#but also i always just think its the dumbest catchphrase ever and its so funny every time and

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Superior spidey when the die is cast or whatever

[hellyeahheroes]

Secret Empire: Top Ten DUMBEST Moments

As far as events go, Secret Empire is probably one of the worst. And considering both Civil Wars, Ultimatum, Amazons’ Attack and Countdown are events, that bar has been set pretty low. So as it finally comes to an end, seven months too late, let us showcase some of the worst decisions made during the creation of this story. They made it into such colossal trainwreck.

Honorable Mention: Dress Like a Nazi To Work Day

Out of all moronic decisions in this event, this was the one that irks me the most because it slipped into real life. Marvel tried to get their retailers to not only dress in Hydra shirts the day the book premieres but also dress their entire store in Hydra symbols. At least one store owner told them they hire LGBTQ and Jewish people and will be dropping Marvel. Hard to blame that person. Who in their right mind tells people selling his product to dress like a Nazi?! And don’t tell me the old “Hydra isn't Nazis” crap. First of all, even if they’re not, they’re still a fascist death cult that had absolutely no moral qualms about working with the Nazis during World War II, copying from their style and being effectively taken over by remnants of Nazi Germany multiple times. At this point, it’s splitting hair. And two, Marvel, you had Steve Rogers say Hail Hydrand a whole year before. Since then you were constantly trying to tell people Hydra isn’t a Nazi organization and NOBODY BOUGHT IT! At this point, you should have looked at the “Hydra Takeover” idea and realize it might backfire. That this wasn’t recalled but went through only proves that Marvel’s head is so deep up its very ass they no longer see the reality.

Number Ten: Captain America Walking Out Of Himself and Standing Nearby

It is undeniable that Marvel did horrible damage to Captain America in this story, basically twisting the guy into everything he wasn’t. I was honestly afraid how, if ever, they manage to fix the character. But I was not expecting them to pull out the good, old-fashioned chickening out by having an identical copy of the character before he was ruined appear to take over. While seeing real Captain America beat the shit out of Captain Nazi is really cathartic, one cannot forget it came to be through rather...ridiculous means.

Number Nine: Tony Stark

Okay, this one is simple. Tony Stark is in this story. Despite being in a coma. Tony Stark holographic A.I. from Brian Bendis’ Invincible Iron Man is filling in for him. Only here he parades around in Tony’s old armor all the time without anyone commenting on it, recalibrated his personality to be constantly drunk and at one point Steve Rogers tries to decapitate him, a hologram, talking some technobabble about how Hydra made it possible for Tony to die this way.

He’s just Tony Stark. He is Tony Stark because Spencer had scenes requiring Tony Stark to be there and instead of killing his darlings like a good writer, he just wrote clearly human Tony Stark and threw some half-assed explanations and lampshades. It’s silly and makes every scene with him impossible to take seriously.

Number Eight: All the Fucking Quislings!

This one is bad. And I mean, just simply bad. Okay, it’s multiple problems, not a singular one. But it makes my very insides turn at the thought. Nick Spencer asked how can he threw some moral ambiguity IN AN EVENT ABOUT HEROES FIGHTING LITERALLY NAZIS and the best idea he had was to have some random heroes join Hydra. I’m not talking here about those who were brainwashed, like Wanda and Vision, although that is a conversation to also be had by their fans about how often this treatment occurs. Although I wonder - if they are too powerful to let them roam freely, why even HAVE them in this event? It’s not like every superhero was there, currently, heroic Victor Von Doom could probably break Hydra at day one and he was nowhere to be seen.

No, the real problem is with the fact they made some heroes join Hydra willingly. Sometimes they tried to throw flimsy reasons in. Punisher joined to get his family back...even though in previous stories he refused the same offer from less evil people. I feel it’s kinda funny they did this with Frank, considering the man who more or less defined him, Chuck Dixon, has thrown in with real-life Nazis like Milo Yiannopolus. Meanwhile, Deadpool and Thor just go along with letting Nazis rule the States because....Steve Rogers said so and Steve Rogers is always right. That’s just a plain stupidity and total lack of compassion on their side. I’m sure don’t feel like buying any book starring them ever now.

