Okay, so here’s a quick rundown for what you guys should know about Secret Wars: for the last, like, three years, all the alternate realities of the Marvel universe have been colliding with and annihilating each other, culminating in the final collision between the Marvel universe and the Ultimate universe.  So, spoiler alert, every Marvel character exploded and died forever.  Except Doctor Doom did some kinda magic somethin’, and now the only thing left is Battleworld, hearkening back to the patchwork planet from the original miniseries, assembled from fragments of numerous different planets.  This time the world is assembled from the remnants of a few dozen Marvel continuities, including separate realities like 1602, the Age of Apocalypse, and Future Imperfect, or versions where established events turned out differently, like Civil War, Inferno, or the X-Tinction Agenda.  They all coexist within their own territories, each zone has its own baron or baroness to keep things in order, and everybody is ruled over by their all-powerful god-emperor, Doctor Doom.  The Thor Corps are the enforcers of Doom’s laws, and if anybody breaks those laws, they’re tossed over the giant wall separating the rest of Battleworld from the Deadlands, where all the ravenous Marvel Zombies hang out.  But what I like about it is that instead of a whole planet full of characters saying “Oh no oh no what’s going on where are we how did we get here,” as far as they know, it has ever been thus, and Doctor Doom has always ruled over them and this entire ridiculous planet.

And so, as is de rigueur for giant crossover events these days, like feeder fish hanging out around the mouths of sharks, we get the tie-in anthology miniseries.  In my opinion, there are ways to do tie-in anthology miniseries well, and a few examples that spring to mind are some of the X-Men miniseries.  When there was a big event in the main titles, such as when the X-Men broke up for a little while after the events of Messiah CompleX, or when they relocated to San Francisco, they put out a four- or five-issue series with a handful of stories of the various X-Men adjusting to recent events.  And since there were — and remain — just so many X-Men, it was always nice to see just a few pages of minor side-characters who otherwise tend to get lost in the crowd, having solo adventures or tying up some loose ends, put together by new/upcoming creators.

But then there was the recent tie-in miniseries for Original Sin (confusingly titled Original Sins), out of which I’d say the fifth and final issue was the only good one, despite the darling multi-part Young Avengers series written by Ryan North.  (Compare and contrast issue 5’s hilarious two-page back-up written and illustrated by Chip Zdarsky to the issue 4’s two-page back-up about an Eskimo who peed on Captain America while he was still frozen in a block of ice.)  And then came the truly execrable AXIS: Revolutions miniseries.  Aside from the stories’ focus on inverted characters already heavily featured in the main AXIS series and crossover issues — evil Nightcrawler, jerk Thor, good-guy Sabretooth — each of the halfhearted, inconsequential stories left me with the same unresolved question as the rest of the AXIS event: “So what?”

Hence, I’ve been more than a little reticent to pick up the Secret Wars tie-in miniseries, especially considering there are two of them (Secret Wars: Battleworld and Secret Wars Journal), and especially when the advance solicitations draw attention to this fact by way of a friendly rivalry as each of the series tout themselves over the other.  But this issue… ehh, it wasn’t bad.  Not awful, but not mind-blowing.  The first story featured Punisher unwillingly semi-possessed by the astral form of Dr. Strange, who then encounters Inferno’s demonic answer to the short-lived ’90s Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, and Wolverine.   I enjoyed the Punisher dispassionately utilizing Strange’s sorcery to form a mystical Rocket of Raggadorr-launcher and a Weapon of Watoomb grenade.  The war-weary Punisher succeeds in giving up the fight and blowing himself up, allowing Dr. Strange to possess the near-immortal and resigned Wolverine instead, so… yay?  Then we get a goofy little story about M.O.D.O.K.’s latest bid for power, summoning a legion of alternate-reality M.O.D.O.K.s, since theirs are the truly superior intellects.  With, of course, predictable super-villainous results, since between their mutual distrust and enormous egos, they all quickly end up destroying each other.  But I did like when the multi-limbed Spider-M.O.D.O.K. announced, “My spider sensors’ readings are highly erratic!”  Largely missable, but still some silly harmless fun to be had.