SWA #11-12: "...And Dust To Dust!", "...Nothing To Fear..."

(The end of the beginning.)

Comments

When last we visited the Beyonder's Battleword, Doctor Doom had just pulled the ultimate fast one and acquired Galactus's power, making him in effect a living god, a result he's only to pleased to explain to the heroes.  As issue #11 kicks off, Molecule Man gets rather suspicious watching the heroes chinwagging with his former boss, and creates a new atmosphere-scraping mountain with them on top so he can talk to Doom alone.  Here we see our first proof that Doom really has changed (other than his lovely new entirely unscarred face).  Old Vic might have atomised Owen Reece simply for interrupting his conversation.  New Vic feels more generous, and teaches Owen how to affect biological molecules in the same way he does inorganic ones.

Whilst Cap's posse scramble down the planet's newest mountain before they run out of air, then, the Molecule Man grabs the entirety of the Denver suburb transported here a few days earlier and, wrapping it in an airtight dome, begins the long voyage home with the neighbourhood as his starship and ten very impressed supervillains as his crew.  I would read the shit out of that series.

With the villains gone, our heroes are safe to take up residence in Doombase, that being the least battered base they know of, as well as giving them the chance to keep an eye on Captain Marvel and see if there's anything to be done for her.  With seemingly no-one left of the planet but hot cat aliens with healing powers, it seems things are pretty quiet for now.  Colossus skips out to woo Zsaji, but otherwise things seem pretty peaceful.

Until something comes in the night and starts possessing people, first Hulk, then Spider-Woman.  Apparently it's looking for Klaw, but Doom ruins the plan by arriving to take his loyal lunatic back to his new 200-mile high base.  Whatever other force had been searching for Klaw disappears, leaving the heroes none the wiser.  As parting gifts, Doom returns Captain Marvel to normal, and cordially invites the heroes to join him in his massive edifice the following day.

Deciding prudence is the better part of valour, our heroes show up at the appointed hour, and are ushered into Doom's presence by a fully restored Klaw.  Doom announces that his quest to become the supreme being is now complete, and with that done the affairs of humans have become rather uninteresting. He decides to atone for recent crimes by resurrecting Kang (something of a strange way to say sorry, I'd have said, but then who am I to criticise the LOGIC OF DOOM), and offers the heroes a boon.  Rather snippily, they turn him down, and head back to Doombase in the hopes that Reed can get them all home. 

Except not all of them head out.  Whatever possessed Spider-Woman (and let's not kid ourselves; it's the Beyonder) never really left, and uses her to find Klaw.  The force then hops into Doom's loopy, reverb-heavy butler, and Spider-Woman staggers back to her friends none the wiser.

Once again, then, it looks a lot like everything's been settled. Cap, though, isn't willing to let things go. He's concerned Doom isn't as free of the petty passions and needs of mortality as the guy is letting on. Why fix his face if the physical realm is now irrelevant? Why plot to save his mother from an eternity of torture at the hands of Mephisto if people no longer mean anything to him? 

(Actually, I'd be pretty happy helping Doom out saving an innocent soul from infinite agony for all time, but that's exactly the sort of liberal wishy-washy thinking Steve Rogers can't afford I'd imagine.) 

Cap puts the question to the assembled heroes (including Colossus, who's taking time out of seducing Zsaji on Xavier's orders), and the vote is unanimous.  The day Doom has become both entirely benign and utterly invincible is exactly the time to strike!   

At least, it would be, except that at that moment the entire room suddenly explodes...

Issue #12 opens with some of the bleakest imagery Marvel's done before or since.  How fare our heroes? "Blood oozing from the mangled remains of their flesh sizzles across the debris of their once-mighty fortress".  Oh.

When Doom decides you've outlived your usefulness, he really doesn't mess around.

Meanwhile, aboard the good ship Denver Suburb, an exceedingly promising sitcom premise is denied us as the Enchantress hides in the bathroom and summons up an exposition elemental.  Apparently the water spirits of Asgard hang out with their equivalent numbers across the galaxy, and one of them happens to know exactly what's going on.  Enchantress and the reader both sit rather impatiently as the last eleven issues are summarised (turns out Magneto's placement with the heroes really was because of how convinced he is that he's helping other people, though I still say that Doom qualifies under similar conditions).  It's like a Game of Thrones info-dump, only without any sex.

Goddammit.

Learning of Doom's apotheosis, the Enchantress decides Asgard should be informed, and tries to suck the life from Volcana in order to provide the necessary power for an interstellar text message. Lizard and Molecule Man catch her in the act, though, and attack.  In a panic, the Enchantress teleports herself - with Lizard in tow - back to Battleworld.  There, she drinks the energy from the Lizard instead, leaving him a charred corpse, and tries to teleport back to Asgard.  The universe's most fascinating variant on Big Brother has just suffered its first evictions.

Back in reality's most phallic tower, Doom is brooding over the death of the heroes.  Klaw is convinced he subconsciously wanted them to survive, hence why he blew up their conference room rather than stripping the area down to its constituent atoms.  He also suggests Zsaji might have found Colossus' armoured body and been able to restore him, after which he could save Richards by putting him in a nearby alien medical pod, which in turn could lead to Mr Fantastic saving everyone else.

Doom rejects this as so ludicrously unlikely as to be worth not a moment's thought, especially since in thinking about it he might actually resurrect the heroes by accident in any case.  It's not easy having the powers of a living God. 

One gets the distinct impression here that Klaw wants the heroes to have survived, and when a moment later Mjolnir smashes through the wall, it's clear he's gotten his wish (either because his ridiculous story turned out to be true, or Doom subconsciously retrospectively made it true; I don't know which option is more stupid).  Immediately he announces his wish to kill them all, which seems odd, but then the guy is certifiable, and possessed besides.  Maybe he just wanted the personal pleasure of killing them himself.  Or maybe he's angling for a slice of Doom's power.

That's what he gets, anyway, and he busies himself creating an army of monsters, led by a newly-resurrected Ultron, which I believes now returns the Secret Wars casualty rate to 0%.  Amidst a pitched battle, Captain America overcomes Klaw (the power to "blacken ten thousand suns" apparently being of limited use when one receives a drop-kick to the face) and confronts Doom.

This, though, is the moment Klaw has been waiting for. Each time Doom atomises Captain America (for interrupting nap time, I presume), Klaw resurrects him, until eventually Doom becomes so furious he loses control, and the Beyonder's power starts spilling out in all directions.  That's what the force possessing Klaw - the Beyonder himself, by Jove! - has wanted all along, and feeding off the escaping energy, the creator of Battleworld and instigator of the Secret Wars is once again whole.  He exacts some measure of vengeance by returning Doom to his previous, horribly-scarred appearance, and then he, Doom and Klaw all disappear.  The heroes, it seems, have won by default.

Not without cost, however.  Whether Doom allowed it to happen, caused it to happen, or simply didn't see it coming, the heroes were indeed saved by Zsaji, who perished in giving them so much of her life-force.  Colossus has some mourning to do, then, but for the rest of our heroes, it's really about tying up loose ends whilst waiting for Reed to figure out how to get them home.  There are two developments here that intersects with this blog's focus.  The first is Xavier's announcement that he shall continue to take part in field missions, during which time he'll be in command.  Storm (and Wolverine) continue to think this is a mistake, and given Charles's first act is to create a new costume in a colour exactly halfway between lime green and diarrhoea brown, it's easy to see why one might consider Xavier unsuited for field work.

The other we need to take notice of is the return of Lockheed, who after several issues MIA has returned... with a girlfriend!  Apparently the after-shocks of the battle between Doom and the Beyonder has created some kind of background psychic wish radiation, or something. So Reed Richards claims, anyway, clearly utterly unfazed by how indescribably idiotic the idea is.  I think it's much more likely that the Beyonder is giving the victors at least a taste of the rewards he promised them, though fixing Cap's shield and giving Lockheed a little action seems somewhat far from what was originally promised.  Bringing Zsaji back might be a bit more like it, but for whatever reason, that seems to be off the cards. 