But the worst one is, by far, the Hulk. Who also comes back to life for this event, only to smash for Hydra and immediately die.But that is not the worst part. The worst part is how they build up to it. By having Hydra Steve give Bruce Banner long speech over how Avengers and everyone mistreated him over the years and with Hydra he will finally be accepted for who he is. And Banner calls him a Nazi and tells to go fuck himself. And it is a very powerful moment, Bruce Banner symbolizes everyone disfranchised by the society being offered hand by Nazis and heroically rejecting it... Nah, turns out Rogers was talking to Hulk who felt like changing his catchphrase to Sig Heil. I don’t think Spencer even realized what message he sent by this one moment. He basically said that everyone who has been screwed over by the system secretly agrees with the Nazis, but are “too PC” or “too weak” to say it out loud. It’s stupid AND extremely insulting, two for the price of one.

Number Seven: BARF!

How to properly seed a classic Chekov’s Gunman and yet STILL make him feel like a Deus Ex Machina? Make him ridiculously fucking stupid, that’s how!

Enter Barf, a random Inhuman with the power to vomit up things he needs. He shows up in the first issue, is absent through the entire story only to reappear in Captain America #25 and vomit out a fragment of Cosmic Cube. Because why let people work for their victory and earn their happy ending when you can just have all their efforts blow in their faces and just have means of victory handled to them on a silver platter in the most blatant way possible! If Nick Spencer knew he’s going to write himself into a corner, couldn’t he simply change the plot to avoid it instead of setting up something so stupid?

Number Six: Thou Shalt Not Kill, Miles

After Civil War II we were left with a vision of the future where Miles Morales kills Captain America. Once Secret Empire rolled around and we saw Rogers go full Alt-Right on the country, many were hoping this will actually happen. And Miles, with a handful of friends, does join Black Widow in her efforts to off Captain Nazi. And she spends most of the series training them to be more like her....then talking how she doesn’t actually want them to be more like her and how her generation screwed things up....then taking them on the assassination day anyway only to lock Miles up to kill Rogers herself and when that fails, give up her life trying to stop their fight. Which, in the classic refrigerator fashion, pushes Miles hard enough to actually do this. Only to be given one of the most hollow, lazy-written speeches about how killing is wrong. It hits all the old, tired notes. “Heroes should be better than villains”. “If you kill him, you will be just like him!” (a reminder that “you” in this situation is a Black-Latino and “him” is A FUCKING NAZI FOR CHRIST”S SAKE...). “Natasha wouldn’t want this for you.” (she showed it in the strangest way).... It’s especially bad when you have a character who has a backstory of being trained to kill but rejecting those ways, like Nadia Van Dyne, delivering this speech. Despite her background and personality none of this sounds like her words. It reads like she was going through a checklist of tired cliches.

This is why I came to hate this Aesop that superheroes shouldn’t kill. Because nine times out of ten this isn’t done to actually be a piece of a character driven narrative. It’s done to give a bunch of excuses to let villain live when he deserves to die.

Also, that entire plot point dragged since the previous event, in the end, amounted to BUG FUCKING NOTHING!

Number Five: Who Cares About the Civilians, Right?

So okay, the day is saved, villains are defeated, Captain Nazi got his ass kicked by Steve Rogers and Kobik, a sentient cosmic cube, undoes all this damage. EXCEPT FOR FUCKING VEGAS, WHICH HYDRA LEVELED AND LEFT NOT SURVIVORS! Seriously, I don’t care about the explanations given. Someone should have asked her to do it. And no, some “leave it as a reminder” excuse doesn’t work, Kobik is mentally three years old, she isn’t some wise all-powerful being like Odin or the Stranger from whom we could buy this shit. This is pretty much done only so that Nick Spencer can claim he kept his promise to not undo everything by the cosmic cube. He didn’t undo EVERYTHING, that counts, right? It makes all the heroes look like morons and assholes. Even Z Fighters in Dragon Ball have enough decency to ask the dragon to resurrect all dead civilians when they undo everything after every arc. Marvel heroes, for all the “lessons” this even taught them, couldn’t be assed to do even that.

