Front Lines - Secret Wars (Week of October 21, 2015)

Front Lines by Mike Maillaro, Mike Weaver, Grey Scherl, and Gina Maillaro

1872 #4 by Gerry Duggan and Nik Virella

Summary: Simon Williams is laying a whuppping on Doctor Banner, trying to get him to name other enemies to Roxxon’s interests.  Williams believes his men are torturing Natasha Barnes, but she has killed and tortured all of Roxxon’s men.  She stabs Simon in the neck.  Banner is in real bad shape, having been forced to drink the contents of his bomb.  Natasha convinces him that he needs to still blow up the dam.  Banner manages to set off the bomb, killing himself in the process.

Back in town, Red Wolf and Stark are standing against Kingpin and his men.  Plus, the townsfolk Kingpin bought off...which seems to be all the men in town. Fisk tries to escape, so Red Wolf goes in pursuit.  Fisk manages to beat him down, but Red Wolf stabs him in the face with Roger’s sheriff star.  He arrests Fisk.  Fisk makes him that he will never go to trial.  Natasha arrives and agrees.  She shoots him dead.

Stark asks Red Wolf to become sheriff.  The town is overjoyed at Fisk’s death, but it’s likely Roxxon will send more people.  A boy asks Red Wolf to help find his missing father, Norman.  Punisher and Deadpool hunt down the men responsible for killing Rogers.  And it’s hinted that Banner has transformed into a monster.  The end.

Mike Maillaro: Nice wrap up to this great story.  It was a little off that the town quickly changed sides from being ready to kill Red Wolf for Fisk to celebrating Red Wolf for killing Fisk.  It was just a little too quick and tidy a resolution.  But, it was still a great ending, and I loved the epilogue hinting at origins for the Hulk and Spider-Man.

Score: 4.5/5

AGE OF APOCALYPSE #5 by Fabian Nicieza and Iban Coello

Summary: Dr. Nemesis is able to fight off Cyclops, Burner, Wolverine, and Havok.  He seems to have all the powers of a wide variety of mutants. He flies out of the base with Burner in pursuit.  It is revealed that Burner is Adam-X, and in this reality he actually is Cyclops and Havok’s brother.  Dr. Nemesis tries to get the X-Men, Elite, and Infinites to join him and help overthrow Doom.  Cyclops rallies everyone to attack Nemesis, causing Nemesis to teleport away.  Nemesis says he has more important allies to recruit or kill.

Back at the Human Village, Apocalypse and Magneto are both dead.  Sinister says they have all been infected with the Legacy virus.  He orders McCoy to find a cure, but Nemesis arrives and blasts McCoy.  Emma manages to pull the knowledge from McCoy’s head before he dies.  Blink teleports Emma back to McCoy’s lab.  Wolverine also brings Jean to the lab.  Emma finds out that Essex had removed the part of Jean’s brain that governed her mutant powers.  In order to help get Jean rolling again, Emma needs to put part of Emma’s own mind into Jean’s head.  Essex arrives agreeing to perform the necessary surgery.

Nemesis continues to rampage, slaughtering many of the mutants and humans.  Essex manages to succeed in the surgery, and the Phoenix rises once more. Jean destroys Nemesis and cures everyone of the Legacy virus.  In the process, she wipes out the mutant gene entirely to give everyone a fresh start.

Mike Maillaro: All right...so what was the point of Doug Ramsey?  This series started with everyone talking about how important he was to the future of the domain, but he really didn’t do much other than narrate the story.  Phoenix turned out to be the only real important character, and she ended up just waving a magic wand to fix everything.  I still enjoyed most of this story, but it felt like a huge cop out in the end.  I hate neat and tidy endings.

Score: 3.5/5

SECRET WARS: AGENTS OF ATLAS #1 by Tom Taylor and Steve Pugh

Summary: This story takes place in the Orwellian domain called Metropolitia, led by Baron Zemo and his Agents of SHIELD.  The people here make weapons for all of Battleworld.  Work. Sleep. Repeat. If they underperform, they are sent to be experimented on in Zemo’s labs.  There is a resistance movement called The Atlas Foundation.

Director Coulson of SHIELD has Gorilla Man come in.  Coulson says Jimmy Woo is missing.  Gorilla Man tries to play innocent, but Coulson knows that Gorilla Man is party of the Agents of ATLAS.  Coulson has secret meetings every week with Jimmy Woo, Atla’s leader.  He asks Gorilla Man when he last saw Woo. Last week, 300 men, women, and children were being transported by train to Zemo’s castle.  The Agents of Atlas liberated the the train.  But when Venus used her powers to subdue Zemo’s Weapon X troops, the Agents fell under her spell too and they were distracted.  This allowed them to be recorded by Zemo. Gorilla Man believe that led to Woo being captured by Zemo’s forces.  

Gorilla Man and the Agents plan to take the fight to Zemo directly.  Coulson agrees to join them. They arrive at Zemo’s castle.  When Gorilla Man goes to rescue Woo, he sees a child being held in an Iron Maiden.  He rescues the kid, who stabs him in the neck.  The kid is Zemo’s son, Helmut.  Killing Gorilla Man passes the gorilla curse onto Helmut.

The other agents arrive to take down Helmut and rescue Woo.  Woo reveals that Zemo kidnapped him to try and get him to lead Zemo to Venus.  Zemo had fallen in love with her and wanted to make her his wife.  As they escape, Zemo arrives, shooting Coulson.  Venus arrives and lures Zemo to his death.  It turns out that she’s a siren, not a goddess.  Woo tells Helmut that he’s now baron and he better do a better job that his father ever did.

Mike Maillaro: Real nice done in one story.  This world and characters were great, and I kind of wish we got to spend more time with them. I would have rather read 5 issues of this that Squadron Sinister or Karvac Saga.  I hadn’t read much with the Agents of Atlas before, but Tim Taylor did a great job making them into compelling characters.

Score: 5/5

Weirdworld #5 by Jason Aaron and Mike Del Mundo

Summary: Arkon has decided to kill himself because he was unable to find his way home.  At the end of the last issue, the reader had discovered that Polemachus was actually on the flipside of Weirdworld directly under his feet.  As he prepares to kill himself, his life flashes before his eyes.  It makes him so angry, he decides he would rather kill than die.  He decides to lay waste to Weirdworld and build a new Polemachus.  He is going to start with Morgan Le Fey, the witch queen who rules Weirdworld.  Conveniently, she arrives riding a dragon.  She vows to burn Polemachus.  Her armies charge.  Akron is knocked off the edge of Weirdworld and sees Polemachus.  

Swamp Queen and her Man Things rescue Arkon and stand against Le Fey.  Maybe of the characters Akron encountered through the course of this series arrive to join the battle, including the restored Cystar, lord of Crystallium.  They all promise to protect Polemachus.  Le Fey tries to use her magic on Arkon, but the dragon bites her arm off.  And then all of Battleworld explodes as a result of Secret War and the fall of Doom.

Sometime later, a plane lost in the Bermuda Triange ends up in Weirdworld.  Arkon is still trying to find Polemachus, which is now more lost than ever.

Mike Maillaro: Some major spoilers here for the end of Secret Wars.  I loved how all of the elements of this series came together in the end.  All the threats and characters formed a close to perfect ending.  It’s a shame that Arkon never quite made it home, but with a new Weirdworld series coming, I kind of expected that.

Score: 5/5