Grief stricken, Colossus rejoins the X-Men and their dragons, and Reed uses the Beyonder's own technology to beam our favourite mutants home again, though the addition of Lockheed's squeeze apparently causes some problems with the system.  One by one our superhero teams leave the Beyonder's patchwork world, until only Ben Grimm remains, determined to stay behind as himself rather than risk returning to Earth as the Thing. 

The heroes are home, the villains have their interstellar flat-share experiment, and Ben has his face back. The Secret Wars, at last, are over.

So what have we learned?  Well, quite a lot, actually.  In terms of our focus on the X-Men, we've spent quite some time deconstructing what the series offers us in terms of mutant/human relations.  To summarise: mistrust of mutants isn't just for one-dimensional villains and witless mob dialogue anymore.  The sight of Wolverine defending Magneto's actions to Captain America strikes me as clear proof that a turning point has been reached.

That turning point is very important in more ways than one.  Firstly, it thrusts "the mutant problem" into the realm of personal politics, rather than the ignore/hate dichotomy that existed before (though Claremont has recently added "exploit" to those two poles).  Whilst there's not a single panel of Secret Wars that can sensibly called subtle, this new approach does lead to a far greater range of equally unsubtle viewpoints, which is something.

The second reason Shooter's approach is important is part of a larger consideration.  Secret Wars is to all intents and purposes the first of the blockbuster crossovers (Contest of Champions being basically Animal Olympics with Blitzkrieg instead of Kurt Woofington), so it's worth noting how it sets the template for what follows.  And one of the most obvious things to say, other than "involves massive threat to all reality" is the fact that even back in the mid '80s, an awful lot of this crossover involves the heroes basically being dicks to each other.

The idea of superhero teams that don't entirely get along is hardly new, of course.  The team Xavier assembled back in Deadly Genesis were far from a sure bet to even get to Krakoa without at least a couple of self-inflicted casualties.  The only time Wolverine gave Cyclops a break was when he was mouthing off at Professor X.  But the idea of superheroes coming together specifically to deal with a threat (albeit unwillingly here, and due to internal issues on many other occasions), simply to threaten to (or actually) punch each other out has to my knowledge its basis here.  One way of putting it is this: Secret Wars marks the end of the era when superheroes only fought each other due to misunderstandings or mind control, and ushers in an age where they might well come to blows simply because they don't like each other.

Many have argued that this kind of - dare one say it? - "civil war" between heroes has now become the standard crossover template, and indeed if one includes suspicion over Skrull infiltrators and the mind-controlling hijinks of the Serpent's hammer, it's featured prominently in just about every crossover since House of M in 2005.   It would be foolish to suggest this is a direct result of Secret Wars when one can far more easily point both to an entire decade of superheroes written as violent malcontents (that would be the '90s, if you're new to all this), as well as the fact that internal conflict has become a far more common aspect of genre fiction since the '80s in any case.  So it's not that Secret Wars was a sufficient condition for Civil War or Avengers vs X-Men.  I can certainly see an argument that it was a necessary one, however.  Whether or not this is actually a good thing, we shall talk about some other time.

With that though, then, I shall bring my Secret Wars posts to a close. Next time around, we'll finally return to our original mission of investigating the timings of Uncanny X-Men as we ask ourselves: why is monsters always start by eating Tokyo?

Clues

These issues pick up directly after SWA #10, and continues into the following day.

Date

Thursday 12^th to Friday 13^th of January, 1984.

X-Date

X+5Y+318 to X+5Y+319.

Contemporary Events

Christine Craft wins her lawsuit against KMBC-TV, who had demoted her from news anchor to reporter three years earlier after focus groups found her "too old", "too unattractive", and someone who "wouldn't defer to men".

Standout Line

"The exquisite Enchantress, supreme sorceress of Asgard, locks herself in the bathroom..."

If Marvel didn't release a mini-series detailing the adventures of the supervillain houseshare, mere syllables will not be able to express my profound fury.

SWA #8-10: "Invasion!", "Assault On Galactus!", "Death To The Beyonder!"

(In which I go on at rather too much length about Captain America.)

Comments

Last time around, we left She-Hulk in the clutches of the villains, with Captain America and his forces heading off to hopefully save her. But has she been able to survive the extended beating inflicted on her whilst Steve Rogers was waiting around?

Issue #8 opens with the heroes attacking Doombase.  The villains take a time out from beating on the unconscious She-Hulk and prepare to repel borders, all except the Enchantress who has just gotten herself mindless pissed on magical mead instead.  If I could summon mead at will, I'd do the same thing, if I'm honest.

The resulting fracas takes up much of the issue, which is handy for summarising.  Klaw releases the Lizard only for both of them to decide they'd rather play patty-cake with a once-more depowered Thing, and there's a nice moment where Captain Marvel demonstrates transparent shields aren't any use against someone who can turn themselves into light rays, but that's about all we need to take note of.  Eventually, the heroes gain the upper hand and battle their way to Doom himself, only to find him all but comatose following his stint in the troposphere back in issue #7.  They find She-Hulk, too, even more far gone, but at least she can be put into one of the nearby alien healing devices; no-one dares try it with Doom in case his suit misinterprets the gesture as a threat and detonates one of the many booby-traps it surely has built into it.

With the battle over, it's finally time to bury the Wasp (and here I thought the funeral had been skipped over; apparently it was merely postponed off-panel). Except there's no need, because Wasp is alive! Zsaji the alien healer managed to pull her back from the brink, Janet being "not dead -- merely wounded, but also in some kind of death-like stasis" - or so noted physician Colossus puts it, this presumably being a common thing to happen to Russians who are shot through the chest - though it's nearly at the cost of her own life.  The Avengers are obviously delighted when their comrade returns to them, even if her first action is to complain about a lack of make-up and hair products.

There's just time left in the issue for Spider-Man to go searching for a machine to make him a new costume and end up with a jet-black suit that attaches itself to him, and then play time is over.  The X-Men have called in: Galactus is dressing for dinner.

In issue #9 it's once again time for the X-Men to shine as they try and buy Cap's forces time to mount an offensive against Galactus.  Cyclops, at least, knows that this is suicide, and wonders whether Professor X's recent unpleasant attitude was due to his suspicion that he'd have to send the whole team into their deaths.  That sounds like apologism to me, frankly, but I suppose there might be something to it.  Whatever else one might want to say about Xavier, though, at least he's leading this suicide mission from the front. This is more than can be said for Wasp, Captain Marvel and Hawkeye, certainly, who are standing in the alien village waiting for Cap to arrive.  Much better to die with other humans than those mutie weirdos, I guess.

Cap himself has corralled his cats and the whole herd is heading into battle, including the Thing who has once more regained his powers, and Spider Woman, who Iron Man suspects of being a spy, and of having nice enough legs to make her worth keeping tabs on either way.

The Avengers and friends are almost at the battle when Galactus shoots them down (and not even deliberately), which seems like a long way to have come just to die pointlessly.  Fortunately, they land on Colossus, cushioning their fall (I am not even slightly exaggerating).  Together the second wave of heroes attack, Colossus wondering what fate has befallen his teammates, everyone else wondering how much of them will be left to scrape into a bin-bag five minutes from now. Just as humanity's defenders are starting to break through Galactus' flock of flying death-balls, however, Reed Richards has an epiphany: the heroes must not stop Galactus, which to be honest is a bit like one bee telling his mate that he must not kill the bear currently stealing the hive's honey supply.

Mr Fantastic's reasoning is fairly simple: they should let Galactus win because he'll then receive the Beyonder's prize, and use it to cure his need to consume planets.  Of course, all the refugees the Beyonder dumped on this world will die, as will the heroes, but that's a price Richards is willing to pay (though not mention, apparently).  No sooner has he worked this out than he's beamed onto Galactus' ship (which he describes as "[pulsing with life... with living splendour! Mountains... seas... forests... a world of inconceivable vistas of beauty...", making it a bit of a shame that all we see is a bunch of giant metal rooms).  Galactus has something he'd like to discuss.

