Secret Empire - So bad it may have ruined Superhero comics forever

>eruditorumpress.com/blog/antica/
>"This is not merely an embarrassingly bad summer crossover that should serve as a vivid wake-up call to Marvel regarding the need to reexamine their approach to publishing. This is a comic so gobsmackingly and bleakly awful that it begs to be the epitaph for the entire genre - the point where we, culturally, accept that the superhero craze we’ve been living in since the turn of the century has run its course if this is what it does when written on all of its default settings. The gauntlet has been thrown down. From here, the onus is on anyone working with superheroes to demonstrate why the genre should even exist."

Other urls found in this thread:

desuarchive.org/co/thread/94897765/
bleedingcool.com/2017/09/14/brevoort-parts-secret-empire-made-right-people-unhappy-upset/
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

>He’s a blonde-haired, blue-eyed “super-soldier” named Captain America. The concept has always flirted with fascism, as has the superhero concept in general, with its fantasy of puissant men in uniforms who will protect us from danger and change.
Wasn't that really just a case of Jews (Simon and Kirby) using the Nazis own 'master race' meme against them? Like "the Nazis talk about being the ubermensch, but this guy who actually fulfills their physical ideal is fighting for American values against fascism!" kind of thing.

Yes, yes, OMG outrage, the sky is falling.

So not even the Leftist SJW they were pandering this event to, liked it?

Secret Empire was bad, but it wasn't THAT bad. Marvel themselves are publishing way worse stuff right now.
Terrible article, you should feel bad for posting it.

So when is Sup Forums going to realize this event is universally hated by the mainstream and start hailing it as genius/kino/Chad/whatever to distinguish themselves from reddit?

I know the guy who wrote this article. He's crazy, and thinks he's the spearhead for a "Gothic Marxist" political revolution.

People were praising it in the storytime threads leading up to around #7, because that's when they realized that it totally was going to have the cube fix everything.
The comments about how the build up was so good disappeared, and more and more people complained about the narration boxes

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I'd agree with this, if I didn't know they don't mean it the same way I do.

>white and blonde is flirting with fascism

Ok ...

Sandifer is another one of those post-rationalist loonies, yeah. Dude is not exactly on the cutting edge of hot takes.

It was pretty bad. But at least something happened in it.
Remember when they tried to make an event comic out of literally nothing?

>The gauntlet has been thrown down. From here, the onus is on anyone working with superheroes to demonstrate why the genre should even exist.
And only one Marvel Writer is fit to lift that gauntlet. God Speed Ewing. You're the only one who can save Marvel now.

Is he on anything new in Legacy? U.S. Avengers looks done at #12, and Royals is on life support as well

All of his books are ending, if Ewing has any sense he'll jump ship for another publisher.

>Remember when they tried to make an event comic out of literally nothing?
I'm still boggled that anyone expected anything else. Even aside from the name of the event being an obvious attempt at mirroring the movie's subtitle and the fact that the previews showed the plot was lifted right out of Minority Report ... the Big Bendis Event just prior, Age of Ultron, was ALSO a "nothing fucking happened" non-event ( literally: time travel shenanigans == it never even happened ).

>/blog

>>The gauntlet has been thrown down.
I'm pretty sure that that happened back in the 1980's, senpai. It was called Watchmen.

Does this Secret Empire have anything to do with the Secret Empire I read about in a Spider-Man comic 25 years ago?

And if Marvel have any sense they'll actually set Ewing up on one of their flagship books before that happens.

I read his blog when he did doctor who posts but the post about the blowjob slab episode being good was the point where I just moved on.

I personally blame all white people and Drumpf for this.

Maybe not. Secret Empire was a Captain America story arc back in 1974. A secret group was making Cap look like a fool to the public, and plotted to replace him with one of their pawns. Cap and the X-men foiled the plan, and Cap chased chased the grand leader into the White House. The leader pulled off his hood, scared Cap with his identity, and then shot himself.
In 1974, the Watergate investigation was still going on, and Nixon would resign later that year. The "Number One" in the SE was 100% Nixon back in 1974, but then they retconned it later to be a high ranking senator or something.

Here's a recent full storytime of it
desuarchive.org/co/thread/94897765/

>But at least something happened in it.
>character assassination of Thor, Punisher, Beast etc
>killed off characters it literally just didn't bother bringing back "because it had to leave a GRIM REMINDER"
>didn't even bother fully bringing back Steve
Seriously "nothing happening" in the end would have been an improvement.

some white, some white-washed, with a dash of russian government

Tfw facist cuz white, blonde and go to the gym. Fml senpai.

>FASCISM
>NAZI
>RUSSIA

I'm starting to think Americans are inherently retarded.

The retardation crosses all borders user. It's just burgerland has better Wi-Fi.

Articles where the writer quickly compares superheroes to fascism usually raise red flags to me.

DON'T BE DIM, BIN THAT GYM!

There were more qualifiers then that. But it is a image straight out of Nazi propaganda.

>Secret Empire
>pandering to leftists
What.

