Today, Drew, Patrick, and Spencer discuss Deadpool’s Secret Secret Wars 2, Thors 1, Runaways 1, and Old Man Logan 2.

This is an imaginary story…aren’t they all?

Alan Moore, Superman 423

Drew: Comics continuity is a funny thing. We generally understand characters in their broad strokes, but those broad strokes can change from time to time. Alan Moore’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow” was written at one such juncture, saying goodbye to one era of Superman before Crisis on Infinite Earths ushered in a new one. But that goodbye doesn’t have to be permanent; events can be revisited, recontextualized, altered, or even undone. All of those approaches are fair game during Secret Wars, which affords us more time with characters, settings, and situations we might have thought were gone forever.

Deadpool’s Secret Secret Wars 2

Drew: No series plays with the notion of revisionism more than Deadpool’s Secret Secret Wars, which sets out to tell the untold story of Deadpool’s escapades during the original Secret Wars event. That idea was more than clever enough to carry us through the first issue, but writer Cullen Bunn isn’t done twisting the knife, skipping the story ahead to make the events of the issue a flashback. That is, it’s a revisionist history within a revisionist history, turning the often convoluted continuity of comics in on itself.

Lest that sound to highfalutin’, there’s still plenty of space reserved for Wade’s antics. Bunn seems to relish the necessarily inconsequential (or at least somehow forgettable) role Wade plays in Secret Wars, and has a lot of fun detailing a fight with Spider-Man that is ultimately wiped from Spidey’s memory. I suspect something similar is coming down the pike for however Wade manages to rescue all of Marvel’s heroes (perhaps with the help of the healer girl) that will leave Wade as the totally unsung savior of Secret Wars. For now, though, I’m having a lot of fun seeing Wade utterly dismissed by everyone as an obnoxious boob.

Patrick: Yeah, man, Deadpool never gets any respect, even when his most fundamental qualities are saving the day. Hell, Reed basically invites Wade to enrage the Hulk to keep them all from being squished by a goddamned mountain. That makes Deadpool useful by virtue of his obnoxiousness — that’s not a trick we see achieved in every Deadpool story.

I’m really taken with Mateo Lolli’s artwork in this issue, which manages to adroitly capture the Saturday Morning Cartoon vibe of the original Secret Wars. Coupled with Ruth Redmond’s highly contrasting colors, Lolli’s pencils craft both action sequences and moments of stillness that simultaneously make sense and are graphically compelling. I’m sure we’ll get around to discussing Andrea Sorrentino’s artwork in this week’s Old Man Logan, but that’s a good example of compelling graphical concepts trumping clarity — Lolli makes no such comprise. Wade’s fight with the Lizard is a masterclass in clear storytelling, getting so detailed that we can track the motion of the Lizard’s claws and tail with each strike. Look how he even gives us the frantic waggle of the tail post-separation.

The fight with Spider-Man is equally clear — the yellow backgrounds allow both character’s red costumes to pop on the page.

Thors 1

Patrick: While I sorta can’t believe that it takes 10 pages to get away from the initial crime scene, Thors 1 manage to successfully state and explore the fun concept at the heart of Secret Wars: the genre mash-up. In this case, Jason Aaron is mashing up Thor, which is one of his regular writing gigs, with procedural police drama. That interminable first scene has all the hallmarks of a cop show: two grizzeled vets on the force — partners who remember the bad old days; the rookie in the corner, puking his guts out; a shit-talking detective that thinks he could do better. It’s amazing how exciting those tropes are when they’re grafted on to Thors. Secret Wars may have been promising readers that we’d get to see old versions of characters and concepts interacting, but I don’t think any of those interactions are quite as fun as a pair of hot-shot Thors being called into Commissioner Odin’s office for a verbal dressing-down. Plus, the nerdy lab-guy-type is Frog Thor. And the petty perps they bust in lieu of finding any real leads are Ghost Riders. Everything from the Big Book of Police Procedural Tropes is funnier with Battleworld specifics.

Also, I love that jamming these two concepts (or three, if you want to count ‘Battleworld’ and ‘Thor’ as separate concepts) produces the hilariously innovative story of a serial killer that’s killing the same person across all known realities. I’ve never seen those NCIS guys tackle one of those, have you? When we finally discover the identity of the body on the final page (which I totally saw coming, but giggled like a lunatic anyway), there’s a neat sense of deja vu — after all, it was just Aaron’s last issue of Thor that ended with a final-page reveal of Jane Foster. How cool is that?

Spencer: Very cool, Patrick, especially since, as you alluded, we now have a version of Jane Foster as Thor in play. The fact that she’s not only our very own Earth-616 Thor, but that she remembers the pre-Battleworld universe (as shown in Secret Wars 3) means that there’s room for this story to develop in a lot of interesting directions. If Jane!Thor shows up (as this issue’s cover insinuates she will) and leaks some “blasphemous” information about Doom’s godhood — or lack of — how will these loyal Thors react?

