In 1984, there was Secret Wars. In 2015, there was Secret Wars. But in between? There was Secret War.

Yes, it is very confusing. Your Major Spoilers Retro Review of Secret War #1 awaits!

SECRET WAR #1

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciler: Gabriele Dell’Otto
Inker: Gabriele Dell’Otto
Colorist: Gabriele Dell’Otto
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Andy Schmidt
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Cover Price: $3.50
Current Near-Mint Pricing: $10.00
Release Date: February 4, 2004

Previously in Secret War: The head of SHIELD since the Cold War era, Nick Fury was once a bastion of decency in what Shang-Chi called “games of deceit and death.” A conspiracy involving Life Model Decoys forced him to bring down his own organization, leading to the end of the Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-enforcement Division. Fury himself rebuilt the organization as  the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate, filling the ranks with hand-picked agents that he knew were all on the up-and-up. Even so, Colonel Fury took the security of SHIELD seriously, having seen it collapse first-hand, which leads us to the story of how he began his own secret war with a sovereign nation.

Of course, in order for us to understand how it began, we first have to see how it ended.
Our story opens with an assassination attempt, on the life of Hero for Hire, Luke Cage. The woman’s identity is supposed to be secret at this point, so you might think that the dark and shadowy art is to protect that secret, but it’s actually going to be like this all issue, so buckle up. The strange woman attacks, causing the apartment that Luke and Jessica Jones call home to explode, leaving Luke in a coma. When Fury arrives to check in on him, Luke’s best friend Iron Fist is surprised to find out that they even know each other, but it’s Jessica who asks the armor-piercing question.
The story then flashes back to a year earlier, when the minor-league villain called Killer Shrike got pinched by a SHIELD strike team. Using very brutal and probably illegal techniques, agents of SHIELD force him to work for them in the hopes of getting close to the man known as The Tinkerer, believed to be responsible for the tech wizardry that keeps many of the minor villains of the Marvel Universe operating. The trail leads to Latveria, home of Doctor Doom, who was dead at the time. But a country doesn’t stop running just because the king dies.
The acting prime minister, Lucia von Bardas, has been bankrolling The Tinkerer to resupply villains, which means that they’re acting in league with a foreign government and are, by definition, terrorists. Once again, Dell’Otto’s painted art reproduces as incredibly dark and muddy on the page, making it nearly impossible to see who Fury is talking to, but through dialogue, we find out that it’s the President himself!
When Nick advises that he has prepared a tactical response to the situation, though, W shuts him down, advising that von Bardas is in power because of U.S. support, and that the Secretary of State has established a cordial relationship with her. As such, the situation will be managed diplomatically. As he leaves the White House, a clearly devastated Fury finds himself forced to make another in a series of impossible decisions.
Cut back to Nick, standing at Cage’s bedside, asking the important question: “What have I done?” It’s actually a very compelling first act, even with the darkness of the art (which I honestly attribute to the limitations of comic-book printing 20 years ago), but like so many Bendis tales, it’s just a fragment. If this had been the first third of a story, or even the first half, it could have been an incredibly successful comic book. As it stands, Secret War #1 is mostly a curiosity of a forgotten age, a paranoid thriller full of post-9/11 tropes, circular Bendis dialogue, and art so dark it’s hard to tell Iron Fist from Jessica Jones, earning 2 out of 5 stars overall.

Subsequent issues would show that the titular Secret War was Fury taking Daredevil, Cage, Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Captain America into Latveria and attempting a super-powered coup to overthrow von Bardas, taking the 9/11 parallels to even more obvious places. The only real fallout from this five-issue miniseries was the formation of the New Avengers, featuring all of those characters, an era of Avengers history that feels more alien and dated than Cap’s Kooky Quartet, or the madness of The Crossing does to today’s reader.

---

Dear Spoilerite,

At Major Spoilers, we strive to create original content that you find interesting and entertaining. Producing, writing, recording, editing, and researching requires significant resources. We pay writers, podcast hosts, and other staff members who work tirelessly to provide you with insights into the comic book, gaming, and pop culture industries. Help us keep MajorSpoilers.com strong. Become a Patron (and our superhero) today.

SECRET WAR #1

37%

37%

A Promising Premise

The fully-painted art by Gabriel Dell'Otto is too dark to comprehend, while the script has germs of utter brilliance that get shot down by excessive decompression, giving us a perfect encapsulation of post-Jemas Marvel.

It's a an intriguing start that ends up going nowhere.

• Writing

  3
• Art

  7
• Coloring

  1
• User Ratings (0 Votes)
  0