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 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, 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!
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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 for all of this in that if she was outside in the open air she could really do some damage.
The crowning X-Indignity is that Spidey pimp-swats Wolverine away effortlessly (literally, the sound effect is “SWAT!”), without even chipping a spider-nail on Logan’s adamantium jaw.
I once agreed to a debate with former DC editor Dan Raspler over who would in a fight, Spider-Man or Batman. As I’d written both Amazing and Web of Spider-Man (and Marvel Adventures Spider-Man, for the kiddos), I was charged with the pro-Peter perspective, which meant, going in, I knew mine was the losing side.
Not because I think that Spider-Man would lose in a fight to Batman—quite the opposite, in fact, all things being equal.
But things are never equal. I knew going in that the only thing Batman really has over Spider-Man is that everybody loves Batman, which isn’t just the only thing, it’s everything. People want their favorites to win. Also, Batman has had a major superpower for a while now, which is, “I Thought of That,” like that annoying kid on the playground who proclaims he’s rubber and you’re glue.
No matter how much I argued Spider-Man is stronger and faster than Batman, has a danger sense, and is, if not as smart as Bruce Wayne, is in the general vicinity of his intelligence and gadgeteering level, Dan just said, Batman would have like anti-Spider-Sense jammers set up all over Gotham and/or New York, he’d have laid nerve gas bombs down before the fight started, Batman is cool and Spider-Man is a dork, et cetera. (Nothing against Dan—he was just advocating for his client.)
In audience voting Dan trounced me handily. But then I realized this was a libertarian society where we were debating. Of course they sided with the billionaire! It’s an outcome as ridiculously lopsided as Spider-Man beating up all the X-Men in a page and a half.
The correct answer to any “Who would win in a fight” question, Dr. Manhattan vs. Squirrel Girl on down, is “Whoever the writer picks.” The Spider-Man versus X-Men fight in Secret Wars really reads to me now like scribe Jim Shooter is doing a weird repressed-jealousy thing beating up on Marvel’s most popular series (which, believe me, is the kind of petty nonsense that still happens all the time in mainstream comics).
More stuff happens in this issue, like Magneto putting the moves on Wasp, Enchantress putting the moves on Thor, and the villains attacking the heroes’ base, but I have used so much wordage harping on this one scene I will have to pick all that up with the continuation of this tale next issue…
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CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS #3: “Oblivion Upon Us”
This is basically a continuation of last issue’s plot line, following various groups of heroes protecting (thank you to the commenter who set me straight on that point last time) the Monitor’s big-ass PerezTech McGuffin Towers in various parts of history: this time World War II and the Old West, both of which teem with heroes, so strap yourself in for so much name-dropping you feel like you’re reading Who’s Who of the DC Universe, but with a plot.
There are so many characters in this series that this issue alone introduces two that were completely new to me in 2024: Kole, a crystal-generating heroine not named “Amethyst” that as a Teen Titan for a hot second was voiced by the justly ubiquitous Tara Strong in the 2003 cartoon; and Flower, a member of Easy Co. who has, uh, flowers in his helmet. I looked up Flower assuming that he was introduced to Our Army at War in the late 1960s to appeal to the hippie crowd, but all my internet search showed was that he used to be called Farmer Boy.
As the encroaching Nothingness continues to croach, we get a slew of character deaths.
The Flash dies, again, in front of the Teen Titans, Batman and the Outsiders, and Superman. Said Nothingness kills Nighthawk (no, not that Nighthawk, this Nighthawk) and the Legion’s Kid Psycho, which sounds like a Grant Morrison Vertigo title that should have been. The Losers get killed by the shadow minions—apparently it is mandatory in every DCU-wide crossover that the Losers must die. (If you haven’t read the Kirby run on that title, you absolutely should.)
I bet this Caped Carnage meant a lot more in 1985 before knocking off heroes became de rigueur. I remember I was at a friend’s birthday party at a Brooklyn bar right before the Fantastic Four issue in which Johnny Storm died came out. That comic was shipped in a sealed baggie because the identity of the FF member who was going to eat it was supposed to be a secret and this way you couldn’t learn the ending by just flipping through.
One of the other guests, who I did not know, proudly proclaimed he had pre-ordered a ton of those issues as he knew they were going to skyrocket in value. Because I am dumb, and was likely a little buzzed, I must have made a noise or rolled my eyes at his naiveté.
Our would-be speculator immediately registered my skepticism and proceeded to try and pump me for insider information about his prize investment for the rest of the evening: Did I know something he didn’t? Was the mystery dead Fantasticker not going to stay dead for long? Marvel couldn’t possibly do that to their readers, could they?!
I swore up and down I didn’t know any behind-the-scenes details and he just misinterpreted my expression. In truth, not only was I at the Marvel Summit where Jonathan Hickman laid out his entire FF plan, including Johnny’s death, Hickman also said at this same meeting that said death would be exceedingly temporary. So, yes, I repeatedly lied to this guy’s face.
Not that it really mattered, because he did not believe a word I said. His questioning went on for at least an hour, and he literally followed me out the door and down the sidewalk in the middle of a freezing January night peppering me with questions. Unfortunately, I lived just a few blocks from the bar and I did not want this maniac following me home!
