MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS #4 (1984)
by Jim Shooter & Bob Layton
This is one of the very best covers ever conceived: the Hulk carrying over his shoulders a 150 BILLION TON MOUNTAIN.
This might be the Doctor Doom retrospective, but there’s NO WAY I’m not going to cover that moment!!!
On the very first page, we get an acknowledgement of the ludicrous amount of power the Molecule Man has: he buries the heroes HQ under tons of rocks. As a reminder, the HQ was stated to be about 50 times the size of the Pentagon!
No biggie, really.
Titania might be a little jealous of Molecule Man getting all the attention, so she decides to throw an enormous amount of debris. Nice choice of panels, using a vertical one that runs the entire page, showcasing how massive it is.
But nobody upstages the Molecule Man, who proceeds to drop AN ENTIRE MOUNTAIN RANGE on top of the heroes!!!
DAMN.
Doctor Doom is not impressed.
The only hero known to have survived is Thor, who left the HQ with the Enchantress. Probably to make out with her. But dropping AN ENTIRE MOUNTAIN RANGE is felt throughout the planet.
Thor finds the villains and asks what happened. I absolutely adore Doom’s matter-of-fact answer.
That “Simple! Effective! No?” gets me every time. I really, really like how Shooter writes Doom.
The Enchantress sides with the villains, so it’s Thor against a bunch of supervillains… including Ultron who now has a disintegrator ray (!!!) courtesy of Doom.
A disintegrator ray supposedly powerful enough to kill Thor!!!
And Kang, who Doom murders in retaliation for the attack in issue 1.
Meanwhile the X-Men have found Magneto’s base and ask him about his plans…
…which lead to Wasp to reveal that she only faked being a damsel in distress falling in love with her captor. Still a bit icky, but I don’t mind too much.
I’ve argued in favor of Spider-Man easily escaping capture by the X-Men, but having Wasp do the same thing is a bit of a stretch. I really, really like Wasp as a character… and she’s not exactly a newbie at the superhero business… but this is too easy.
Also: WOW are the X-Men complete jerks in this series!!! Even more so than their 80s standard.
Back to the heroes… SOMEHOW they’re alive!!!
As for how they’re going to get out of this: never underestimate Reed Richard’s ability to pull super-science solutions out of nowhere.
Another thing I love: Reed dismissing Cap’s question whether the others can help with just “no”.
Reed is really at his best here: keeping his head cool while modifying Iron Man’s armor, while at the same time making sure the Hulk stays angry enough to keep holding the mountain.
Thanks to Reed’s modifications, Iron Man’s armor is able to absorb enough energy from the Human Torch and Captain Marvel to SPLIT THE MOUNTAIN IN HALF.
Really makes you think what kind of monster Reed would be if he designed his own armor.
The heroes reunite with Thor (who only faked being disintegrated, SOMEHOW); Captain Marvel explores the planet to find a place where the heroes can rest, and…
One of the aliens, Zsaji, is a hot woman with healing powers who will be important soon.
And the Human Torch immediately hits on her, because of course he does.
MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS #5 (1984)
by Jim Shooter & Bob Layton
Yes it would be about time for the X-Men to at least pretend to do something heroic.
Galactus has summoned his GINORMOUS spaceship. For context, this thing is bigger than the planet!!!
But enough about that, because apparently the Human Torch trying to get laid is more important.
Jokes aside, it’s really to recap the plot of the previous issues with the excuse of Zsaji using some kind of telepathy-inducing mist.
Still, Zsaji is soon going to be essential to the story’s development.
Her relationship with the Torch, not so much.
We also keep track of the villains, with Molecule Man and Volcana establishing their relationship while the other villains compare notes about their weapons.
Bullying a guy who can DROP A MOUNTAIN RANGE ON YOUR HEAD is not the brightest idea in the world.
Another interesting dynamic is Enchantress trying to seduce Doom to form an alliance instead of being his pawn.
It doesn’t work. AT ALL.
DAMN.
Enchantress teleports away, leading Doom to get all philosophical.
Back to the heroes, the X-Men finally DO SOMETHING: Professor X tries to telepathically contact Galactus, helped by Magneto.
This is a rare reference to Magneto randomly having minor telepathic powers in the Silver Age.
Unfortunately Galactus is so cosmically powerful that even a telepathic shrug has devastating consequences.
Galactus dispatches a robot, hilariously referred to as his cat, to keep the other heroes from disturbing him.
Once the X-Men join the other heroes, the fight escalates to the point of distracting Galactus for a moment. Which is enough to allow Doctor Doom to reach his spaceship.
Colossus is injured in the fight, and we get one of the most infamous moments of the series… the Human Torch randomly being racist.
We KNOW what you meant, Torch. THAT’S WHY IT’S WORSE.
Colossus does eventually allow Zsaji to cure him, and he’s going to fall for her. Hard.
Meanwhile Doctor Doom is touring the Galactus ship.
We’ll return to what exactly he finds there. But first we’ll have to take a detour to provide the backstory… that’s going to come from Dazzler, of all people.
Doom significance: 0/10
He doesn’t appear all that often; the only important thing happening to him is getting on the Galactus ship.
Silver Age-ness: 7/10
The heroes survive A WHOLE MOUNTAIN RANGE being dropped on their heads!!!
Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
The stuff with the Human Torch is problematic, plus the X-Men are really pushing what they can do and still be called heroes. The best part is still the downtime moments, both for heroes and villains, with a couple of iconic action set pieces.
Crazy tech
It ultimately failed to kill Thor, but the disintegrator ray that Doom gives to Ultron is badass.