Secret Wars Battle Report, Prelude

Attention, Marvel Comics readers! Starting next week, an eight-part crossover called Secret Wars will smash the Marvel multiverse into tiny pieces and make all the surviving characters fight like a bunch of action figures in the little fists of a six-year-old. At the end of the summer, Marvel higher-ups promise us the landscape of the stories we’ve loved for decades will be a much different place. Over a dozen tie-in books have been announced, including “Last Days” issues of some current titles like Loki and Magneto, miniseries like Infinity Gauntlet, and ongoing series like the female Avenger team, A-Force. Some of these books are going to be creative gold, spotlighting amazing new talents like Noelle Stevenson on Runaways or revisiting beloved stories like Inferno and Spider-Island. Other books will be as bad as that issue of Secret Wars 2 where Spider-Man taught the Beyonder how to poop. While this battle rages every Wednesday, check in on Saturday nights as Bam Smack Pow catches you up on what went down in the crossover, which books you need to make sense of the ongoing story, and which tie-ins are a waste of your time.

This week, all we got was:

Secret Wars #0

What happened: Valeria Richards, genius daughter of the Fantastic Four’s Reed and Sue Richards, tells the rest of the Future Foundation that they have to build a life raft because their universe will be destroyed by collision with another universe. Her brother, Franklin, quickly explains that the Illuminati tried saving the colliding worlds and have even destroyed some planets and allowed Thanos’s cabal of cosmic monsters burn down the multiverse, but they failed to stop the damage. The issue closes with the Foundation kids watching a bunch of their heroes flying toward a bunch of heroes from the Ultimate Universe, ready to throw down for global survival.

Was it good: Nope. Not at all. Hickman has been doing these stories for a couple of years in the main Avengers titles, and the six summary panels do not cover the plot he set up. Readers of the Avengers books don’t need this recap; non-readers won’t be able to understand more than a few words. Sweet cover, though.

Is it necessary: Nope. There is a zero percent chance the first Secret Wars book will finish without explaining the Incursions story lines, making this pamphlet redundant.

Should you buy it: Nope. It’s the Free Comic Book Day offering from Marvel, and it’s not even worth that.

Here’s hoping next week’s Secret Wars #1 delivers more on Hickman’s epic story, and don’t forget to check in at BamSmackPow.com every Saturday night for the weekly Battle Report!

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