Ribić brings several armies to terrifying life, illustrates a malicious grinning Thanos, and, in the opening chapter, the end of the world as Marvel’s pantheon knows it. His artwork has always presented as sparse and cold, yet that’s ideal for Doom’s new world, looking as if designed by an architect valuing space above all else. This is a concern because it’s seemingly only Doom’s will holding the world in place.Ī project of this magnitude, in Marvel terms at least, demands spectacle, and while this is rationed in the intelligent pondering and court intrigue of the early chapters, Esad Ribić can deliver it. “I’m beginning to think in my perfect world I’m the one flawed thing”, he confides to Susan Richards. At the most powerful he’s ever been, self-doubt is creeping in. How the current state of affairs developed is revealed around the halfway point and we’re left with Doom an old-fashioned tyrannical monarch experiencing a new sensation.

Under the hands of better creators Doom has always been a fascinating and contradictory personality, and here, possessing the greatest power in the universe he only becomes more so. A handful of heroes and villains have survived the destruction of the old universe and they eventually arrive in the new. Fragments of previous realities from destroyed universes are stitched together, and in command of all is Doom with an army of Thors at his bidding. Those so inclined can explore this world, which in effect assimilates all Marvel’s alternate worlds, pasts and futures, in assorted Battleworld and Warzones graphic novels.ĭoctor Doom is the focus of the series. Indeed, were the bigger picture not an issue (and it seemingly always is in Hickman’s stories) then the recreated reality of the second chapter would be worth a diversion. Furthermore, with the configurations he imposes and the ethical issues he raises, Secret Wars is undeniably cerebral for a crossover event.

Some pieces of plot stretch back five years beforehand to his days on the Fantastic Four, when he set up the Future Foundation. That’s down to Jonathan Hickman, who was sowing the seeds for a very long time. The brief for Secret Wars, not to be confused with the 1980s collection under the same title, was to reshape Marvel’s universe, freshening it by integrating various doppelgangers.

Secret wars by jonathan hickman