This volume contains the core story of Secret Empire, and there are some very strong moments, imagery, and pages in this book that stick in my head.

There are, of course, a lot of the same sorts of action, adventure, explosions, and fist fights that you would expect in a typical superhero comic book, but there are also some very strong themes that were incredibly timely when they were published around 2017, and still feel very pertinent today, more than five years later.

I’m not sure that the themes are entirely done justice, but it is a bit hard to go into depth, and explore nuance, when you’re also trying to tell a fast paced action plot with three major storylines happening at the same time. I really wish we had gotten some more vignettes of how Hydra’s rule was affecting the lives of regular people, though. One of the most powerful and interesting points that is made by the end of the series is that there are many regular people who are not only willing, but eager to be fascist, but while we do see some of that, we don’t see a lot of it.

Also, this suffers from the same problem, that a lot of big event, comic books have, being that there are so many tie ends, and bits and pieces and cameos that don’t make sense unless you have read a vast swath of mostly unrelated titles. If you go in wanting or needing to understand all that history and context, you might find the story to be too fragmented, with too many moving pieces, some of which feel unimportant to the story, because they aren’t - they are important for elsewhere and elsewhen. I don’t personally believe this is a dealbreaker, but it is annoying, and could be much worse for readers who are mostly unfamiliar with the general landscape of the Marvel comic book universe these days.

Still, I think it was a very good event, with solid writing and art, as well as important and timely themes. If you’re interested, I definitely recommend it.