I finally managed to convince him that I rolled my eyes because I thought Speculating is a net negative for the comics industry—which is true—but he should definitely pick up his truckload of Fantastic Four #587s as scheduled (and not stiff the poor retailer, geez).
Then I somehow managed to flee into the snow-swept night. I wonder if he’s still trying to unload unopened copies on eBay?
Maybe this is the guy?
I’m telling you this long anecdote about the Big Two suckering their readers into caring about Hero Death because I do not have a whole lot to say about Crisis on Infinite Earths #3. In the business we call this kind of issue “moving the football down the field.” A perfectly serviceable comic, but nothing terribly memorable happens, unlike in Secret Wars, where something super memorable happens, if for the wrong reasons.
Also, I am already sick of these lame shadow minions. I get the necessity of keeping the Big Bad shadowed in a Darkseid-esque profile, but I’m feeling like this thing is really going to kick off next issue. Until then, though:
ROUND 3 WINNER: SECRET WARS
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Our Tally So Far: SECRET WARS 2, CRISIS 1
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MORE
— COMIC BOOK DEATH MATCH: Secret Wars #2 vs. Crisis on Infinite Earths #2. Click here.
— The Complete COMIC BOOK DEATH MATCH Index. Click here.
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13th Dimension contributor Fred Van Lente is an award-winning, New York Times-bestselling comics writer, as well as an occasional novelist, teacher, and playwright. Sign up for updates on his upcoming projects and check out the trailer for his comics-writing course at his web site, fredvanlente.com.
March 16, 2024
RE: {Spiderman] “has a danger sense” [compared to Batman]
Quite true. But I remind everyone that Batman had this too for a brief time–as brought you by, of all people, Bob Haney, which 13th Dimension just recently celebrated in a recent posting for his rather creative ways of storytelling.
This was Batman’s “Bat Sense,” which I’m sure was borrowed from Spidey himself (though I have no documentation of this–but c’mon, who else could it be?). I’m unsure when Haney first made use of it, or exactly if Batman acquired it or was treated just as a given–and it’s one of Haney’s noted creative moments, perhaps a riff on how bats sense things in their nocturnal environment via their sonar-like echo-location (my guess now that I’m older). But it was noted, as I remember in my kiddie days, during DC’s heyday of the 100-page Super Spectacular era.
At least two issues of The Brave and the Bold reference it: # 112, “The Impossible Escape” (a Batman / Mr. Miracle team up), where an armed gang is assaulting the Gotham Art Museum to steal certain Egyptian artifacts. Batman, Comm. Gordon and his cops have just tear-gassed the place and begin to rush the building when Bats suddenly tackles Gordon to the ground as a bomb goes off inside the museum:
Gordon: “I’ll have the badge of the man who tossed that grenade!”
Batman: “That wasn’t from outside Gordon! Luckily my Bat-sense warned me! Come on!”
Then the very next B&B issue notes it again: #113, “The 50-Story Killer” (a Batman / Metal Men team up). Here Bruce Wayne and his entire Wayne Foundation building and employees are held hostage by an armed team whose leader has a vendetta against Batman. So, this was another Haney creative moment by conceiving of a “skyscraper-jacking”–as yet another riff on the 1970s “skyjackings” where commercial airplanes are seized by armed groups–and became very frequent from the late 60s to the early 70s (“In a five-year period [1968–1972] the world experienced 326 hijack attempts, or one every 5.6 days”–Wikipedia).
Here Batman escapes an elevator before it gets shot up the gang, and as he’s climbing his way up the elevator shaft he says to himself: “Good thing my ‘Bat-sense’ warned me to exit from that elevator –“.
There might be other instances, but these two moments I’ve always remembered (and I still have the B&B issues) that, like Spidey before him, Batman had (or acquired) a Bat-sense to warn him of danger. If actually inspired by bats echo-location skills one wonders if it should have been kept as an ingrained ability. . . .
March 17, 2024
I remember this. And I’m glad it never caught on!
March 17, 2024
Yeah. Thinking it through, you are correct Dan. Makes more sense for Spiderman to have a Spidey-sense since bitten by a radioactive (or genetically-enhanced) spider (do spiders have some special communication ability–apart from things getting ensnared in and so tugging on their in their webs?).
Such a skill is harder to explain for Bats, as he was never bitten by a radioactive (or genetically-enhanced) bat–even it the “Bat-sense” might be seen as a riff on a bat’s echolocation abilities. Maybe an ability more justified for Man-Bat as so enhanced with his serum extract than Batman.
Thanks Dan, your posts are a fun read–even if here I have to agree with Shaen that Crisis will always trump Secret Wars for me. And I esp. liked the 3rd issue of Crisis with all the Earth 1 heroes now coming to the fore in response to Anti-Monitor anti-matter machinations.
March 16, 2024
Fred, I very much enjoyed your article; however, no issue of Secret Wars is better than any issue of Crisis. Nuff Said! :p
March 17, 2024
I cannot understand Secret Wars winning any issue on issue match up, Perez is a far better artist than Zeck and SW is the most colossal dreck Shooter ever wrote.
March 29, 2024
You’re welcome and thanks for the shout-out.