Back at Doombase, the eponymous villain has decided to have another go at stealing Galactus' mojo, and he knows just the person to help: Klaw.  This leads to what is easily my favourite exchange in the series so far:

KLAW: You narrate your life as you go along, don't you? Are you being taped?
DOOM: Why, yes! Every utterance of Doom must be recorded for posterity!... Come with me!
KLAW: Where to? Toodle-oo, toodle-oo!
DOOM: To the lab! I'm going to dissect you!
KLAW: Oh, good!

What I wouldn't give for a sitcom with those two as flatmates.

We return to the battlefield, where Colossus has found the other mutants (Magneto had buried them under the ground to avoid being blown up), and everyone else basically waits for the other shoe to drop. Soon enough Mr Fantastic is returned, babbling something about Galactus naming him the "universal champion of life", and himself an instrument of death.  Whether this means Reed should let Galactus win so as to save billions of sentients from Galactus' hunger, or fight to the death to protect the people of this particular planet, he has no idea.  Good work, Galactus, nice and clear.

There is of course an elephant in this particular room that Galactus himself might find too big to eat.  The moral choice here - fight to save a planet, or let yourself die with it to save a thousand more - is utterly bogus.  If the heroes fight and lose, it's immaterial.  If they somehow manage to win, then whichever hero is granted the powers of a God can then cure Galactus' hunger in any case.  It's hard to watch heroes agonising over whether to sacrifice their lives when five seconds' thought would reveal there's no need at all.

Eventually, all the heroes decide they're going to get up in Galactus' grill in any case.  Unfortunately, there's one flaw in the plan; they go for Galactus' planet-blender instead of the dude himself.  With his machine wrecked, Galactus simply retreats to his worldship, and starts eating that instead.  Reed points out this is an obvious prelude to eating the planet and then possibly the sun. Galactus doesn't actually need the planet-blender, it just makes things more efficient. Timely info there, Stretcho.  Great work you're doing.

Of course, Doom has his own plans.  Chopping up Klaw (which hasn't actually damaged the guy, though apparently he's more lunatic than ever) has resulted in a series of finely-tuned lenses (because sound can, er, become glass that... focuses because of... resonant frequencies? Yeah, that'll do...), which Doom plans to use to gather the energy from Galactus' ship into himself!

That gets us to issue #10, in which Doctor Doom's plan is going very well, thanks for asking.  The power from Galactus's ship is redirected into him, and he gets busy using it, turning all nearby objects into replicas of his face and laughing his armoured arse off as he mentally dissects the puny desires and needs of his former flunkies.

Tipped off to these developments by a Captain Marvel - reconnaissance is pretty easy when you can move at the speed of light - the heroes decide it's time for another hopeless stand against impossible odds.  The things you'll do to entertain yourself when your TV isn't available.  Magneto animates the heroes' crashed ship, and they head off to battle (with just enough time for some mutant/human bickering, which we'll return to later).  For his part, Doom's not sure Cap's forces are even worth the effort of raising his boot to squash them, so he builds himself a Beyonder-destroying chestplate app and heads off for a real fight.  The heroes arrive to find their quarry gone, Captain Marvel frozen into a hologram, and Klaw just a head babbling about Doom.

Meanwhile, in whatever dimension the Beyonder calls home, battle is joined.  The resulting shockwaves ripple out into our reality, shaking the Beyonder's hastily assembled planet like a Magic 8 Ball with only one prediction: "Signs point to apocalypse".  Both Reed Richards and Zsaji are badly injured (Colossus throws a strop when the Human Torch prioritises the former over the latter), as is She Hulk.  It's Doom himself who fares worst, however, rapidly having his left leg blown off as he tries to close with the Beyonder.  Risking everything on a melee weapon doesn't seem so wise right about now, I'm guessing.

But at least the ruler of Latveria has cojones, steel-covered though they might be.  With his last strength he knocks the Beyonder back long enough for him to appear before the heroes and ask for assistance in exchange for godlike powers.  No-one takes him up on the offer (Magneto is briefly tempted, leading to yet another argument), however, and Doom is quickly overwhelmed.  Intrigued by his new plaything, the Beyonder begins to dissect Doom, layer by layer, whilst Victor is still conscious.  This proves to be something of a mistake when Doom manages to hold onto consciousness long enough to trigger the device inside his breastplate...

And suddenly it's all over.  The heroes, having fled the collapsing Doombase (after freeing the trapped villains, because our guys are classy) find themselves standing before an omnipotent Victor von Doom.  He assures everyone that the defeat of the Beyonder has also resulted in the death of the old, villainous Doom, and that the war is at last over.  Looks like it's going to be two issues of peaceful harmony and garden parties, right?

Right?

With events snowballing to the double-length finale, there's not a lot of room here for mutant/human relations to be explored, and what does creep in is, perhaps inevitably, centred once more on Magneto.

The first and most important standoff occurs in issue #10 as the heroes head towards a show-down with GodDoom.  It starts off with some atypically snarky patter from Captain America and some entirely typical overreaction from Magneto:

America: Amazing! Looks like you've managed to live up to your own hype, Magneto!

Magneto: I gather, Captain America, that you would have preferred that I fail!  Or... was that remark, perhaps, intended to be a "well done" for which I should be humbly thankful!

Frankly, I'm entirely behind Magneto on this one, though since here that essentially boils down to the fact that I'd have told Rogers to go fuck himself as well, my position on this probably isn't worth a great deal. Instead, let's take a look at Wolverine's opinion:

What you don't understand, Cap'n, is that we mutants are at war! Always have been, always will be! You, with all your high-falutin' ideals -- you're the champion of the American dream, fightin' for liberty and justice -- but only for your own kind! For humans... for regular Americans!  But you just stand by while mutants are being persecuted, don't you? When have you ever fought for our rights? Some of the God-fearin' Americans you protect hate mutants -- and when they come after us, it's a lot like how the Nazis went after the Jews! Xavier wants us to hide... try to help humanity... earn acceptance... fit in!  But when they're threatenin' you and yours, it's easy to play it like Magneto did--! Fight back--!  Take the offensive--! Drive 'em into the sea if you have to... Now, though, Professor X has convinced Maggie to lay off...  Stop taking the expedient route... stop using noble ends to justify violent means... an' still you won't lay off!

This not just gets to the heart of the problem regarding the intersection between Captain America and mutants, it strikes at the core of a much bigger issue: the intersection between Captain America and America. So let's take a look at what these problems are, shall we?

The root of this problem is a common one: fifty states, five centuries, and four million square miles have conspired to create a country of a variety difficult for a Brit like me to truly comprehend.  There is not, and never was, a single America.  The "real" America is a construct that exists only in the minds of the most self-absorbed and intolerant conservatives.  It is the first Great Lie of the USA. America's strength is its diversity.  The Founding Fathers knew this; the explicit aim of much of the Bill of Rights was to ensure as many different people as possible could call themselves American without the place exploding.  The translation of "E pluribus unum" is not "You better be white and Christian round here, pal".

And yet President Obama notwithstanding, that seems to be the way it's worked out in practice.  There are many Americas, but there's only one holding all the cards.  Even the first black president spends an awful lot of time trying to do things the way the rich white guys want it to be done (exhibit A being the insurance-friendly Affordable Care Act, which whatever its advantages - and there are many - was explicitly crafted to try and keep as many monied interests as possible on-side).

This has always been the uncomfortable truth beneath Captain America; he's the de jure champion of an entire nation, and the de facto champion of whomever has the largest voice, which is almost always the white guy with a sharp suit and access to the Situation Room.  When Cap discovered agents of the Seret Empire had infiltrated America's government, corrupting it from within and causing Cap to abandon his role and become Nomad, the shock wasn't that the US government had been so riddled by enemy agents, it's that Cap could ever possibly have believed the American government could have been living up to his ideals in the first place.

This is not me trying to suggest there is something uniquely problematic about American politics.  On the contrary, the problem is that American politics are so utterly like everyone else's, but this is played out against a backdrop of unique self-righteousness, and with access to a unique level of power. Cap is told this more or less explicitly in Captain America Vol. 4 #6, in which a mass-murdering terrorist tells Rogers he hails from a country utterly fucked over by US interference in its politics and infrastructure, and promises to give himself up if Captain America can successfully guess which country he's talking about.

