COMIC BOOK DEATH MATCH: Secret Wars #3 vs. Crisis on Infinite Earths #3
Batman, Spider-Man and Fred Van Lente walk into a bar in Brooklyn… Fred Van Lente’s COMIC BOOK DEATH MATCH is back and better than ever! Now, as a monthly feature for 2024! See, Marvel this year is celebrating the 40th anniversary of 1984’s 12-issue Marvel Super Hero Secret Wars by re-releasing each installment as a Facsimile Edition every month. And of course, what is the DC event it’s always compared to? Why, 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, of course. And that series will be re-released monthly too, starting in April! It’s a great time to revisit two maxiseries that redefined comics for good and for bad. You can click here to find the previous entries, but right now the tally stands at 1-1. (The Secret Wars #3 Facsimile Edition is out now.) Ring the bell, Fred! — By FRED VAN LENTE SECRET WARS #3: “Tempest Without, Crisis Within!” (Released March 6, 1984) Confession time: When I was 12, I absolutely adored this issue. I loathed the X-Men and loved Spider-Man. Peter Parker was a wiseass nerd, just like me, and Uncanny X-Men seemed to me to be an impenetrable Oppression Porn soap opera. I guess I’ve always had a knee-jerk revulsion to “Born Special” stories, whether it’s mutants, Harry Potter, or Kwisatz Haderaches. So when the X-ers catch Spidey eavesdropping on them deciding to decamp to fellow mutant Magneto’s base (after the Master of Magnetism tried to something-something the heroes’ base last issue) and he kicks the crap out of them in a page and a half while escaping, 12-year-old me was in ecstasy. A character I liked was beating up some characters I didn’t like: Fan Catnip! When you actually have to write characters, though, you must turn off your Fan Brain and learn how to empathize with all of them. Years later, I’d write a surprising number of X-Men stories at Marvel and became a lot more sympathetic to them. I’ve since done a 180 on what was once my favorite Secret Wars bit. For one thing, Spider-Man’s reaction to the X-Men deciding to move out is to drop out of a ceiling vent and bitch-slap Charles Xavier, a bald man in a tie, which seems wildly out of character. He webs Colossus, Rogue and Nightcrawler in that many panels. He dodges a lightning bolt from Storm, who offers a kind of lame justification...
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