to setting, (kudos on creativity on that), but each time the images on display are always distorted, with the earlier issues containing artwork that appear as if a constant sandstorm is going on, covering all the images and issues towards the end only using yellow, red, white and black in very strange ways to color the images that makes everything appear as if it were a dream sequence or something.  It’s not something that I would necessarily call bad but it seems inappropriate for this series, especially how the art style contradicts the other series where these characters appear.

            In the end, Old Man Logan was easily the most disappointing series of the Battleworld Series and by the time it was half way through the idea of reading it was one that filled me with a depressed resignation.  The story never went anywhere. Wolverine didn’t seem to be all that phased by the adventure when all was said and done and the artwork was just an eyesore.  Ordinarily it could easily be written off as a disposable Wolverine story but the fact that they had to make this a continuation of an otherwise great storyline makes it all the more insulting.  I am interested in seeing what they have in-store for this character in the new Marvel universe, but this series is only meant for kindling.

Verdict

Burn

Planet Hulk

            This is a series that is perfectly acceptable for what is, even if it doesn’t aspire to be much.  The story follows a version of Captain America as he travels through a Battleworld Zone known as Greenland with his faithful T-Red companion, Devil and a Hulk creature known as Doc Green, as he attempts to rescue his friend Bucky from a Greenland ruler known as The Red King.  What follows is a perfectly serviceable road trip comic where the three encounter and fight their way through various creatures, Captain and Doc argue about morality and ultimately arrive at the main fortress of The Red King where a few twists are revealed, (some more predictable then others), and the fates of our main characters are ultimately decided.  As I said, it’s perfectly acceptable for what it is.  The artwork is good, you find yourself invested in the main characters’ struggle, and it ends on appropriately bittersweet note.  I say give it a read if you have nothing else better to do but don’t expect the next Watchmen out of it.

Verdict

Browse

Spider-Verse

            Oh dear lord.  Aside from the awful artwork I really don’t have anything to say on this series.  It has a good setup to what could have been a potentially great series but seemed content to just have the characters mull around discussing their shared memory problems while other characters went back and forth from being bad guys to questionable allies to bad guys again all the while supported by the laziest artwork I’ve ever seen in a modern mainstream comic.  Don’t waste your time with it and I refuse to waste any more of mine on it.

Verdict

Burn

The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows

            It’s good.  Read it.  It has fantastic artwork, knows how to play the family angle in all the right ways, shows why Peter being married, having a child and being is probably not a good idea and gives us an interesting new villain for our main characters to fight.  Check it out.  It’s a fun book.

Verdict

Read

Armor Wars

            Now here is yet another a comic that had a fantastic setup but couldn’t quite follow up on it due to it being a five issue miniseries.  The story takes place in the city of Technopolis; a massively polluted city where people can only survive by staying in Iron Man suites where Tony Stark himself rules and follows a series of events that were caused by the murder of this world’s Spider-Man.  At first it seems like it’s going to be a story of corporate espionage instead of the traditional Heroes V.S. Villains story but sadly this isn’t the case.  Talking about it at length is unfortunately not possible because the series is built around twists that start roughly halfway through the story and continue on until the end but I can say that while the twists are good, they ultimately can’t help but undercut the promise of the initial setup.  The artwork is appropriate and serviceable, given the setup of the city, but it can’t help but feel overdesigned, yet still somehow fails to leave the reader with anything all that interesting to look at outside of the novelty of seeing Wilson Fisk and a Thor powered Rhodey running around in Iron Man armor.  Still, when all is said and done, it’s certainly not a bad series and I say take a look if you have some spare time, provided that you can ignore just how much better it could have been.

Verdict

Browse

Civil War

            Aside from Old Man Logan and Secret Wars itself, this was the series that clearly had the most promise to it but only succeeded in being one of its biggest disappointments.  The premise is simple.  The Marvel Civil War continued but rather than actually being about a civil war between the various super heroes led by Captain America and Tony Stark, the series instead decides to be about Tony investigating an assassination on a woman who was determined to bring about peace between the two while Steve begins preparations for an all-out attack on Tony’s forces.  The problem is that the whole thing feels like the ending to a much more interesting story.  Throughout it, they talk about an ongoing war that essentially split the country in half, with Stark gaining the eastern parts of the U.S. while Rogers gained the western half all the while with Tony convincing the other nations of the world to view Captain America’s west as a rouge state and refuse to trade with them.  And to me that sounds like a much more interesting story then discovering who offed the peace ambassador at the tail end of the war.  Even ignoring all of that, the story itself isn’t terribly interesting, featuring a plot that consists of only said war preparations on Rogers’s side and a subpar mystery on Stark’s side that has such a lackluster payoff that you’ll find yourself rolling your eyes in indifference at.

            In the end it’s certainly not the worst story that I’ve read in the various Battleworld series but it was one that simply failed to register any type of emotional response from me, and to be honest, that easily the worst thing any kind of art can do.

Verdict

Ignore

Years of Future Past

            And finally we have Years of Future Past, a comic with a premise so overused that I’m genuinely shocked that anyone even bothered to use it in 2015.  The premise is essentially that President Kelly, a human antagonist of the X-Men, has turned the world into that of Days of Future Past, minus the Sentinels ruling everything, and the older mutants plan on using the younger ones as a means to turn popular opinion, (and perhaps Kelly’s) towards the idea that not all mutants are bad while the sentinels continue to hunt them and other rouge mutants.  The key problem with this series is that it’s essentially using a setting that has been used far too many times over the past thirty years and fails to stand out from the crowd, lacking the time traveling intrigue of the original Days of Future Past and Terminator franchise and fails to portray an interesting war between the Sentinels and mutants.  In truth, there is probably more to say about this comic but in all honesty, I can barely remember a thing about it so I can’t imagine it’s really worth your time either.

Verdict

Ignore

            And that wraps up my thoughts on the various Battleworld series.  Some were good, some were bad, some were great but a lot of them simply felt pointless.  I get the impression that if these series had been allowed to last a few more issues they could have been truly great stories in their own right as opposed to being simply okay ones.  As it stands, the new All New Marvel universe is now in full swing and so far the lineup has been impressive.  While I’m not sure that Marvel really needed to do this whole Secret Wars thing to reboot their universe, (as it stands, most of the series are virtually unchanged), the good series were more than worth my time and made the whole thing worthwhile and I despite their apparent redundancy, I still recommend that you give them a read.

            So until next time, please be sure to follow the site, like the Facebook page, and follow me on twitter.  Until then, let’s hope that the future of Marvel remains bright.