Comic Review: Secret Wars #1- A beautiful comic book, buy it now

Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Essad Ribic
Colours: Ive Svorcina
Main Cover artist: Alex Ross
Publisher: Marvel
Released: 6th May 2015


This comic book put me in a good mood, not because it dealt with real world issues and pleased me on a political level, but because it’s a wonderfully entertaining comic book with a lyrical tilt and emotional resonance.

Forget about all of that real world depressing stuff, like the pointless UK election, and jump into a comic book that is well written, excellently pencilled, inked and coloured and a heck of a lot better than I ever thought it could be.

I don’t know what’s going on in the Avengers. I don’t read the book, but after reading Secret Wars #1 I’m going to buy the Secret Wars Prelude TPB and get myself bang up to date with the context behind what is going on in this story.

You know why I bought the book, right? Yeah, it’s because of that excellent front cover by Alex Ross. How could I not buy it? How could any comic book fan not want to buy a book with that cover? It’s excellent, it really is. The detail is lush, complex, stunning, extravagant, hey, it’s beautiful man, and it makes me smile just to look at it.

Well I bought the book because of that cover and saw that the interior artist of the book was a bloke called Esad Ribic. I know him. He’s the guy who did Thor recently. I loved Thor, well the art anyway, and now he’s doing the art in this Secret War as well? Man, how could I miss that? I open the book and BAMM, there it is, that quality, that beauty, it’s already spectacular and I haven’t even read the story yet.

The story is going to disappoint, isn’t it? The cover, the art, that’s just covering the weakness of the
story, right? It’s average, right. It’s just okay, right? It’s just your typical comic book story, right?

Nope, don’t worry about it, the story is great, it really is. I love it, and I’m not even getting the full benefit here because I haven’t yet read all of the other books that have set the story up. You know what that is? It’s good writing, it’s allowing new readers to join in the fun, whilst keeping your long-term readers happy as well, and I know they’re happy because I’ve scanned a couple of other reviews and the vast majority of them have nothing but praise for this book.

I rarely agree with the vast majority of other Internet comic book reviewers, but I have to agree with them on this book. It’s lavishly illustrated, has a big time feel to it, is wonderfully entertaining and has a rare emotional resonance and lyricism to it that you only get in top quality comic book writing.

I’m a real life grump, but I loved the book. Forget the world, jump in, it’s great, that’s all you need to know.


Rating: 10/10 (Beautiful, lyrical, emotional and fun)