Reading Comics 156 "Impending Secret Wars"

I may be totally off-base on this, but it looks like Marvel found out DC was doing Convergence, and then decided, "Hey, we should do the same thing!"

And thus the new version of Secret Wars that's about to commence.

Maybe there's more to it than that.  I'm not sure how much I should care.  I know this much: the company has been making various decisions that make it look like "everything will be different" post-Secret Wars (this is the usual statement post-any event).  And maybe once announcements start coming about what does result (DC started making such announcements at a fairly rapid pace, so that fans knew what to expect post-Convergence before Convergence itself even began), I can quit worrying and maybe learn to embrace Secret Wars.

Or not.

What's clear at this point is that while DC chose to represent certain eras in its version of this event, Marvel is evoking acclaimed stories, and it has been releasing handy one-dollar reprints of first issues for these stories.  The Infinity Gauntlet edition is the only one so far that I actually took up on as an offering.

(I passed on Age of Apocalypse after some consideration; I've never read this event, but it always seemed pretty interesting, although recently I read an analysis of it that was not particularly flattering.  Also, I saw what's inside Armor Wars.  A lot of extremely dated art.  I passed quite eagerly on that one.)

Like Convergence, Secret Wars is featuring a bunch of spin-off mini-series.  The only one I'm interested in is Old Man Logan, to be written by Brian Michael Bendis.  It's inspired by a classic story arc from the mind of Mark Millar, which I greatly enjoyed in its original incarnation.  Does Bendis has something interesting to say?  Oh, "Old Man Logan" refers to Wolverine.  In-continuity Wolverine is still dead, by the way.  But his publishing schedule remains undaunted.

Anyway, I didn't really pick up the Infinity Gauntlet reprint because of Secret Wars specifically.  I picked it up because of Infinity Gauntlet itself.  This was Jim Starlin's opus, the culmination of his Thanos stories. You know, Thanos, as in the guy at the end of The Avengers who grins in the general direction of the audience when his lackey equates fighting the eponymous heroes with "courting death."  This is because Thanos obsessively courts Death, literally.  Everything he does is because he loves the silly gal.

And no, not the version in Neil Gaiman's Sandman.  (That might be easier to understand.  She's kinda cute.)  Starlin figured out a way to convert Thanos from a blatant ripoff of DC's Darkseid to a Shakespearean tragic figure, who has no idea how ridiculous his quest really is.  Death literally resurrects him to play into her hand, not because she loves him or respects his obsessive courtship (I mean, who would?).

Whenever Starlin focuses on Thanos, his storytelling is blameless.  It's when he focuses on anything but that the wheels wobble.  Sure, Silver Surfer and Dr. Strange are fine and all, but they're not Thanos, and the three don't amount to the inhabitants of every panel.  And other characters are not to par.

Basically, Infinity Gauntlet is absolutely worth your time.  Thanos is the standard by which all cosmic villains should be rated.  But finding a story that at any point deviates from his specific perspective is perhaps a challenge too great for even Jim Starlin.

Ah, which means, if Jonathan Hickman uses Thanos in Secret Wars, which certainly seems to be the implication, he ought to be careful indeed...But then, how likely is it that Secret Wars itself will be anything but a random series of "everything-changes-forever!" nonsense?  You know, in a way that Convergence isn't?

Yeah...