Posted By Dan Greenfield on Sep 15, 2024 | 1 comment

Reed Richards’ big moment — and the DC villains push all their chips to the center…

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 3. (The Secret Wars #9 Facsimile Edition is out now.)

Ring the bell, Fred!

—

By FRED VAN LENTE

Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #9: “Assault on Galactus!”

Both Galactus and the Anti-Monitor have had construction projects going on for the last few issues, and the latter finishes his anti-matter cannon only to have it blown up by the Flash; Galactus finally finishes his Battleworld-eating machine only to have it immediately attacked by the X-Men. Flash gets killed for his efforts; the X-ers appear to get blown up immediately by the G-Man’s defenses, much to the horror of Hawkeye, Captain Marvel, and the newly-resurrected Wasp, who has been brought back to life by alien hippie Zsaji.

The other heroes rush to assist, albeit mired in their own Mighty Marvel Misery. Spider-Man is the only one who appears the least bit chipper, because he has this cool new black costume that he can make into short sleeves and generates webbing on its own! Boy, no downside to this black costume, is there?! Nah, there can’t be.

The heroes attack Galactus’s Cosmic Hibachi, but all of sudden Reed Richards stops them. He realizes that if Galactus wins, and succeeds in killing everybody on Battleworld (by, uh, eating it), he will have won the war and the Beyonder will have to give him his greatest desire. That, Reed intuits, is clearly going to be a removal of his accursed hunger, which would save the universe from the scourge of Galactus for the rest of time.

I mean, all that entails would be the death of a bunch of A-List superheroes. The likes of the pregnant Susan Storm, the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, Kitty Pryde, the New Mutants, Black Cat, and I dunno, Dazzler and US 1, probably, would have to step up and protect Earth from all the surviving B-List super villains. Geez, that could make a pretty interesting issue of What If?

The heroes are understandably skeptical of Reed’s “Hey, what if we all just died?” proposal, and carry on with the fight, now joined by the not-shockingly not-dead X-Men. The battle does not seem to be going well, until suddenly Reed re-appears, having completely changed his mind.

In a very human moment, amid all this comic bombast, Reed confesses as much as he cares about the universe, he also wants to live long enough to see his unborn child come into the world—and he’s willing to fight to make that happen. It’s compelling dialogue by Shooter, and Zeck perfectly captures the painful mixture of doubt and conviction on Reed’s face.

Unfortunately, just when the heroes appear on the brink of victory, Galactus teleports back to his solar system-sized crib and starts devouring it. Turns out he prefers to use his machine to eat planets but doesn’t need it, and the power from his home will be enough to allow him to absorb Battleworld.

But of course, that tricksy Dr. Doom, he’s got other ideas…!

—

Crisis on Infinite Earths #9: “War Zone”

That is a pretty awesome cover from Perez. After the Anti-Monitor seemingly got blowed-up along with his super weapon last issue, the fusion of the five remaining Earths has been put on indefinite pause. The various Earths’ villains, assembled on Brainiac’s rad skull-ship (why the Ed Hannigan-redesigned Brainiac never stuck around to be the primary version I will never understand—too much like a skinless Terminator, maybe?), decide it’s time to strike.

For one thing, with the threat of the Anti-Monitor seemingly over, many of the other heroes have gone off to appear in various tie-in comics. Fear you not, I am also in the process of reading all of those, to provide you with a Top 13 list just as I did with the Secret Wars tie-ins. There are approximately 30 times more Crisis tie-ins than there were for Secret Wars, though, so it’s taking me a while.

Alexander Luthor (the good, Earth-3 one) convenes a copy-heavy meeting of the United Nations that is mercifully interrupted by Brainiac’s floating skull and Super Powers green-battle-suit Luthor (not my favorite). They sneeringly tell the General Assembly that unless they all agree to turn control over their worlds to the bad guys, they’re going to blow up three of the five Earths they’ve already conquered. This will, for some reason, blow up Earth-1 and -2 too. Luthor gives the UN… 15 minutes to make up their minds?!

Look, my last real job before I went comics pro was at the United Nations, and I regret to tell Lex he’s barking up the wrong tree. The UN still hasn’t recognized Taiwan as a country, and it’s been around since 1949. I saw the Taiwanese protesting every day when I went to the Secretariat to go to lunch, and as far as I know they’re still there. These villains need to set some more realistic deadlines for 25 sub-committees to decide which country on which Earth wants to be ruled by Solomon Grundy. Like, would a century and a half work?

And… wouldn’t the villains also blow up with the rest of the Earth Five-Pack? Is Brainiac’s skull-ship tough enough to withstand Multiversal destruction? Are there enough beds for all the villains? What is the villainess-to-villain ratio, is it enough to repopulate Planet Bad with imps, brats, and scamps?

Well, I guess people don’t turn to villainy by thinking through things.

Jay Garrick and Wally West cosmic treadmill a hero army through the barrier between worlds to battle the bad guy army, which sets up some wildly mismatched face-offs: Speedy’s arrows, I’m sorry, are not going to do much against Shaggy Man, who is both indestructible and crazier than a carny on bath salts; I admire the Penguin’s pluck, but he’s not lasting long against Firestorm.

Luthor and Brainiac watch all this cackling, until suddenly, Psimon blows up Brainiac with a mental blast and declares he’s seizing control of the villains’ admittedly dubious plan. This may be because I am not a huge Teen Titans guy and it irks me that this noob took out a guy who literally has a word in the Oxford English Dictionary named after him, but no moment in this issue matches Reed Richards’ come-to-Jesus moment. Ergo:

ROUND 9 WINNER: SECRET WARS

—

Our Tally So Far: CRISIS 5, SECRET WARS 4,

—

MORE

— COMIC BOOK DEATH MATCH: Secret Wars #8 vs. Crisis on Infinite Earths #8. Click here.

— The Complete COMIC BOOK DEATH MATCH Index. Click here.

—

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.