Thoughts

Well, Secret Wars finally comes to an end, and with it our longest excursion away from comics written by Claremont. I originally included this as I really want to be as completist as possibe for this era. The X-men disappearing is referenced in the main title, had repurcussions in the New Mutants and, perhaps, crucially, is a key step in the final split of Colossus and Kitty.

Of course, with my daily reading, I quickly discovered that this is a series that, in terms of story, is pretty poor for the X-men. You can tell Shooter didn’t really care for them.

In fact, this issue is a good illustration that the only characters Shooter cares for, or even wants to have fun with, is the villains. Doom, the Enchantress. Even the Not-really-villains such as Molecule Man, the Lizard and Volcana get more interesting character takes than the heroes.

Its hard not to get to the end and think that as a title, it probably would have been much better served as a villains only title. The Beyonder summons all the villains to a planet to determine who will triumph among them and get the power to achieve all their villainous goals. I get the impression Shooter could have filled 12 issues with this alone. Having to crowbar the X-men in this doesn’t add anything and it shows.

The Colossus and Alien Lady romance reaches a conclusion Shooter is so uninterested in it pretty much happens off-screen. Only relayed at a later date via visions. Colossus is then sad for a bit. Then agrees to go home. Poor Piotr. You deserve better than this.

Doom, however, gets a fun story. If the MCU movies are heading in the Secret War direction, I really hope they bring in Doom.

Anyway, time to celebrate, we’re back on the Claremont titles from the next blog. Back to the old format. And hopefully, the X-men will get to do more than be crap in battle, follow plans drawn up by Xavier that make no sense whatsoever, and fall in love through alien space magic type nonsense. Fingers crossed.