As Mark Twain once quipped, "Loyalty to your country always, loyalty to your government when it deserves it".  And a large part of what makes the American government unworthy of Cap's unswerving devotion is it's insistence - usually implicit until HUAC starts up or Steve King starts congressional hearings into Muslims in Congress - that the needs and identity of America should correlate with what the white guys are thinking.

This is basically what Logan is getting at.  There are human Americans, and mutant Americans, and the former both hold all the power, and are closer to what the pollutions Rogers venerates think constitutes "real America".  And when the deck is stacked that badly, there is no such thing as remaining neutral. If Captain America isn't actively aiding the mutant cause, he's enabling their oppression.

This is something Steve Rogers really doesn't want to think about, because he buys the first Great Lie, and because he buys the second Great Lie as well.  The second Great Lie is intertwined with the first, and says that America is complete.  The second Great Lie states that everything is fine now, that racism has been solved, that sexism has been overcome; that mistakes were made in the past, but these days everything's been sorted and people should stop going on about it.  

Again, this is a product of the American right - just look at the conservative-heavy Supreme Court gear up to chuck out the VRA because clearly legislatures in the former Confederacy don't have so much as a hint of racism mixed into them any more - but really it's just the US flavour of standard conservative thinking, the only way a political movement that has fought against every form of social progress in human history can look themselves in the mirror.  It's also an utterly essential foundation for Captain America's ability to function.  Try to imagine Captain America waking up during the '60s and actually engaging with the Civil Rights movement.  Or dealing with President Reagan sending in the National Guard to break the heads of some hippies. Up until the late '90s at the very earliest, the idea that contemporary America might be suffering from internal battles more complicated than the Avengers brawling with Ultron was simply inconceivable.  The battles against the bigoted and the wealthy aren't there for Captain America to fight, they're there for Captain America to state were right to have been fought twenty years after the shooting stopped.

And Logan is calling him on this.  If mutants were real, instead of fictional, Marvel Comics wouldn't have come within a million miles of having Cap fight for their right to exist.  The closest they'd come is to have him take the stance he does here, that terrorism is never the answer.  Which Logan then points out is too loaded a term, though in truth Magneto wouldn't be the person I'd go to the mat over on that particular rhetorical point.  The larger point though is the Catch-22 mutants find themselves in; if they don't make enough noise they're ignored, allowing them to be oppressed.  If they start fighting back, they're decried as menaces, causing them to be oppressed.  There is theoretically some kind of sweet spot where things will gradually, painfully progress - Martin Luther King Jr. found it, and it cost him his life - but it's one thing for the oppressed to find that centre, and another for those who are allied - even if only by default - with the oppressors to give lectures on the need for it to be found.  "Please proceed in a way that won't spook heterosexual white Christian men" isn't something a minority needs to hear from a heterosexual white Christian man.

This, ultimately, is why I don't think Captain America works as a character, particularly in the same universe that hosts the X-Men.  His title has no real relevance when he's outside his own country, and it limits what we can plausibly interact with upon his own turf.  It's a character limitation, not a character facet.  And whatever the flaws of mutants as an analogy to the real world, at least those parallels can be drawn.  Captain America exists as an anti-metaphor; an attempt not to reflect the real world but to shore up something that does not and cannot exist in reality.  It's unfair an oversimplistic in the extreme to suggest Captain America's only foundation is jingoism, but it is true that treating him as such might be the only way to keep everything consistent.  

Which is a real problem. I mean, at least Captain Britain is a drunken sexist malcontent.  That's how you put together a character who represents an entire country.

Clues

These issues pick up directly after SWA #7, and continues for several hours.

Date

Thursday 12^th of January, 1984.

X-Date

X+5Y+318.

Contemporary Events


Standout Line

The Human Torch warns of the dangers of over-exuberant embraces from the Thing:

"Jeez, I can see the headlines -- 'Affectionate hug slays Human Torch en route to battle -- universe destroyed as a result'!"

SWA #5-7: "The Battle Of Four Armies!", "A Little Death...", "Beserker!"

("A big big love".)

Comments

Right.  It's EXTREME SUMMARISING time again.  If you're not convinced things are sufficiently EXTREME, then let me assure you that you're wrong, because I'm typing out these SUMMARIES whilst absolutely desperate for a piss, meaning I am risking bladder rupture every second I delay.  And all for you.

Issue #5 begins with the arrival of Galactus' worldship, an event which rather puts the wind up heroes and villains alike.  Both the Avengers and the X-Men (alongside Magneto) prepare to attack if necessary, all but the Human Torch, who decides to get high with his new alien girlfriend instead. Which proves he's not as dumb as he's suggested to be, actually. He's certainly putting less noses out of joint than Xavier, who's now decided he'll be leading the X-Men in the field despite having had no field experience in the last thirty years.  Over at Doombase, the Enchantress tries in vain to seduce Doom in exchange for protection from Galactus, whilst the Wreckers are so busy watching Piledriver attempt to bully Molecule Man's new girlfriend Volcana (which goes exactly as poorly as you'd expect) they almost miss the vast craft appearing in the sky.

Each of the three groups respond differently to the arrival of Galactus' ship and his subsequent construction of some kind of machine that everyone's terrified will blend the planet good and proper so Galactus can chug back a world smoothie.  The heroes send Reed to try and speak to Galactus, hoping the fact Mr Fantastic once saved the guy's life might count for something.  Xavier meanwhile has the X-Men prepare for battle whilst he tries to make mental contact, using Magneto's latent psychic powers to assist him.  I don't think I've seen Magneto's psychic abilities referenced since the mid '60s, so that's interesting.

It's also unwise, however. Initial attempts to make contact fail, leading to Magneto trying to tear his way into Galactus's mind.  The resulting pain causes the world-eater to notice the X-Men, which goes very badly when he blows up a third of their base. Interrupted from his reverie, Galactus also notices Reed trying to get his attention, and responds by attacking the heroes with a giant killer robot, so he can get some peace and quiet.  No sooner have Cap's forces stopped the machine than the villains attack once more.  This is Doom's own response; distract the heroes with his minions whilst he sneaks aboard Galactus's ship.

This he does, and there's almost an unexpected bonus as his forces come close to defeating the heroes.  At the last moment, however, the X-Men arrive to help out, resulting in another retreat for the villains.  This time the battle is not without cost, however, Colossus is stabbed through the chest by Wrecker - an odd thing to happen considering he's armoured up, but maybe Wrecker's superhuman strength plus his magically enhanced indestructible crowbar is up to the job - and Xavier orders he be left behind, believing his injuries too severe to risk moving him.  Fortunately, his hunch plays out, and the heroes arrange for the local healer to save Colossus, but even so, Charles's apparent callousness serves to stoke Storm's suspicions about his fitness for command still further.

Of course, if Doom manages to succeed in his goal of stealing Galactus's power for himself, the internal cohesion of the X-Men won't really matter a damn, and neither will anything else.

Issue #6 kicks off with a look at what happened to Wasp after she was shot down escaping Magneto's base.  It turns out she makes an ugly landing inside an alien swamp, which turns out to be where the Lizard has been hiding since fleeing the initial encounter with Cap's troops. Best laid plans of mice and angry sentient lizards, and all that.  Not best pleased by the interruption, the former Doctor Connors leaps to the attack, but Wasp manages to calm him down with soothing words and, once she learns the Lizard broke his arm when fighting the heroes, a quick Androcles impression.

Back aboard Galactus's ship, and Doom has made a surprising discovery, when it turns out the villain Klaw, last seen flash-fried in Dazzler, is a) still alive, b) aboard the worldship, and c) out of his fucking mind ("So... I have managed to recreate a raving lunatic!").  Apparently, being made of sonic energy has its advantages, and once Dazzler freed him in a burst of light aimed at Galactus a little while after absorbing him, Klaw was able to gradually reform, albeit as a simple-minded pest.  Even he has the wherewithal to carry a message, though, so Doom beams him to the villain's base, where Klaw relays instructions intended to stop Galactus from chowing down on the surrounding landscape.

