Customer Reviews

Secret War (New Avengers) (Book 1)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

SECRET WAR was a mediocre comic book. It's a great hardcover, though.

Let me explain. SECRET WAR by Bendis and Dell'Otto was originally supposed to be a quarterly series. It ended up being effectively a biennial. With gaps that large, it was tough to follow the dark and somewhat complex story. Read in one sitting and with oversized pages to showcase Dell'Otto's painted art, however . . . It's a lot of fun.

The story concerns super-spy Nick Fury discovering that a foreign power has been supplying supervillains with weapons in what amounts to state sponsored terrorism. Prevented from intervening by the government, Fury organizes a covert action which involves Wolverine, Captain America, Spider-Man and other top Marvel heroes taking the fight to the foreign capital. Flash-forward to a year later, when the heroes are attacked by powerful supervillains and one, Luke Cage, is seriously injured. The story of the fight for survival is intercut with flashbacks to the covert action, with the true nature of the "Secret War" revealed late in the game.

Also included is a series of in-character profiles of various superheroes "by" Nick Fury. They're a hoot, albeit fairly superfluous.

The dialogue is trademark Bendis (not for all tastes) and the pacing still leaves something to be desired, but there's a lot of action, a lot of intrigue, and Dell'Otto is an amazing new talent where Marvel is concerned.

Overall, I'd recommend it.

I'm not a great fan of Bendis, but I do think he's a good idea man. The premise behind this series is compelling, the execution could be better. But the good parts first:

The artwork is perfectly suited to this story, gritty and blurry without being sloppy, it's an excellent moon setting. The moral ambiguity that the tale centers around was implict as soon as you open the trade and see the graphics. The storyline is a good look at some of the darker corners superhumans might find themselves in if they did exist, a nice realistic depiction over the idealized that overall comics are associated with. And this is an important trade that leads up to events going on now (Civil War). This use of superheroes starts the questions that really start getting asked in Civil War.

But on the negative side, the story really seemed to drag to me, when I read it. The action is nearly nonexistant, and mostly in dimly remembered flashbacks. You don't really see the actual war, just its fallout. The series starts out with a bang, in media res, but after that it goes downhill. The few issues it ran for would have been improved if the actual conflict took place in an ongoing narrative, in the middle of the story would have been fine, but it should have happened. This series was either not long enough, and should have had the story of the actual war, or way too long, as revelations are boringly dragged out. The all text "transcripts" of shield agents, as mentioned before, are way too frequently and lengthy to be interesting, and the "shield files" or whatever at the end of the series is reprinted filler.

It's a shame that they design "covert ops" costumes for the heros involved and we barely get a glance at them as well. This series did not live up to its potential

Brian Michael Bendis is a generally well-regarded writer, but this book is a huge waste of time for the reader and all involved. There is a Secret War that Nick Fury put the heroes on in Doctor Doom's kingdom of Latveria and guess what? That battle is still secret, it's never shown! This is inexcusable writing. They take five issues to hint at the battle, and the aftermath and consequences of such, but the battle itself is shown only in tiny, brief flashbacks. What??! Then why bother?

Then the insult is compounded by a trade paperback that is only half-filled with the actual comic. The other half are goofy "email" transcripts and panels on a "Who's Who" of various villains. Was not worth the price paid for it, I want my money back, Bendis! Next time, put out a 12-issue story, if you can't tell it in five!

This book reprints the SECRET WAR 5 issue mini-series and the SECRET WAR: FROM THE FILES OF NICK FURY one shot. The story by Bendis is disappointing, particularly how the ending transpires. The (painted) art is by Gabriele Dell'Otto, which at the time the mini-series was being published was being hyped by Marvel as the next Alex Ross (that prediction didn't come to pass). While the art wasn't bad, it did not possess the take-your-breath-away impact the Alex Ross' work does. It also was an odd pairing with Bendis, whose work is more light-hearted in tone (Spidey has some one-liners in this book) while the painted art conveys a dark and moody tone.

What really is the downfall of this book is that HALF of this book is made up of chat logs, dossiers, etc. Again, HALF OF THE BOOK (I counted the pages - the story was 128 pages). While they do add to the story, this takes away from the enjoyment experience of the book immensely. A few pages I would understand, but when you cannot proceed to the next chapter of the story due to the voluminous pages of text material (which one cannot ignore if one hasn't read the book before), then it becomes a chore to go through the book.

At this price point, even with the online discounts, it simply is not worth it. Save your money.

Overall, good concept, amazing art and great writing. However, there are obviously some gaps. It looks like the artist and writers got tired part way through and rushed the the series.

One of the bonus pages has Bendis giving a synopsis - the big battle was supposed to include the Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic Four, the Defenders and more! Unfortunately, this was not the case as it got scaled down quite a bit.

That's how the entire story feels, a great idea scaled down. They put all this work into designing new costumes for the heroes and we only get a few flashbacks.

Too bad. If they ever came back and filled out the missing parts of the story this would easily be a 5 star book.

I thought that was rather flat. Nice art, and nice story - for what is actually there, but the climax fades out and there's no sense of catharsis or conclusion, least of all 'an end'. The endless pages of transcripts and SHIELD files were just 'filler'. If you can't fill out the story properly, don't insult the readers by injecting the book half full of superfluous text and gimmicks. I didn't read a word of it. I wanted a graphic novel, not a novel.

It was a promising story, but only half explored, and the rest was just a waste of time.

This graphic novel had the story idea potential to be on par with V for Vendetta, but in the end the plot line was over about halfway through. The rest of the book was marginally interesting, but mostly useless information about the characters. The drawings were excellent though.

It spent a lot of time looking for things in this book. The artwork makes it a little hard to identify characters. And the story jump around a little too much. And its resolved with another unknown super character. Still I bought it and kind of like it. Maybe its because I like the way they presented Fury.

you won't miss anything by passing on this one, except some super art by dell'otto. shoddy writing by bendis.

Secret War is an important book in the current direction of Marvel continuity. It ties in threads from the New Avengers and does some foreshadowing in the current Civil War crossover happening in the Marvel Universe.

The art is breathtaking. Although not to Ross' level, it is still beautiful. The storyline of Nick Fury gathering a few costumed heroes for a top secret black ops in Latveria as retaliation for the Latverian head of state's funding of technology-themed criminals, is both fresh and relevant.

However, my main gripe about this could've been excellent hardcover collection is a lot of scenes and revelations occur during the "transcripts" of the interrogations. Sure, having "transcripts" and computer files of the protagonists there as a storytelling device is OK but I sure hoped Bendis or his editors kept it to a minimum. It feels like SECRET WAR was running way, way behind on schedule and D'Otto couldn't keep up with the art so they had to include those "transcripts" so SECRET WARS meet the deadline. Those aforementioned scripts and bio take up around 1/4 of the book. I buy comic books to look at pretty pictures while enjoying a great story. If I wanted a story told in words, I will buy a pocketbook.