Marvel Free Previews: Secret Wars

Not technically a Free Comic Book Day book, this was a freebie that was widely available last summer. I'm not sure which store I picked it up in.

Title: Marvel Free Previews: Secret Wars
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Date: 2015
Writer: Jason Aaron, Felipe Smith, James Robinson, Sam Humphries, Brian Michael Bendis, Charles Soule, Dan Slott, Peter David, Skottie Young, Chris Sims, Chad Bowers, Scott Koblish, Jason Aaron, Marc Guggenheim
Artist: Chris Sprouse, Juan Gedeon, Steve Pugh, Alti Firmansyah, Mike Deodato, Leinil Yu, Adam Kubert, Greg Land, Skottie Young, Chris Sims, Chad Bowers, Scott Koblish, Mike del Mundo, Carlos Pacheco

I didn't pay much attention to last year's revival of Secret Wars. It seemed to involve a ridiculous amount of books, even by the standards of modern mainstream comics crossover "events". I did pick up this handy free preview, though.

So, from what I can tell from this, Secret Wars is basically a ten-year-or-so run of What If?, all released in the space of a few months and all connected by some vague attempt at continuity, with Doctor Doom as the main villain.

This book previews the following titles:

Thors: It's a bunch of versions of Thor functioning as Doom's police force in a story that's, well, a police procedural. Silly. Oh, and it has Beta Ray Bill. So even more silly.

Ghost Racers: Like NASCAR except all the drivers are versions of Ghost Rider. Also, Arcade is in this one. Not sure how this is supposed to be entertaining.

Age of Ultron vs. Marvel Zombies: Okay, you're just trolling us at this point, right? Tigra seems to be the lead character here. Zombie-Kingpin makes for a disturbing visual.

Star Lord and Kitty Pryde: This one was fairly entertaining. In addition to the title characters, Gambit is prominently featured, as well as an odd take on Drax.

Guardians of Knowwhere: Drax (different version than above) and Angela fight for pretty much no reason inside a (not a moon) space station made from a Celestial's head.

Civil War: No, not THAT Civil War. Although the basic theme is there. Cap and Iron Man each rule half of North America. Stark is Lawful Good; Rogers is Chaotic Good. And speaking of good, this preview was actually really good. First story in this book that I'd actually be interested in reading.

The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows: Peter Parker is married to Mary Jane and they have a young daughter. This looked like fun. Sense of humor with heart. Presented in black-and-white for some reason that I can't fathom.

Future Imperfect: Hulk has a beard. And calls himself the Maestro now. Nothing much happens in this preview.

Giant-Size Little Marvel: A v. X: Basically a toy commercial.

X-Men '92: Okay, this was hilarious. In classic early-90s X-Book style, the X-Men head to the local mall in Westchester so that Jubilee can whup them at Lazer Tag. Third winner from this batch. Let's see how many more we get.

Weirdworld: As you might expect from the title, this was incoherent. The art was lovely, and the final page (revealing the "map" of Weirdworld) was awesome.

Squadron Sinister: Squadron Sinister kill Squadron Supreme in one of those superhero-battle-where-characters-actually-die scenarios, and none of the characters are anyone we care about. It doesn't help that the good guys and the bad guys are both rather blatant knock-offs of the Justice League. Which may be the point; I'm not up on my Squadron-Whatever history. Oh, and some random person gets their arms ripped off. Because... I'm not really sure. To remind everyone that the bad guy is a bad guy, I guess.

Mrs. Deadpool and the Howling Commandos: Okay, at least they chose to end on a high note. Deadpool mixed with 1970s Marvel monster comics is pure magic. This should have been the entire crossover. The "Secret War" could have been between the writing teams, pitting their various "What If?" scenarios against each other, and this totally would have won.

So, that makes thirteen previews. I found four of them entertaining, two for decent-quality story (Civil War, Renew Your Vows), and two for ridiculously over-the-top entertaining concepts (X-Men '92, Mrs Deadpool). I'll also half a vote each to Weirdworld and Kitty Pryde/Starlord, which at least looked like they had some potential.

The bad news is, that's still only 5 out of 13.

Which amounts to (after generously rounding up):

Rating: 4/10