Over in the shadow of Galactus, our two groups of heroes aren't having the best time of it.  Cap's forces are getting more and more agitated, partially because the Wasp is missing, but mainly because the sum total of Captain America's battle plan is to do sweet fuck all on the off chance Galactus suddenly decides to eat the planet.  Of course, if that is Galactus' plan, there's nothing the heroes could plausibly do about it, which pretty much means Cap's strategy is to do nothing so as to save strength for when they're all immediately brutally killed.

Meanwhile, Colossus may have been healed, but the exhausted Avengers and Fantastic Four don't seem to have any interest in him, and he's finding it hard to keep his mind of Kitty (who he last saw all of two days ago) because of how smokin' hot he finds Zsaji, the alien healer who repaired his chest wound but apparently plucked out his heart first.  Alas, she apparently only has eyes for Johnny Storm and his classy pick-up lines (see end of post).

The rest of the X-Men have their own problems.  When Charles's mental snooping reveals Doom has dispatched a team for reasons unknown, he orders Cyclops to lead an interception team, enraging current leader Storm.  When she confronts Xavier about his recent heavy-handed tactics, and threatens to quit as a result, Professor X calmly tells her that her options are limited to following his orders willingly, or being mentally forced into doing what she's told.  You'd better believe we'll come back to this later.

For now, though, we follow Cyclops, Wolverine and Rogue into battle as they charge forward - despite Xavier specifically ordering they not engage - and engage Doom's team, who've been sent to a range of dormant volcanoes for unknown reasons.  Given that the villains here include the Molecule Man, it doesn't seem likely that our heroes have much of a hope.  Of course, Wolverine is smart enough to realise that, so his very first move is to try and cut Owen Reece in half.  Only a last second optic blast from Scott saves the villain, who is still almost eviscerated.

With that, the villains retreat, meaning the X-Men are free to investigate the area, and Cyclops concludes Molecule Man's goal was to re-ignite the volcanoes.  Curious as to what the villains planned, and assuming it might have something to do with Galactus, Cyclops takes the utterly demented decision to open fire into the nearest caldera, setting of a chain reaction of eruptions across the plain.  The team get out in their ship at the last second as Scott muses "I hope I did the right thing!"  Ensuring the assumed exact goals of your enemies come to pass on the off chance it will benefit you too later on?  What could be more right than that?

Back in the swamp, Lizard is well on the way to being domesticated; he's already learned to say "sss-sorry", though admittedly only after announcing "I hate humansss... crush them all!", so there's some distance still to go. Alas, Janet van Dyne won't be around to help out; the Wrecking Crew arrive under orders to retrieve the Lizard, and they shoot Wasp straight through the chest before she even knows she's there.  That's the thing about the alien vehicle the criminals are driving:

it's just so damn hard to see or hear coming. The Wrecking Crew grab both the Lizard and the Wasp's body, and head out of the swamp.

Meanwhile, a shadowy figure watches the heroes from the shadows...

Onto issue #7, and the mysterious stranger is quickly revealed: it's a super-heroine named Spider Woman.  Not the New York one, but someone from Denver, who was swept up by the Beyonder when this new world was being formed.  This answers the question of where Titania and Volcana came from originally (though not how Doom met them), and finally confirms that the inhabitants of this world are not from the galaxy the Beyonder destroyed in the opening issue.  For those keeping score, then, it's at this point that the heroes horror about seeing an entire galaxy get torn to shreds could convincingly fade into the background.

There's some concern that this new heroine might be a spy (Spiderman is none too pleased about encroachment on his IP rights, also), but the discussion is rapidly tabled when the Wrecking Crew rock up in their tank, sticking around just long enough to throw Jan's dead body to the ground.  Naturally, our heroes are outraged, but Cap refuses to countenance retaliation, still being too worried about what Galactus might be planning.  It's still best, he insists, to wait and see what happens, even when Captain Marvel points out attacking Galactus is suicidal in any case. 

(As is trying to sneak into his base, as Doom soon discovers when Galactus finally notices the intruder, and has Doom sucked out of the nearest airlock.  Somehow he survives, but when he finally staggers into his base several pages later, he immediately passes out on a lovely comfy double bed.  Apparently even Doctor Doom needs a kip from time to time.)

Back with the villains, Molecule Man isn't looking good. He's close to bleeding to death, and both Cyclops' vessel and a second craft carrying Xavier, Magneto, Nightcrawler and Storm are closing in.  Watching on the Doombase monitors, Volcana strikes a deal with the Enchantress to be teleported to her boyfriend's side, which proves fortuitous, as seconds later the villain's craft is shot down and another battle with the X-Men begins.  Ultimately the villains escape by stealing one of the X-Men's shuttles.  Storm is less than impressed, but Charles argues their performance was good enough to prove he belongs as their field leader and that Magneto is a boon to the team.  Personally, I think the only upside to the whole affair was that Wolverine got to chop the Absorbing Man's arm off, but then I'm not the master tactician Charles (has persuaded himself he) is.

Upon returning to Doombase, the villains lick their wounds and clean up.  Titania threatens to tear the Enchantress in half if she doesn't save Molecule Man, the Wrecking Crew find a cage for the enraged lizard, and the Absorbing Man learns to his significant relief that he can re-attach his severed arm upon transforming from rock back to flesh.  There's no time to get anything else done, because at that moment She-Hulk attacks. She's struck out on her own, but with surprise on her side - plus, obviously, massive strength - she takes out the entire Wrecking Crew in seconds. Ultimately, however the sheer number of bad 'uns nearby overwhelms her.

Incredibly, when he learns She-Hulk has gone rogue and is almost certainly on the shitty end of magical/molecular torture even now, Captain America still refuses to roll out, so terrified is he that if Galactus eats this world, some of his men might not live long enough to die in the resultant apocalypse.  It's only when Xavier finally does something useful and offers his services as Galactus' baby sitter that we finally get to see Rogers step up to the plate.  Avengers gotta assemble.

That at least is a nice ending to the infighting that's plagued the heroes since the first issue, even if it comes at least four issues later than it should have.  But with the Avenger, FF, and X-Men all working together at last, is there anything one could seriously object to in these three issues?

Oh my, yes.

There's two major problems with these three issues, which though very different do have a definite intersection.  We'll start with the one more directly relevant to this blog's focus, I think, and talk for a bit about Charles Xavier.

I never really understood why so many readers were upset over Whedon's portrayal of Xavier in his Astonishing X-Men run.  Sure, there were problems there (a crippled man driving an articulated lorry being my personal favourite), but anyone claiming Professor X would never enslave an AI in the service of the greater good was simply not paying attention.  Charles Xavier has always been a douche.  In fact, that's what I like about him, genuinely flawless Messianic figures being pretty much unbearable.  Hell, even Jesus fragged that fig tree for no good reason. 

The problem, I think, is that a lot of people mistake Charles's dedication to empathy as a general concept for giving two shits what anybody else thinks.  Charles has decided that the world would best be served by people living in harmony, and he hasn't any interest in listening to suggestions about how best to do it. He spends a lot of time agonising over decisions in his own head, which is part of why people might think of him as reasonable (it helps that for decades we were able to see what was going on inside his head), but once his deliberations point one way or another, that's it; the truth has been found.  In short, whether he's truly reasonable or not, he can't be reasoned with.  This is the point Chuck Austen made with his very first and arguably best Uncanny X-Men issue back in 2002; Xavier and Magneto differ in both goals and methods, but they're actually exceptionally similar in terms of how they respond to those who disagree with their impenetrable self belief.

These Secret Wars issues underline this point.  The instant Xavier is capable of standing, of course he decides the best thing he can do is lead the team in the field. He's the one with the vision, so it stands to reason he's the one best suited to carrying it out.  When Storm threatens to quit, and thereby cost the team one of its most important power sets, of course he tells her she'll be mentally controlled unless she falls into line.  Because Xavier knows what's best, and he doesn't have time for you people to work it all out for yourself.  The fact that between threatening Storm with being reduced to a mohawk-sporting meat puppet and tearing pieces out of Spiderman's memory he's lecturing Magneto on the sanctity of human life, and when he's not bellowing at the X-Men to attend him immediately he's explaining to Magneto the dangers of expedient concision rather than warmth, is all part of the same thing.  It's not so much that he's a hypocrite, as he's completely unable to fathom the idea that his decision on what is and isn't necessary could possibly be the wrong one.