Christ. It wasn't any worse than Civil War II or Fear Itself. I liked the premise and the first half of Secret Empire. Then it kind of stalled and needed tie-ins to make sense, just like most Marvel events. I hope they keep the mutants segregated and in control of their region.

I have the feeling Marvel's not going to be hiring Ewing for anything, so no sense on his part necessary.
They want to increase their sales, not lower them.

how was this worse in any way than Civil War 2? Marvel has published many events worse than this one.

I'm hoping DC makes a move and picks him up, puts him on a New Gods related book

Yeah that's the goal, just like when Superman was made, but the question is if that actually worked, or if it backfired over time.

why do they keep extending events when they don't even know how to fill up the initial batch of commissioned books?

>They want to increase their sales, not lower them.
He always gets obscure books. Do you honestly think he'd sell even less if he replaced bendis for instance?

Loki, Avengers, and Ultimates aren't obscure. Yes, he'd sell worse than Bendis. Jessica Jones did/does better than Ultimates, US Avengers, and Royals and it's not even a high seller.

It isn't even the worst Marvel crossover this year.

Secret Empire's biggest flaw is a classic one: shoukd have been an isolated story but its scale demanded it to be a giant crossover event. The main mini suffered from one key problem: the portions focusing on the resistance was largely ineffectual and had too much filler. It really should have focused on Steve and Hydra alone, with the resistance being very much on the background until the very end. Also, the build up to Steve returning was shit, as was the idea to use Kobik and Bucky just in Thundebolts until SE started.

>He’s a blonde-haired, blue-eyed “super-soldier” named Captain America. The concept has always flirted with fascism
This is so goddamn dumb. Steve is the fucking Uber Mensch. He's Hitler wet dream. And the perfect man is fighting for the good guys. Thats the point.

That doesn't matter, there are now regular people who are blue eyedand yellow haired and lumping them with nazis is bigotry.

Just because they didn't like it doesn't mean it wasn't supposed to be pandering to them. Had Hillary won like most media members expected (please don't respond to that specific point respond to the following if anything) this would have likely been seen a good think piece. She lost and Marvel should have pulled the plug on this because leftists don't want to hear any sort of think piece since last november.

I remember when people couldn't stop sucking Marvel off. Funny how things change.

Still not worse than this

>He's Hitler wet dream.
That's what he meant by "flirting with fascism"

Like a good number events, it had good tie-ins. Secret Empire didn't even have good tie-ins.

>Ewing could end up doing cosmic on DC

That sounds pretty good

LOL holy shit.

Fucking critics.

This writer just clearly thinks the genre itself is fascist ala the british school and is using cap as an excuse.

We as a culture responded to Secret Empire by not fucking buying it because it was bad.

something being visually similar with something else, while having non of the similar one's function isn't enough to count as "flirting" with it.
Sheesh, you people and guilt by association.

How is Age of Ultron btw. I'm expecting it to be bad since it's a Bendis event but I'm a fan of Hank and Ultron so I might give it a read. Is it awful like Civil War 2 or like 5/10 meh

>burgerland has better Wi-Fi
Fucking Estonia has better Internet than US

It's not as awful as CW2, but it's close. Also, they advertised it as a "nothing will EVER be the same!!!!" story, but the first few issues made it clear that all of it was going to be retconned away by he end.

None of the SE tie-ins were consistent with the main event. It's honestly amazing at how hard editorial failed to organize this event.

>Marvel's only hope is a guy who is having all his books canceled and has sales of any book he's on tank.
Fitting.

what's the difference between a cosmic cube undoing everything and the writer undoing everything in his epilogue issue

B-but Rick and Vegas are still dead.

The industry survived everything DC threw at it in 2009-2010. Secret Empire wasn't that bad

Or Lanterns

the entire world outside of new york could be gone and I doubt you'd notice it to be honest

>it wasn't any worse than these two piles of hot garbage

Nice defense.

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what's the point of Marvel superheroes these days? seems to me that all they do is fight each other and generally make the world a worse place to live in.

To fight each other call the other side fascists/cowards.
Like a poorly written version of political drama.

Pls no. He writes Johns tier action blockbusters.

bleedingcool.com/2017/09/14/brevoort-parts-secret-empire-made-right-people-unhappy-upset/
>Spencer on how the ending wasn’t just undoing everything with the cosmic cube:
>Whenever you do a story that involves the cosmic cube, people have a tendency to say, ‘well they’re just manipulating reality.’ The thing is here, the only thing Kobik did was manipulate Steve. Everything everyone else did, they did on their own. Delegating so much power to Steve, that was something they did of their own free will. Being willing to give someone like Steve an enormous amount of power. […] What you see Stevil here pointing out is ‘I didn’t force anyone to do those things. I may not have been honest about who I was, but these were things people did of their own volition.
>Spencer on what to take away from the story (but it’s not about modern politics, nope, says the guy who almost certainly bought ten copies of Hillary’s book):
>What Stevil really points out in the omega is that from now on everybody’s gonna know that a huge part of the population was happy to go along with this. They were actually really comfortable with. They had Captain America as the proponent as the cover, but as far as what he asked them to do, they went along with it pretty easily. That’s gonna be a really troubling legacy in the marvel universe.