Now that I think of it, Thor actually makes quite a handy parallel to the police. As a warrior prince, Thor is good at following orders, working as part of an unit, and has an unquenchable thirst for justice, but also has a history of arrogance and letting his righteous fury get the better of him. In many ways Thor represents both the good and the bad sides of the police force, so it should be fascinating to see how these Thors react — both as individuals and as an unit — to the harsh truth still out there to learn.

Also worth mentioning: our very own Odinson, the poor unworthy former-Thor, puts in a brief yet memorable cameo.

If these Thors are all filling stock police drama roles, then Odinson’s the former cop with a chip on his shoulder. Poor guy; Odinson can’t catch a break, can he?

Runaways 1

Spencer: High school never ends — not even on Battleworld, apparently. Noelle Stevenson and Sanford Greene’s Runaways 1 manages to perfectly capture all the aspects that make high school stories so much fun, and much of its success can be attributed to its colorful cast of characters. By combining typical high school archetypes with established Marvel characters, Stevenson creates a cast that feels familiar and realistic without ever letting them become stereotyped. I feel like I know these kids: Jubilee’s the cool kid who may be too cool for her own good, Amadeus Cho’s the bullied nerd who brings a lot of his torture on himself, and Skaar’s a gentle giant who somehow wound up befriending an idiot and now spends all his time defending him (I’ve known more than a few of those). I especially see a lot of my high school self in Sanna, who is obsessed with following the rules despite it causing nothing but trouble for her.

It hits a bit close to home for me, but I love that Stevenson can so effortlessly tap into these kinds of universal truths. I’m also impressed by how diverse the cast is: Stevenson includes characters of all races, sexual orientations, and personality types without ever drawing too much attention to it (or too little, for that matter). I’m intrigued to see what’ll happen when these kids inevitably run away (although God Doom and Valeria have it out for them no matter what happens); I’m so enamored with these characters that I’ll follow them anywhere.

Drew: Few first issues can boast successfully introducing even one character, let alone eleven, and while some of the cast is certainly more fleshed out than others, I feel like I have a sense who all of these kids are. Other writers might rely on our familiarity with the characters, but Stevenson basically does this on hard mode, bringing together an entirely new Runaways cast (aside from the obvious inclusion of Molly Hayes). A lesser series might be hobbled by a brand new cast, but Stevenson manages to tap into the idea of the Runaways so succinctly that it hardly matters. Actually, the tone is so well-matched, its kind of difficult to say what actually makes it work so well — is it the diverse cast? The well-observed characters? The “kids vs. the world” set-up? I have no choice but to chalk it up to “all of the above,” and say that the creative team really knocked it out of the park.

Old Man Logan 2

Drew: Of course, a big part of the fun of Secret Wars is mashing up different eras and versions of Marvel characters and seeing what happens. Old Man Logan 2 sets out to do exactly that, which the titular OML interacting with the X-Men circa Age of Apocalypse, but in true Brian Michael Bendis form, they never get past asking each other who they are. It’s a frustratingly decompressed story that doesn’t quite know what to do with itself. Tight-lipped Logan isn’t a great match for Bendis’ signature banter, and the mystery around where this story is taking place handicaps the artist Anrdrea Sorrentino’s range. The issue doesn’t resolve into a clear setting until the final image, which might not be enough to hold on to.

The first issue lacked for pacing as well, but it made up for it in a coherent mood. Here, it feels like the characters are so caught up in whether Logan is a time traveler (the go-to assumption for all X-Men [especially when they’re featuring in Bendis titles]) they fail to even establish the mood of their world. What do the characters in Age of Apocalypse feel like? Well, I suppose it would be giving away the game to hint that they feel anything. I tend to be okay with Bendis’ “one event per issue” pacing, but this time really feels like withholding that reveal got in the way of the storytelling.

Patrick: Yeah, the story is moving at a glacial pace and refuses to be clear about how it’s characters are motivated. Which means most of the value I see in this issue is in Sorrentino’s artwork. Generally, Sorrentino isn’t the most effective storyteller, so maybe it’s a blessing that the story itself is little more than a series of cool lookin’ images. Weirdly, there are two title pages for this issue; the first of which is also kind of the Previously On… — a sizable wall of text that doesn’t really clarify anything. The second title page, however, is a little more upfront in delivering the central idea of this series — the lone panel of a Mjolner held aloft and sizzling with lighting. That’s the series: a totally bad ass image, realized in high contrast by Sorrentino and colorist Marcelo Maiolo. Like, I almost feel that our discussion-based, narrative-focused conversations can’t really do the issue justice. There’s very little story or character being represented in this panel, but it’s clearly a masterful work of visionary pop art.

Maiolo’s coloring alone is fucking crazy. Look at it!

Did you read some Secret Wars tie-ins that we didn’t? Sure you did! There are holes in our pull list. Holes that you’re encouraged to fill with your comments. Let’s keep talking about Secret Wars.