To the outside observer, this seems maddeningly inconsistent.  Ten minutes after ordering the X-Men not to engage the Molecule Man's squad, and telling Storm she'll be brainwashed if she disobeys orders, he's congratulating Scott on disobeying orders by ordering a ridiculously fool-hardy attack that only worked because Logan almost killed someone, and which proved to be pointless when Cyclops did the villain's work for them anyway.  Indeed, it's pretty hard to see this as anything other than playing favourites.  Even that ties into Charles's bigger issues, however; it makes total sense that he'd prefer the man he chose as field leader to be his second in command, rather than the woman chosen by the team without his input.

Of course, what isn't explained by Cyclops being Charles's favourite might be attributable to plain sexism.  These are not good issues from a feminine perspective. The Wasp spends almost every panel right up to her death complaining about the lack of lunch spots and hairdressers, pausing only to blame the X-Men for not stopping her stinging them repeatedly in the face and then stealing their shuttle, or to take a distinctly schoolmarmish tone with the Lizard. This is hardly helped by us seeing her death but skipping her funeral, rather reinforcing the idea that Wasp's death is a shock event, entirely independent of her character save that it removes same.

As I've mentioned, though, this could be me just bringing my more general Wasp baggage into this story. On the other hand, if Shooter wanted to steer people away from accusations of poor sexual politics, he should've cut out the rather nasty streak of fat-shaming that goes on throughout these issues.  This is Volcana:

Now, those don't strike me as particularly realistic breasts, but otherwise, Marsha Rosenberg strikes me as having a perfectly natural female form.  Some women are slimmer, others less slim, but there's nothing out of the ordinary here, I don't think.

Alas, not everyone agrees with me.  Over the course of these issues, Volcana is called a Guernsey cow, a fatbag, plump, and bloated.  Which is utterly, utterly horrible.  I'll come clean here and admit that I've never been as bothered about the way women are drawn in comics as some, at least up to a point.  The giant breasts are a problem for me, but in general, a lot of women in comics are drawn like a lot of men in comics, according to what society at a given time tends to view as a desirable body shape.  Now, that's clearly a major problem in itself, but it makes comics a symptom of a wider problem, and the symptoms are only particularly obvious here because comic artists lack the constraints upon casting directors.  I'm not trying to defend comics from what are accurate criticisms of their treatment of women; I'm just saying there's a wider context here.

Even that, I'm just saying to highlight how terrible these issues are in comparison to standard comic problems.  It's one thing to pretend everyone looks like society says they should, and quite another to actively mock those who don't fit into that ridiculously narrow (in both senses) template.  And yes, all the people throwing this crap at Volcana are villains, but that doesn't really make me feel much better.  We've sort of touched on this before, I seem to remember, but "it's only villains displaying bigotry" isn't nearly as good a counter-argument as a lot of writers seem to think.  At best, it implies bigotry is so obviously villainous that it can't be found in otherwise decent people, which is as wrong as it dangerous, and at worst it leads one to wonder exactly why that particular line of prejudice is coming up so much.  Four references to a woman's weight in three (actually, two) issues?  There's no other way to show these characters are arsebiscuits? Sooner or later it stops looking like trying to make characters seem unpleasant, and starts looking like trying to have characters be unpleasant to provide you with cover.  It's why Seth MacFarlane can't get away with arguing his offensiveness is part of studied character comedy.  Eventually the straw hits the camel's spine and you realise the guy just wants to say shitty stuff and get away with it.

It's not all bad, though.  I wanted to quickly take a look at Wolverine's attempt to murder Owen Reece, because it allows Shooter to present iteration number 974,665,846 of the "heroes don't kill" speech.  I thought this was worth focusing on because of how much time I've spent railing against how stupid the idea is, but reading this scene actually made me think again.

The reason I'm unusually sympathetic to Cyclops' argument here is that the Molecule Man is clearly a man with severe mental issues.  He was seeking therapy and trying to live the straight life when the Beyonder threw him into Doom's clutches for the sake of good interdimensional TV, or whatever the hell all this is.  Also, lacking any actual improvements to his physiognomy, it's not like Wolverine couldn't just have punched Owen out instead of trying to bisect him. In short, Logan was absolutely right to try and take MM out of the fight, but the argument that either had to or deserved to die is particularly weak here.

The counter here is obvious; you only kill when you absolutely have to.  Which, fine, that's not hard to grasp.  There's any number of situations the Marvel Universe has thrown up where killing a villain has been unambiguously the right decision, what with the entirety of the universe about to be exploded and suchlike.  But there are two ways to phrase this idea.  The first is to have a rule that says "No killing unless there is literally no alternative save allowing innocent lives to be lost".  The second is to have a rule that says "No killing under any circumstances" and understand that under certain circumstances it is right to break that rule.

The most obvious real-life analogy to this involves the endless (as well as endlessly horrible) conversation in the US about whether or not torture should be legal.  I use the term "real-life" somewhat loosely here, since so much of that debate has been  taken up by various conservatives (including at least one Supreme Court Justice, who seems utterly determined to disgrace their position until the very instant death claims him) that the events of 24 should be considered a historical document.  If Jack Bauer has to torture some Arab to find the location of a nuclear bomb before it blows up Los Angeles, then a real operative might have to torture some Arab to find a similar bomb.  And if that might happen, torture has to be legal, because otherwise that operative might hesitate for long enough for plutonium atoms to start getting jiggy in a way biological life doesn't appreciate.

Even leaving aside the implausible nature of the scenario and the commonly stated view that torture is a great way to get information but a terrible way to know if that information is accurate, this is a horrible argument.  It's a clear recipe for morality creep.  Leaving this door open is an invitation to step through them, and each time we do, it gets a little easier to do it the next time.  The only option is to lock the door, and recognise that there might be some sufficiently convoluted series of events under which someone could kick the door down and run through, and it not be something we should punish after the fact.

So maybe at the end of the day the bright clear line of "never kill" is exactly what the X-Men need.  If everyone understands that under certain circumstances every rule might need to be broken, there is something to be said about deliberately making rules too inflexible, especially when making them too flexible can have terrible consequences.

Ah, Jim Shooter.  You bring enlightenment, but you also bring the mocking of women who couldn't stand atop a rhino's head and insist they were a giraffe.  What wonders and outrages remain in the final five issues of this series, I wonder.  Will any amaze me?  Will any disgust me?  And most importantly, will any make me any less depressed at the thought of reading Secret Wars II?

Clues

These issues take place over the course of roughly a day.

Date

Wednesday 11^th to Thursday 12^th January, 1984.

X-Date

X+5Y+317 to X+5Y+318.

Contemporary Events

After years of attempting to restore the Pyramids of Giza using modern building techniques (which you'd think calls into question what the word "restore" actually means, but anyway), the committee responsible agrees to return to traditional techniques to repair the structures. This was generally agreed to be a good idea, both because it was historically appropriate, and because the water used in modern cement was eroding the limestone from which the pyramids were originally built.

Standout Line

"Being that it may be the last couple of days of our existence, how about we sneak off and go necking over by the waterfall?" - Johnny Storm

SWA #2-4: "Prisoners Of War", "Tempest Without, Crisis Within!", "Situation: Hopeless!"

(Humans vs mutants vs criminal freaks.)

Comments

These three issues take us up to one third of the way through the Secret Wars, so I suppose I should go over what happens.  Fortunately, there's nothing particularly complicated that needs explaining.

Issue #2 starts off with a brawl between the two sides which leaves the villains sorely defeated.  Only Doom, Galactus and Ultron escape a beating, though in the latter's case that's only because Galactus has already deactivated him.  Whilst those villains who escaped capture limp away from their encounter, Doom breaks back into their lair (which he renames, inevitably, "Doombase"), hoping to scrounge together something useful, possibly including Ultron's body.  When the villains return, Doom has reactivated Ultron under his control, and it takes very little time to "persuade" the various ne'er-do-wells that they're best off taking orders from the ruler of Latveria from now on.

