Written by: Marguerite Bennett and G. Willow Wilson
Art by: Jorge Molina and Laura Martin
Publisher: Marvel
My opinion of the Secret Wars tie-ins has been less than favourable, many of them feel horribly rushed and lack a feeling of direction or weight. A-Force has been one of the few that has stood out to me, originally because it looked like it was going to shine a light on some of the rarer seen characters Marvel has under its belt and I stayed with it because of its interesting character interactions and the theme of loss that was carried throughout the series. I was much more interested in the side story of Nico coming to terms with death and the loss of loved ones, through learning that people can still live on, in a fashion, by the impact that they have on other’s lives, than the main, sub-par political intrigue story that this rather existential tale was wrapped around.
This particular issue is bracketed perfectly by opening and closing narrations about how much a single location can mean to someone, referring of course to the island of Arcadia. These two pages are my favourite part of A-Force as it just sums up the sentimentality that the series tries to get across so perfectly. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the issue is spent watching the A-Force fight the dead that have broken through The Shield and it is one of the most boring ‘epic’ battles I have seen in comics.
The book doesn’t rest on any one fight going on in the melee for more than panel, giving the heroes present just enough time to blurt out one bit of snappy dialogue before we’re whisked away to another similar scene, leaving no room for any meaningful development or sense of action to come across. This goes on for four pages but it somehow feels more than twice that. The characters that are shown in these panels often didn’t even appear all that much in the previous issues and it feels like they were just inserted into the scene to somehow make up for the complete lack of focus they suffered earlier on in the arc. I guess my main problem with this scene is the dialogue, it’s so bad (and not in a, ‘ohhh man that’s so stupid! I love it,’ way that you often get from a spiderman comic), almost every line that someone says in that fight just feels so weirdly out of place and at odds with every other bit of dialogue that has come before it.
I was disappointed when towards the end of the book, a character says (almost verbatim to what i said in the first paragraph) what the themes of the arc are and what lesson can be taken away, stripping away all subtlety. Fortunately, it doesn’t ruin the book and although it’s not the best send off the story could have had, the last page fixes it.
I realise I’ve probably been pretty strict on A-Force and although I could nit-pick at it about things like there never being an explanation as to why there seem to be so much more female superheroes than male on Arcadia (I won’t question the will of God-Emperor Doom) it’ll just be that, nit-picking. Secret Wars’ A-Force has interesting ideas about the concepts of home and family and what that can mean to us which struck a chord with me and I fell in love with. I didn’t really care about the over-arching story of betrayal and superheroism but I saw it as a necessary evil and just wished that the series could have gone on for about twice its length so that we could have seen more meaningful character growth and exploration, especially between Nico and the mystery girl that appeared and I hope we see this when A-Forced is released as its own series. If you want to try something new, think Secret Wars is boring or ever had a place or time that you cared about I suggest you give A-Force a shot.
