Secret Wars Battle Report, Week Thirty-Three
By Matt Conner
This week has the last of the tie-in books, Ultimate End, reaching its… right. The War officially ends January 13, so let’s dive into this book while we still can!
Ultimate End #5
What happened: Miles Morales interrupts the battle between the heroes of the main and Ultimate Marvel Universes, and the telepaths on either side connect everyone to learn what Miles knows about life before the Incursions. They unite to take out Doom, depicted by a repeating 70-panel double-page grid where characters disappear as they’re killed in battle against Doom. After the world goes white, Miles wakes up in New York, overjoyed to find out that his best friend Ganke and his mother are both alive and well.
Was it good: No. The repeating grid bit was a cool idea but impossible to really read closely, like the great interrogations in Powers but exaggerated out of any utility. In this version, Miles is a pre-Incursion refugee, but Peter Parker isn’t anymore, and the heroes are involved in the final battle in a way that doesn’t show up in any of the Secret Wars pages we’ve seen so far. As a send-off to fifteen years of the Ultimate Universe, there aren’t very many panels with those characters, and the dominant one is the one we all know survives Battleworld to become the Spider-Man of New York.
Is it necessary: No. I don’t think it even lines up with the main crossover, and if you really cared enough about the Ultimate Universe to need to say goodbye, you would have bought enough issues of their books to keep them from euthanasia. Happy trails, Ultimate Universe. Maybe you should have gotten eaten by Galactus after Age Of Ultron and avoided this cruddy hash of a sendoff.
Should you buy it: Don’t. Take this week off and save your money for the final issue of Secret Wars next month.
Essential Reading:
Really, just Secret Wars. Well done, Marvel.
Recommended Tie-ins:
A-Force, Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows, Captain Marvel And The Carol Corps, House Of M, Inferno, Inhumans: Attilan Rising, Marvel Zombies, Old Man Logan, Star-Lord & Kitty Pryde, Thors, X-Men ’92 (digital version), and Ms. Marvel or Silk (Last Days).
Good Books That Just Don’t Make Top-Tier:
1602 Witch Hunter Angela, 1872, Age Of Ultron Vs. Marvel Zombies, Captain Britain And The Mighty Defenders, Civil War, Deadpool’s Secret Secret Wars, Ghost Racers, Giant-Size Little Marvel: AVX, Hank Johnson, Agent Of Hydra, Howard The Human, Infinity Gauntlet, Korvac Saga, Master Of Kung Fu, M.O.D.O.K. Assassin, Red Skull, Runaways, Secret Wars 2099, Secret Wars: Battleworld, Secret Wars Journal, Secret Wars: Secret Love (for two stories), Secret Wars Too, Siege, Spider Island, Spider-Verse, Squadron Sinister, Weirdworld, Where Monsters Dwell, X-Men ’92 (print version), and X-Tinction Agenda.
Books To Skip:
Age Of Apocalypse, Armor Wars, E Is For Extinction, Future Imperfect, Guardians Of Knowhere, Hail Hydra, Mrs. Deadpool And The Howling Commandos, Planet Hulk, Ultimate End, Years Of Future Past, and any of the Last Days titles you weren’t already reading.
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