Meanwhile, the heroes find a base of their own to make use of, as does Magneto, and Galactus spends his time standing on a hillside brooding in silence.  The issue ends with Magneto sneaking into the heroes' base and trying to start a chain reaction in the generators, hoping to provide a distraction for his plan.  Things don't work out and the heroes catch him in the act.  Magneto is forced to retreat, but manages to grab the Wasp and take her with him.

Oh, and the Thing turns back into regular old Ben Grimm, for some reason.

In issue #3, a massive storm engulfs the land, forcing everyone to drum their fingers whilst they wait for enough blue to make a sailor a pair of Lycra super-tights.  Man, what would our heroes give for a weather manipulator or the God of Thunder right now, huh? Seriously.  Clearly lacking such resources, the heroes sit around and snipe at each other, because that's just what they do. Magneto meanwhile seems intent on either recruiting the Wasp or seducing her; possibly both.

Only the X-Men seem particularly interested in being proactive, though their definition of the word is to plot to sneak out and link up with Magneto, so they can all be mutated BFFs. Spiderman overhears their conversation (a little careless of our guys, actually; it's not like they lack the capability of mental conferencing), but Xavier rather callously wipes the experience from Parker's mind to prevent a superhero civil war.  Which would be awful, when you think about it.

While the X-Men flee the heroes complex and Magneto succeeds in getting to first base with Janet van Dyne, Doom is hard at work slapping together two new supervillainesses to help him crush his enemies.  Meet Miss Rosenberg, AKA Volcana, capable of firing bolts of magma from her hands.  Tremble before "Skeeter" MacPherran, the woman now known as Titania, capable of both throwing gigantic rocks through the air and wandering around in a t-shirt and panties for no real reason!  How did Doom gift them with powers?  Who knows!  What the fuck are they even doing on the Beyonder's world?  No answer is forthcoming!  But boy are our heroes in trouble...

Especially since Thor has decided to interrogate the captured Enchantress, and lets her persuade him into talking away from the heroes' base.  Between this, the X-Men's desertion, and the Hulk failing to wake Captain America when its time to change the watch, the sudden arrival of Doom and his forces leads to a very short and one-sided fight.  The heroes have been defeated!

Lastly, issue #4 deals with the battle's aftermath.  Having punched their way through the heroes, Doom's forces leave the compound so Molecule Man can obliterate it.  Somehow, though, they quickly discover the heroes have escaped, and are regrouping five miles away in plain sight.  Titania's response is to start throwing gigantic pieces of twisted metal at them, a tactic quickly copied by the others, in shape if not in size ("Bomb 'em! With, uh... smaller chunks of debris"). The heroes manage to blast the incoming missiles before they can do any damage, but Molecule Man ups the ante by dropping an entire mountain range on them.  That, it would seem, is that.

If only the villains had seen this issue's front cover!  Then they'd know the Hulk has managed to catch the jagged line of towering mountains and kept it from crushing his fellows.  Which is ridiculous, quite frankly, though in a comic in which we're expected to believe Thor won't fuck the Enchantress because she's only indescribably beautiful on the outside, holding up half the Andes doesn't seem too unreasonable.

Speaking of Thor, the sound of the rearranging mountains persuades him to head back to base to check up on things, only to land in the middle of the villains and be disintegrated by Ultron's new, er, disintegrator.  Doom then has Kang boiled off in the same way, presumably to prove the first go around wasn't just a fluke, or maybe just because green and purple is horribly overused in comics and it's time to put a stop to the madness.

Meanwhile, the X-Men arrive at Magneto's base, sneaking in undetected because the Wasp has Magneto using all his concentration turning metal filaments into beauty products for her.  And how is he repaid?  With treachery! Van Dyne flees firing bio-stings at anyone in reach, all because of a little thing like Magneto being willing to murder Captain America if he doesn't let the mutants have the Beyonder's powers.  Women, eh?  Can't live with 'em, can't threaten to murder their friends in cold blood.

Back beneath the mountain range, Hulk is pretty close to collapse.  Fortunately Mr Fantastic has a plan.  There are two parts to his scheme, which are as follows:

1. Rewire Iron Man's armour to allow the Human Torch and Captain Marvel to direct their power through his repulsor beams, creating a force of massive proportions;
2. Call the Hulk a c***.

Remarkably, the plan works.  Hulk gets madder, and thus gets stronger, giving Iron Man time to use his re-jigged armour to punch out an escape route.  The heroes find Thor, who'd faked his disintegration earlier and has been trying to dig them out, and together they head to a nearby village, hoping the locals will help them with their wounded.  After some initial suspicions, that's exactly what happens, even when Ben makes a startling transition back to being the Thing, and so everything looks like it might turn out OK after all.

Until Galactus decides it's time to start moving again...

Right.  Summary over, onto the musings.  The most obvious storyline being assembled here with regard to our merry mutants is that of mutual mistrust with baseline humans ("flatscans", to use one of my all-time favourite fictional slurs).  I say "the most obvious" in roughly the same way one might call the sun "the most bright", because this stuff is everywhere, and in all honesty is ladled on so thick that characterisation starts to groan a little around the edges.

Let's zoom out for a moment.  There are, generally speaking, two schools of thought regarding how superheroes in general, and the X-Men especially, are almost always viewed by the public as menaces.  The first group think it too hard to swallow that humanity could be so stupid as to not remember the sheer number of times the entire planet has been saved by "capes", and so short-sighted as to believe that if only superheroes would stop punching the supervillains, Doctor Doom et al would settle down to quiet careers in public service.

The other group are cynical enough to argue that it's precisely how much the human race owes to their self-proclaimed saviours that makes them so disliked.  If there's anything worse than a holier-than-thou type strutting around pontificating on how to live a truly virtuous life, it's the ones that hold you in their debt as well.

Obviously, I'm with the cynics. The only human response that works faster than spinning helplessness into guilt is the one that forges guilt into anger.  I can completely understand why the public would hate the X-Men, even if they believed all that stuff about the M'Kraan crystal.  What I don't believe is that this sneering attitude would extend to the Avengers.

Secret Wars was first published almost twenty years after Scarlet Witch joined the Avengers.  Are we really supposed to believe there's any lingering anti-mutant sentiment amongst the team?  This team that has fought beings so utterly varied and insane it's a miracle they can tell a mutant from a turkey vulture, let alone a flatscan?  That doesn't make any sense to me.  And when you take the mutant element out of the equation, all you really have here is one superhero team sniping at another hero team, and again, you'd think people in that line of work would be a bit more understanding, particularly to people who have saved the entirety of reality.

Perhaps I'm being unfair.  The proximate cause of all this human/mutant friction is after all Magneto, and his surprising inclusion in the space station of heroes.  I can completely understand why that would stir up tensions.  The problem is in how these tensions spill out.  Xavier's point that an alliance against the - for want of a better term - proactively evil evil-doers is entirely reasonable, especially given the history he has with Magneto (which, granted, there's no reason to believe anyone outside the X-Men are aware of).  Moreover, given the chequered pasts of, say, Hawkeye and the Hulk, it hardly represents an unthinkable muddying of the Avenger's crystal-clear waters. 

That's not to say the idea is necessarily a good one, of course - if nothing else, if Magneto's interested in helping out the heroes he could at least stop being an insufferable prick for five minutes.  Neither though is it the obvious slap in the face the Avengers take it to be, and the immediate assumption jumped to - the muties are hanging out together, what a surprise - is exceptionally ugly.  Certainly, the X-Men's decision to hang out in a separate part of the heroes' base to everyone else doesn't seem hard to understand afterwards.  It also gives an entirely obvious geographic explanation as to why the X-Men aren't on hand to battle Magneto when he sneaks into the base at the end of issue #2, which is why Captain Marvel can piss right off with her "how convenient the X-Men weren't around" bullshit.

