GREEN CAPE EDITION: Lotsa Doom and lotsa Spectre… 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 Heroes 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. And that series is also being re-released monthly. (It started 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 Crisis 5, Secret Wars 4. (The Secret Wars #10 Facsimile Edition is out Wednesday, Oct. 2.) Ring the bell, Fred! — By FRED VAN LENTE Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #10: “Death to the Beyonder!”  Dr. Doom manages to absorb all the energy from Galactus and Galactus’ house into himself, giving him near-omniscence. Jim Shooter suffers from what like I call “Gene Roddenbery Syndrome,” which is a compulsion to make your characters meet and/or fight God. Shooter does this here, he did this (better) in The Avengers—more on that later—he did it with the New Universe in Star Brand, and he did it over at Valiant in the Unity crossover. The problem with big-g-Gods, at least like the kind depicted in your Bibles and Torahs and such, is that they’re not very dramatically interesting. Stories are about characters wanting things, then going and pursuing those things, but gods want for nothing. Sure, they boss us mortals around and deliver commandments and smitings, but that’s for the faithful to go do something about. In video game terms, gods make for great quest-givers, but terrible player characters. Secret Wars #10 proves this point by giving us some very cool Mike Zeck panels of God-Doom looking into his own brain, and turning a spying Captain Marvel into a solid-light hologram, and not much else. Most of the issue is an incomprehensible (literally) battle between God-Doom and the Beyonder, ending with Vic declaring, two issues before the cover says this series ends, that the “War is over.” I’m not buying it! There’s a kind of pointless subplot where Wolverine accuses Captain America of being a racist out of nowhere; then, when Cap helps Logan rescue the imprisoned...