The empire struck down
Marvel’s latest major crossover event, Secret Empire, wraps up in a disappointingly predictable fashion.
Spoiler alert: this article contains spoilers for Marvel’s Secret Empire #10.
EARLIER this year, Marvel Comics announced that Secret Empire will be its last major crossover event for at least 18 months. This was in response to criticism that there have been too many such events in the past few years, leading to crossover event fatigue, too many revamps of major characters, and a disruption of the flow of many titles’ ongoing stories.
Well, this break couldn’t have come sooner judging from the somewhat lacklustre ending to Nick Spenser’s Secret Empire event last week.
The premise of the story itself is a controversial one: Kobik, a little girl who is actually a fragment of the reality-changing Cosmic Cube that became sentient, is manipulated by the Red Skull into believing that Hydra are actually the good guys; she then changes Steve Rogers/Captain America’s memories and reality to make him believe that he is actually a Hydra agent.
When Spencer dropped that bombshell in 2016, comics fans were up in arms over Cap turning traitor and becoming a fascist leader. In light of recent real-life events in the United States (#CharlottesvilleNazis), this may not have been one of Marvel’s best moves, especially since Cap is one of its most patriotic and iconic American superheroes.
But the wheels of Hydra Cap were set in motion, and there was no turning back for the character.
The year leading up to Secret Empire sees Steve putting the finishing touches to his ultimate plan with the other heroes completely unaware of his treachery.
At the beginning of Secret Empire, Steve rises to become Hydra’s Supreme Leader and executes his plan to take over the world and remake it in Hydra’s image. To do so, he eliminates Earth’s mightiest heroes in two ways: by tricking Captain Marvel and other heavy hitters into space to fight off a Chitauri invasion and then keeping them there by wrapping Earth in a powerful shield; and trapping the other heroes in a Darkforce dome around Manhattan.
Subsequently, he rounds up the Inhumans and imprisons them, and gives the mutants a new sovereign state in San Francisco to keep them happy.
With all the major heroes gone, it falls to Hawkeye and the Black Widow to lead a resistance called the Underground against Hydra Cap, alongside other lesser known heroes such as the Champions (Ms Marvel, Totally Awesome Hulk, Ironheart, Miles Morales aka Spider-Man, Viv Vision, and the new Wasp and Falcon), an AI version of Tony