I'm not exactly hiding my hand, here, the Avengers are being dickholes.  Though I would say that, wouldn't I?  I said the same thing during A vs X, and the reason then could well be exactly the same as the reason now: I just know the X-Men so much better.  It's certainly true that they could stand to be a bit less aggressive in shouting the Avengers down; not only has Magneto attempted to kill every single one of the assembled mutants at least once (with the exception of Rogue), he shows no remorse whatsoever for sinking the Leningrad.  Which contra Magneto and many fans through the years, wasn't an act of self-defence.  Magneto had already demonstrated he could fry the nuke's tracking systems, meaning they couldn't get anywhere near him.  Killing more than a hundred people who can't possibly harm you is cold-blooded murder even if they're actively trying to rub you out.  If my 82 year old grandmother came at you with a box of Dairy Milk she'd have a better chance of finishing you off than the Leningrad did Magneto; you'd still get time in the chokey if you decided to drown her.

In short, neither side are completely in the right about Magneto, but the X-Men's position is at least slightly less unpleasant than that of at least some of the Avengers.  I can't know for sure, but I'd imagine anyone reading the Avengers at the time might have found their attitude somewhat off.  It's a good job then that Shooter strives for balance, having the X-Men act like total berks in issue #3, not only deciding to secretly leave the heroes in the lurch so they can join up with Magneto, but re-writing Spiderman's memories when he catches them plotting.

Because everything I said up there about superhero solidarity cuts both ways.  If you want to argue about whether Magneto gets to hang out with the cool kids, fine.  You're under no obligation to just shut up and go along with everyone else.  Nor are you obligated to follow Captain America's instructions, just because he's been chosen as leader by the majority.  But once you've had your say, you shut up and toe the line, or you announce you're leaving. Sneaking out the back door because you don't want to explain your intentions is cowardice, pure and simple, and if Professor X is as keen as peaceful mutant/human relations as he claims, you'd think blowing off humans without so much as a text message to go hang around a mutant mass-murderer would be something he'd be keen to avoid.

Actually, maybe this isn't all that balanced after all.  Maybe the X-Men really are coming off worse here?  I mean, however snide Captain Marvel gets, however clearly bigotry seems to run underneath the humans' comments, at least no-one suggested secretly leaving the mutants to fend for themselves.  We'd probably need something really ridiculously over the top from the human contingent to redress the balance.

Enter the Wasp.

I've never liked Janet van Dyne.  Maybe it's because I have no interest in fashion.  More likely it's because I have no time for those people who both are interested in fashion and think there's something wrong with anyone who isn't.  I don't begrudge people their trivial interests - I have more than my share of my own - but I rapidly lose patience with people who are convinced their own ephemera are objectively more important than anyone else's, and that doesn't change just because they're lucky enough to make their money off the back of them.

In fact, there have been no few occasions when I've wondered whether Van Dyne is simply an unpleasant character, or an unpleasant stereotype.  It's certainly not that there's any lack of superficial people in the world, of both sexes, and one could make the argument that the Wasp's obsession with creature comforts and the latest dresses are not too different from Johnny Storm's love of hot chicks and fast cars.  On the other hand, the latter isn't a stereotype of men, but a stereotype of a certain type of young man.  Van Dyne just seems modelled on more broad and generic a trope, and that's a problem.

Whether she's a sexist cliche or not, though, she's certainly a gigantic pain in the arse here.  I actually really like the idea of her pretending to fall for Magneto's seduction routine, because there's no way he'd ever figure out he was being played (having Magneto make her combs from iron filaments is pretty funny as well, though it feeds into the spoiled child routine she has going on that's one more reason to be wary of her portrayal here and elsewhere). Indeed, even if she'd genuinely been into Magneto and his icy-eyed charm, it's typically egomaniacal of the man to openly admit the Avengers might have to be killed if they don't tell the line, and act surprised when the Wasp doesn't respond by making eyes toward the bedroom. Her decision to attack him and the X-Men alongside is his fault, pure and simple.

The devil, though, as we've been told before, is in the details.  Magneto's argument runs as follows: someone's going to end up with the Beyonder's powers, and it cannot under any circumstances be Doom.  Since this would seem to be a battle to the death, then, Doom will have to go into that good night first, because the alternative is just constantly knocking the guy down until he finally has a lucky day and wipes the heroes out.

So far, this is not only plausible, but it might actually be the most sensible option, so long as - and this is crucial - you're in favour of the final result, which is that one of the heroes gets the Beyonder's blessing.  There's two schools of thought on this.  The first would be the standard power corrupts argument.  Under that argument, though, the heroes must enforce a stalemate with the villains, and potentially live the rest of their lives fighting villains to bloody draws, rather than being back home where they can help their own people (that's if the Beyonder doesn't just squish them all for refusing to get with the program).

The second argument is that at least if one of their number became a God, he or she could help their comrades home, to check up on a world that might well not be doing too well without its three most famous super-teams. What are the Hellfire Club up to right now?  Or the Skrulls?  Or Thanos?  It also suggests (and again, this is returned to almost thirty years later in A vs X) that an obvious upside to the arrangement is that there's plenty of non-sinister stuff a heroic God could get to do, like create infinite food and water, or cure malaria.

That's Magneto's pitch.  He wants Doom dead to ensure he can never dominate reality, and figures he should get to be Beyonder Mk II so that he can liberate the mutant population and create a new golden age.

This, of course, is where it all goes off the rails, because whilst the "kill Doom, go home" plan isn't automatically terrible, it should at least be ensured that whomever gets to play God isn't someone who's convinced they deserve the role. It certainly shouldn't be someone so convinced they're right they're willing to kill their ostensible allies, even if, like Magneto, this is suggested only to ensure said allies can't get in the way of eliminating the absolute worse case scenario.

The upshot of all of this is that the situation is horribly complicated.  There is no clearly right answer here.  Magneto's plan is callous, and it calls for murder, and it ends with a former terrorist becoming God, but the problem isn't that his aim is evil, it's that his aim is almost certainly unattainable, and it risks evil being done both as a means to an end, and as the eventual true end itself.  Someone better point this out quick before everything goes to hell.

So what does Janet decide to do when Magneto announces his intention to forge "An age in which men and mutants live together in peace!"? She tells him he's "the most evil scum since Hitler". [1]

This, in the end, is what Secret Wars seems to be telling us: that even those humans sufficiently empathetic to become heroes can only care about mutants in the abstract.  Mutant viewpoints that differ from their own are to be considered only insofar as they demonstrate that mutants are a single amorphous mass of "other".  Two mutants disagreeing with you is not evidence you might be mistaken, it's evidence that all mutants stick together and can't be trusted.  A mutant who wants the ultimate power to end the oppression of his people is worse than a human who wanted ultimate power to wipe as many other peoples off the face of the Earth as he could.

These are America's heroes.  These are the first shots fired in America's second civil war.  This is where a dislike of mutants stops being shorthand for villainy or at least fearful, violent ignorance and starts simply being one more facet of human psychology.  All of which is exceptionally important, and long overdue, because if you're going to get serious about mutants as a metaphor, you've got to make it smarter than "rascists are all idiots and dicks".  What we see in these three issues needed to happen.

But my God, does it look ugly at it's being born.

[1] Obviously, the fact Wasp says this to a Holocaust survivor makes it all the more unpleasant, but it's pretty unlikely Janet actually knows Magneto's history, so I'm not inclined to criticise her for that, at least.  Mind you, a few panels later Xavier is announcing he himself is no better than Hitler because he wiped thirty seconds from Spiderman's mind to prevent a pointless battle between the X-Men and the Avengers.  A sense of proportion is apparently something mutants and humans alike lack in the Marvel Universe.

Clues

Magneto confirms that the days and nights on the Beyonder's world are approximately equivalent to our own.  Therefore these issues taking place over twenty-four hours or so on that world means the same time has passed back on Earth.

Date

Tuesday 10^th to Wednesday 11^th January, 1984.

X-Date

X+5Y+316 to X+5Y+317.

Contemporary Events

Standout Line

"None may touch the person of Magneto!"