>Brevoort, on actually believing that fans are interested in super-mega-crossover events changing the Marvel Universe forever and nothing ever being the same again:

>When we do most of the events, one of the things everybody wants to hear about is what changed? What’s different in the Marvel universe? This is a little more subtle than what we’ve done in the past, but there’s a sentiment among some of the people in the Marvel universe who would like to do things a different way. Good Steve has to grapple with this.

>Spencer, on what he thinks his story says about fascism:

>t’s been a really interesting experience. When we had the previous issue come out and we ended on that big rousing happy ending with all the heroes standing there cheering, we heard from a lot of folks, that’s it, it’s all done. But these problems are all still there in front of them. Hydra Steve is still there and Hydra is in some ways stronger than ever. I felt it was very important when we’re doing a story about fascism to not end it saying, ‘well that’s it, we’ve beaten it and it’s gone forever.’ I wanted to emphasize that this is the kind of fight that you have to keep fighting forever.

While i agree with many points, the ignorance of this guy of what faschism and the Hitler's version of it is hillarious.

>these characters appear Spencer manages to work in them saying that they’re “here to teach you some tolerance or else,” proclaiming the campus a safe space for everyone except the right-wing speaker they’re throwing grenades at, monologuing about how “your silent acquiescence is what empowers abusers and the culture of hate,” throwing a grenade while shouting “consider this your trigger warning,” complaining that the heroes opposing them should be allies, shouting “your very presence is problematic in the extreme! I can’t even,”

That's shit straight from Judge Dredd Megazine.

Hopefully Spencer doesn't get anymore Marvel work after his dab comic.

This is the best part:

>So what does Spencer ultimately offer up as his approved response to fascism? A series of tactical surrenders leading up to the revival of the non-Nazi Captain America, conjured out of the memories of the Cosmic Cube, who then dutifully beats the stuffing out of Nazi Captain America. And while the dreadful narration reiterates over and over again that the correct response to fascism is to “stand and fight,” it’s hard not to notice that this is the first time the series has actually shown anything other than complete and utter disdain for the idea. Taken in the context of the rest of the series, it seems to declare that the appropriate response to fascism is to lie down and take it until God sends an authorized Nazi-puncher to stand and fight on your behalf.

It's pretty bad, Ultron is in it for like half an issue, the rest is Hitch drawing rubble cities and most of it is actually about Wolverine going on a retarded time travel side quest.

>Whenever you do a story that involves the cosmic cube, people have a tendency to say, ‘well they’re just manipulating reality.’ The thing is here, the only thing Kobik did was manipulate Steve.
God that's such a politician thing to say. Yes, only Steve was manipulated by Kobik. BUT IT WAS STEVE'S ENTIRE REALITY. So yes, reality was manipulated, despite what Spencer wants us to think.

If clone saga and return of superman didn't I doubt this would

> Stevil only did what people allowed him to.

I did not know Wanda and Vision wanted to be possessed/hacked.

The title "Ruined Superhero comics forever" goes in part to the Death and Return of Superman.

So, you're saying it appeals to House of Cards fans?

I'd say Deadpool was the only good one.

Maaaaaaaybe Secret Warriors.

The only thing that changed over the last several events is how much shittier Deadpool's life got after each one.

It's strange to think that the Deadpool tie ins out of any of them will have any actual impact. Tell me if I'm wrong because I usually don't keep up with deadpool, but doesn't his daughter and a bunch of people close to him hate him for joining hydra?

>God that's such a politician thing to say
He use to be a politician in Cincinnati.

yes, Deadpool became a villain again because of this event. By obeying the orders of evil Captain America.

Now he has to kill Cable, because otherwise Stryfe will kill his daughter. The next arc will be about him trying to kill Cable.

Best Secret Empire story
(only 4 pages long)
I did like how Emma Frost was completely different here to how she is currently in the XBooks. I support ignoring bad continuity.

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>that OP quote

I'm sorry, but apart from the artwork this was pretty bland. If this is the best thing to come out of Secret Empire, it must have truly been abysmal.

also last time we saw his daughter, she was running away from home because Deadpool failed to pick her up and there was no food in the house (and general disgust at him joining Hydra)
and the reason he wasn't able to pick her up is because Maria Hill left him pinned under wreckage out of spite for several days, despite him begging her to let him help publicly fight back against Hydra Steve now that he no longer needed to stay undercover to get Maria info

>partial transformation
is that new, or has she always been able to do that?

This man is retarded

He actually asks for obscure books user. Like personally asks to do them. Ewing doesn't really care.

I feel empowered.

Secret Empire has seriously been my favorite Marvel Event in years. That said, the bar hasn't exactly been high but Hydra Cap was a fantastic edition to the universe and seeing him succeed was pretty awesome

Wait, Deadpool was being a double agent for Hill? And she left him under wreckage?

Okay Nick.

He is just Captain America but with safety over freedom. Not even good at that because everyone constantly fights him.