Number Four: Ultron the Centrist

I’ll be honest with you, Pymltron wearing “Kiss the Overlord” apron, forcing Avengers and Hydra to sit and roasting all of them was one of the best parts of the event. But then it also comes off as paying lip service to the “both sides are as bad” mentality that we saw being used by people of today to desperately try to equate alt-right and those opposing them in real life. It’s pretty much justifying this approach in this story and it doesn’t matter one saying that is a fusion of mentally unstable man and a genocidal robot - he never gets challenged on this position because, for all his talk otherwise on twitter, Nick Spencer apparently cannot think of a compelling argument against it. I guess he secretly agrees with him...

And it doesn’t help that while Ultron ends up aiding the good guys, he does say it’s because Hydra became too strong and might pose a threat to him. Sending a message that any outside powers that show support to those opposing Nazis, in reality, wants America’s destruction...

Number Three: Nazi Pandering

Do I really need to explain this one? The entire event does nothing but bends over to kiss Hydra, and by the extension, Nazi ass at every possible opportunity. They beat up all superheroes because the plot says so, while the narrator goes on and on about how NAZI STRONK! We’re told they were supposed to win the World War II and that Allies “cheated” by rewriting reality...but for some reason let the Holocaust in?! Their rule is shown as being the strongest, which is water to the mill of real-life Nazis as their philosophy is based on “might makes right” and they beat up pretty much everyone, even Wakanda. Every victory heroes have against them must be immediately undermined by giving Nazis another win for consolidation. And while the heroes win at the end, this comes after several issues portraying them as absolutely pathetic losers who didn’t really earn their happy ending but it was handed to them by a random inhuman and Deus Ex Machina device. Which brings us to the next point...

Number Two: Cosmic Cubes

All the dumb shit going in this event can be tracked back to Cosmic Cube, be it as Kobik or the shards. She causes Crazy Steve to emerge, launching this story. And she fixes this mess at the end. Shards of Cosmic Cube serve as a distraction to put both good and bad guys on a wild goose chase because Spencer couldn’t think of any actually interesting plotline for this event. All dumb shit evil Steve pulls out can be explained by them. When it’s time for heroes to win, Barf vomits out a shard. And It undermines everything. A story that entirely revolves around this crap doesn’t have any time to actually show things it’s talking about. Maybe instead of running after Dragon Balls, more time should be developed to show how lack of trust and resentments between the good guys gets in the way? You know, something the narration keeps talking on and on and on but never is reflected in the book? Or show more of them acting like an actual resistance would? Worse, thanks to them heroes no longer win because they’re heroic but because they’ve been handed the I Win Button. Any easy win of the villains can be explained by them holding the Fuck You That’s Why Button. Making you wonder why even care if everybody wins only by writer’s fiat?

Number One: Bown Down To the Gary Stu

Most of the problems in this entire story can really boil down to just this. Steve Rogers is a gary stu. He wins because Nick Spencer wants to show how cool and badass he is. His plans always go without a hitch and he never has to adapt or improvise, under him, Hydra wrecks everyone's shit, even if he loses he still wins and in the end, the only man allowed to beat him is...another Steve Rogers. All other problems in the story can be traced back to Spencer’s desperate need to make him look strong. And believe me, he tried soo damn hard. Up to have him go full Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Four Madara Uchicha with Cosmic Cube Dojustsu on everyone’s ass at the finale. I don’t think we’d see a guy being shoved down our throats so hard if Roman Reigns joined Ultramarines! This is where the book truly falls. Nick Spencer could not let go of his fanboyism over the character and it twisted everything he supposedly wanted to say into a parody of itself, often sending the exact opposite message to accommodate the need to make evil Steve Rogers look good.

So, these are ten dumbest moments in the series. As far as events go, this was one of the worst. It looks like it might have ruined Nick Spencer’s career at Marvel and maybe in general, and will probably make it very hard to look at certain characters for years to come. The only good thing you could say is that it finally ended.

Fuck this book.

- Admin