What Was the Point of Marvel's Secret Empire? There was something very telling about Marvel’s decision this past Monday to announce to The New York Times how its Secret Empire event would end. Watch Best Of Enemies (2015).
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It felt like the publisher was trying to get ahead of yet more problems coming from the series’ conclusion. Now that the final issue of its primary series is in stores today, we know that’s right—and how thoroughly Secret Empire failed. The core concept that Marvel’s blond- haired, blue- eyed living symbol for American patriotism could actually be a sociopathic fascist with a plan to remake the world in his image was a disturbing one, to be sure. But Secret Empire had the potential to become an iconic story about the dangers of blindly buying into a dark, warped form of American exceptionalism that, given enough time, became the base ideology for Hydra’s oppressive, authoritarian society. This potentially powerful story’s importance was only further heightened by the major political events that defined 2.
D- list comic book supervillain managed to become President of the United States. Marvel insisted that Secret Empire wasn’t meant to be a piece of political commentary, but the series launched at a time when its plot eerily echoed the social and political anxieties plaguing the country. Political or not, Secret Empire had every chance to become the kind of seminal story that defined what a flagship comic book event could be in the 2. But by Monday, when Marvel spoiled the ending to its own major comic book event, the writing was already on the wall: Secret Empire was about to end poorly and damage control was necessary.
Having read the issue, we can say that calling it a series of predictable, unfortunate, bad events is too charitable. Even if you’re able to completely divorce yourself from the many controversies associated with Secret Empire, you can’t deny the fact that today’s issue #1. Or, at least, lazy and not at all the kind of well thought- out issue a publisher would want to end an event with.
After months of brutal battles and painful deaths, Earth’s mightiest heroes all finally get a chance to take on Steve Rogers himself, newly in possession of a nearly- complete Cosmic Cube and a Hydra- themed suit that allows him to harness its power. As the heroes all dive at Steve, more than prepared to bring the world’s suffering to an end, it’s obvious that even now Secret Empire’s more interested in “shocking” plot twists than trying to actually say or do anything interesting with its story. The Avengers, X- Men, and Champions converge on Steve only to be effortlessly erased from existence because Steve’s wearing a suit that’s literally powered by a macguffin. What are a few humanoids in spandex to a man with the ability to bend reality itself to his will? But this is a comic book event, which means that the Good Guys have got to win, and they’ve got to win thanks to a clever plan that nobody, not even a man with cosmic omniscience could see coming. After Steve erases all of the physical devastation he’s inflicted upon the world, he’s surprised by a visit from Sam Wilson, the current Captain America, who just so happens to have the final piece of the Cosmic Cube that would turn Steve into a god if he managed to get his hands on it. At this point in the story, there’s nothing much that Sam can really do to fight Steve.
He’s outgunned and his friends are all dead, so he does the sensible thing and bends the knee to Steve, offering his piece of the Cube as a show of good will. But it’s a trick! Though the piece of the Cube is real, buried deep within it are Ant- Man and Bucky Barnes, shrunken down so small that they’re in the microverse within the Cube itself which, it turns out, is a place we’ve seen before.
All of the dreamy flashes to the land bathed in white where an amnesiac alt- Steve has been encountering his friends and loved ones during all of Secret Empire? That’s all happening inside the Cube where Kobik—a living embodiment of the Cube’s powers who’s taken the form of a little girl—has been hiding from the mess she’s made of the world.
Through some comics weirdness that’s never adequately explained, Bucky travels into Kobik’s pocket universe, grabs her and the Good Steve by the hand, and manages to make his way back into the larger universe all within a matter of seconds. While all of this is happening, Evil Steve is standing there like a moron, looking at his suit wondering why his god powers aren’t working anymore. Evil Steve’s horror at the fact that he’s been outsmarted immediately intensifies when he comes face to face with Good Steve who, because of the way that the Cosmic Cube works, is now a real flesh and blood person. As Kobik undoes all of the changes to reality that Evil Steve made and the Avengers are resurrected, the two Steves face off Civil War- style and proceed to beat the shit out of each other in classic comic book fashion.
I’m being rather glib about all of this because there’s absolutely nothing about any of these sequences that at all feels novel or truly creative, especially when you consider the sorts of ideas that big comics events have tried to tackle in the past. No one watching the two Steves fight questions them or unpacks the symbolism of their clash, and that feels like a major mistake. It’s a sorely missed opportunity for Spencer to at least try and have Secret Empire’s characters say something meaningful or lasting about Steve, a living concept at this point, and the ways that he’s put them all through hell. Sure, one of these men is ostensibly supposed to be good and the other bad, but both of them are beings who wouldn’t exist without the Cosmic Cube. Secret Empire wants you to feel as if Captain America is a person redeeming himself for the sins of his darker half, but in reality he’s just a physical construct going through the narrative motions of a predicable hero’s narrative. Even that wouldn’t be all that bad if it weren’t for the heavy- handed, coded language of resistance scattered throughout the panels. Even though Secret Empire isn’t about politics, multiple pages of the issue are dedicated to conveying the basic idea that pseudo- Nazism (Hydra are Nazis; deal with it) is bad and that punching a Hydra figurehead is a good thing.
That’s a lovely sentiment to espouse, but it comes at a point in Secret Empire when readers have had to watch as Captain America murdered thousands and sent minorities to internment camps. To lazily pile on the “punching Nazis is good” imagery without actually taking the time to unpack the psychological and emotional impact the story’s had on its characters is outrageously bad. This is what Secret Empire’s been building up to for months now and it’s a disappointment of the highest order. Secret Empire closes with Good Steve defeating Bad Steve and the entire world deciding to just go along with the idea that everything’s going to be all right now that the bad Hydra bogeyman is no more. There’s a milquetoast epilogue involving an important Inhuman character being released from an internment camp that entirely glosses over what it means to live as a minority in a community of people who were literally just calling for your extermination.
The Inhuman returns home to find his home covered in “Hail Hydra” spray paint messages, but by the next day his home’s gleaming like it’s new thanks to his neighbors coming together to clean the graffiti off. Isn’t that nice? Isn’t that nice? It’s difficult to say what Marvel was trying to accomplish with Secret Empire #1. But that’s honestly understandable when you look back at just how much of a mess this has been for a while now. For all its grandstanding and shocking headline grabs, in the end Secret Empire was little more than your typical big superhero event: good guys fighting bad versions of themselves instead of each other, for once, but still a story that superhero comics have told a thousand times before.
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