Posted By Dan Greenfield on Apr 2, 2024 | 1 comment

Moving mountains and moving moments…

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 2-1, in favor of Secret Wars. (The Secret Wars #4 Facsimile Edition is out this week.)

Ring the bell, Fred!

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By FRED VAN LENTE

SECRET WARS #4: “Situation: Hopeless!”

Back in Issue #1, Reed Richards, the Wasp, and Professor X, leaders of the Fantastic Four, Avengers and X-Men, respectively, unanimously handed leadership of the Battleworld-trapped heroes to Captain America, because that A on his forehead doesn’t stand for France, or something.

Cap rewards their trust by promptly falling asleep on watch, then yelling at the rapidly dumbing Hulk for not waking him up. Of course Dr. Doom’s villain force completely gets the drop on them.

Wait, did I say drop on them?! Molecule Man drops an entire mountain range on top of the retreating good guys; they’re only saved because Hulk drops the four heroes he’s carrying and catches the mountains with both hands in a Paul Bunyan-esque display of physics-defying strength.

Bob Layton replaces Mike Zeck as the penciller for this issue and next. It’s a tough act to follow, but he immediately proves himself up to it by crafting one of the best sequences in the run. The trapped heroes will live only until Hulk’s arms give out, unless Reed Richards can craft an Iron Man-boosting device MacGuyvered together from Spider-Man’s web shooters and Hawkeye’s trick arrows.

I try to drill into my students the idea that comics manipulate space similarly to how movies manipulate time. The more panels you add to a page, the more you drag out the action. It has the effect of slowing down time. The nine-panel page of Reed insulting Hulk’s intelligence to make him angry enough to keep holding up the mountain as he hastily jury-rigs a solution is one of the best examples out there of more panels = more tension. A great sequence.

Thor was off canoodling with the captured Enchantress when the villains attacked their base, and being Thor, he tries to take on all 13 of the bad guys by himself. At first you think this is going to lead to a beatdown on the Hercules-in-“Under Siege” variety, but he escapes when Ultron appears to vaporize him and he, just, uh… vanishes? Shooter and Layton do not bother to explain Thor’s escape, and even as a kid it left me scratching my head. (“’Tis a tale long in the telling,” he later tells Cap. Uh—is it, though?)

The treacherous Kang, however, is not so lucky, and Ultron eliminates him with the power of a Manhattan jury. [RIMSHOT]

The Wasp, who made out with Magneto last issue to learn his plans, beats up the X-Men in three panels—at least Spider-Man had the common decency to take a whole page—and goes to join the heroes in an… alien village that has popped out of nowhere.

As a kid I was completely baffled by where these people came from, along with the pair of American Everywomen that turned up in Dr. Doom’s base last issue to get turned into newly minted villainesses Volcana and Titania (the latter of whom has had surprising staying power).

Now, in 2024, I realize that going on the same time as this series is The Thing, which takes place all across Battleworld after the events of Secret Wars. There it is explained in much greater detail that Beyonder cobbled together Battleworld from parts of a bunch of other planets, including suburban Denver, so of course the Secret Wars team assumes we already know this makes perfect sense. We’re reading Thing too, right?!

Though that in itself doesn’t explain why Marsha (Volcana) Rosenberg and “Skeeter” (Titania) McPherran, a former day-care-center worker and shop clerk, respectively (according to Wikipedia), immediately volunteer to be experimented on by internationally renowned dictator/warlock/science-terrorist Doctor freakin’ Doom upon finding themselves trapped on an alien world.

That must have been one intense day-care center, man.

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CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS #4: “And Thus Shall the World DIE!”

Imagine my delight to crack open this issue to a scene that has less than 20 characters in it. Specifically, Batgirl and Supergirl share a very nice, melancholy moment over the fact the world appears to be nearing its end and they fear there’s nothing they can do about it.

After three issues of set-up, Wolfman and Perez ease up on the throttle and stop firehosing us with superheroes (and GIs, and cowboys, et cetera, ad nauseum) so we can get some character development up in here. This is including Pariah, a character so uninteresting I haven’t bothered mentioning him until now. His superpower appears to be showing up at various scenes of multiversal destruction and doing his best impression of Munch’s The Scream.

What’s cool about this issue is we get a brand-new universe, “Earth-6,” ruled by a superhero monarchy. Pariah somewhat arbitrarily rescues the queen of this world, right after she watches her husband and daughter die, and right before the Nothingness wipes away everything else in her world. Lady Quark sports a badass Perez design which I may or may not be fond of because I am a huge Annie Lennox fan. It’s amazing stuff.

(Though I found a Reddit post that claims Perez actually based her look on… Cloris Leachman? Now she and the allegedly Phyllis Diller-inspired Granny Goodness (Dean of Kirbyologists Mark Evanier disputes this) now must host intergalactic Hollywood Squares on Warworld.)

This issue has some clunkers, including a foppishly off-model John Constantine in what must be like the character’s third appearance. We spend waaaay too much time setting up the new Dr. Light, who other than being the least-identifiable character on arguably the most famous superhero team book cover of all time is a crabby jerk no one’s ever warmed to. (She’s no Titania.) The only interesting thing I gleaned from her origin is that Earth-1 Superman speaks fluent Japanese, apparently.

Everything goes to H-E-Double-Hockey Sticks when Pariah shows up to the Monitor’s base just in time to see him get lethally zapped by his protege/sidekick/slave Lyla/Harbinger, and then both Earth-1 and Earth-2 cease to exist in a spectacular sequence perfectly executed by Perez. It is particularly moving to watch unfold over the course of three pages when we’ve had scenes last three panels before, and it seems to me to both anticipate and, one presumes, influence the even more iconic attack of the Squid Monster at the end of Watchmen.

Both of these comics feature a standout sequence; one is good, the other is sublime.

ROUND 4 WINNER: CRISIS

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Our Tally So Far: SECRET WARS 2, CRISIS 2

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MORE

— COMIC BOOK DEATH MATCH: Secret Wars #3 vs. Crisis on Infinite Earths #3. 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.