Tag Archives: Secret Weapons

Jun 1 2018

Harbinger Wars 2 1: Discussion

by Patrick Ehlers and Michael DeLaney

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Patrick: Let’s run a hypothetical scenario: you’ve got access to a shared universe, full of superpowered characters, all of whom you’d classify as either heroes or antiheroes. You want to pit them against each other, in a… I don’t want to call it a “Civil War” for litigious Disney-related reasons… we’ll say it’s a “Harbinger War.” How do you establish sides? Pick an ideological divide and let it split up your character base, right? That’s a fun, toothless way to pit all your favorites against each other! With Harbinger Wars 2, writer Matt Kindt is crafting a more direct criticism of structures of power, casting the dutiful soldiers and company-men as stooges. It’s a clash of superheroes with the courage to say “hey, some of these guys are wrong.” Continue reading →

May 7 2018

Harbinger Wars II Prelude 1: Discussion

By Patrick Ehlers and Ryan Mogge

This article contains SPOILERS for both this issue and Avengers Infinity War. If you haven’t read the issue or seen the movie yet, proceed at your own risk! 

Patrick: Every big superhero event story needs to kick off with some kind of world-altering, morality-testing incident. A kind of “what did you just do?” moment that our characters will spend the next however-many-issues sorting out. Hell, the climax of Avengers Infinity War happened like 15 pages into the first issue of Jim Starlin’s The Infinity Gauntlet. Where writer Eric Heisserer distinguishes his story is in giving that catastrophic action to our hero, and making damn sure we understand why. Continue reading →

Jan 4 2018

Secret Weapons 0: Discussion

by Patrick Ehlers and Spencer Irwin

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

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Patrick: Discovering oneself is an inherently lonely pursuit. In high school, I was discovering my own sexuality, and had left my then-girlfriend to pursue a relationship with this dude from my theatre class. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I ending up nuking that relationship as well, effectively alienating everyone from all social groups I could have ever claimed to be a part of. Looking back on the events, I was surrounded by people who cared deeply about me, but I couldn’t really see them at the time. I saw me, and only me. This was a time that should have been social and should have been about finding my place in a much more interesting world. But that was so hard to see from the perspective of a 17 year old kid who couldn’t stop wrestling with the question “am I gay?” Secret Weapons 0 presents the intense loneliness of self-discovery as an origin story unlike any I’ve ever read. Nikki finds the answers to so many personal questions, but ends up losing just about everything outside of herself. Continue reading →