By 2004, Marvel figured out that Brian Michael Bendis was an awesome writer (especially in the 2000s, his best time as a writer) so they gave him a painted, prestige miniseries with a bunch of tie-ins.
Nick Fury discovers that a bunch of previous lame supervillains have been given power-ups by the new leader of Latveria—Lucia Von Bardas–who has pillaged and sold all the tech left behind when Doctor Doom was sent to Hell.
Lucia is a new character who will be quite active as Bendis takes more control over shaping the overall Marvel Universe story.
When POTUS refuses to go to war based on Nick’s intelligence, Fury starts his own secret coup—led by S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Daisy Johnson, Captain America, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Black Widow, Luke Cage, Wolverine. Yes, it’s a strange cohort. I think it’s just the characters Bendis likes writing about. I mean, Black Widow, Daisy, and Cap make sense. Wolverine has done some covert ops, so he’s logical too. But Spider-Man? Luke Cage, who is a mercenary and ex-con? And Daredevil, who is both under-experienced AND under-powered? Hm. Anyway, five major players, five issues, each one gets to be on the cover of one of the installments.
Along the way, there’s some color added to Daisy Johnson’s background. Fury personally recruited her when she was seventeen, and she’s the daughter of a prostitute. She has powers—seismic powers.
One of the interesting tie-ins was a one-shot by editor Mike Raicht that mostly just had profiles of characters from the story but that also included a list of the other heroes Nick Fury wanted to use (including Hawkeye, Punisher, Spider-Woman and War Machine) and others deemed unsuitable (like Fury did not trust Mystique enough to put her in play).
And also profiles of some lesser-known characters.
Note that several of these villains are new versions of old favorites (e.g, Crimson Dynamo and Diamondback) while others are souped up versions of the originals.
When Secret War starts, the Latverian coup is in the past. It starts with newly-power-upped supervillains attacking the heroes as Latveria’s revenge. Their attack causes significant damage and lands Luke Cage in a coma.
After the heroes of NYC unite and fight off the army there are some investigations. For one, the heroes don’t believe Killer Shrike could afford his new weapons. Shrike turns state’s evidence, but is killed as he leads them to his source.
After similar suspicious events, Captain America confronts Nick Fury and we learn that most the “coup heroes” were memory wiped: They didn’t know about what happened in Latveria. Only Widow and Johnson remember—and they’re professional spies.
Cap is not thrilled about all this.
The anger at Fury leads to his resignation and the assignment of Maria Hill as the new Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Hill’s interviews with Agent Johnson serve as the framing sequence for the story, which is told in flashbacks.
To her credit, Maria essentially decommissions Daisy Johnson.
This is an excellent, sophisticated blend of realism and super-stories.
The Pulse #6–9 tied to this story, and in fact several scenes from that miniseries are repeated here. It also adds some background and depth to the events of that miniseries. The focus here is on Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, who got severely injured during Secret War. No real revelations, but Secret War was an “event,” so pushing more intimate scenes into a background story makes sense. Like when Jessica tries to visit Luke in the hospital.
In fact, this would become a blueprint for handling “event” stories in the future, and the next Pulse story would tie into House of M.
Lots of really good events in 2005!
Main series: B. Pulse issues: C+.