Writer Brian Michael Bendis

Painter Gabriele Dell’Otto

Letterer Virtual Calligraphy’s Cory Petit

Cover Dated December 2005

Book Five of Five

Secret War was what Ultimate Alliance 2 starts out with, and a few of the characters got to have their Secret War modified uniforms as a second costume in that game.  Which was disappointing as the first Ultimate Alliance game had four costumes and the sequel only had two.

For those who didn’t play the game, Nick Fury chose a few handpicked heroes to invade Latveria and try to stop all of these tech specific villains from getting stronger.  The heroes are – Wolverine, Daredevil, Spider-Man, Captain America, Black Widow and Luke Cage.  They are going to overthrow the Latverian government, which isn’t being run by Doctor Doom as he is dead at the moment.  Believed dead, anyways.

All that was a year ago, today, Luke Cage is attacked by the Latverian leader, Lucia von Bardas and now she has all of the tech heroes going after these heroes.

I like the SHIELD dossiers, this will lead to a Secret War handbook, which I also own.

This series introduced us to Daisy Johnson, hero name is Quake.

Issue opens in the SHIELD Headquarters Interrogation Room C.  Fury is nowhere to be found, so Daisy Johnson is being interviewed.  I like how Bendis knows his SHIELD agents as Director Maria Hill is accompanied by Agents Jasper Sitwell and Clay Quatermain, who I know from Peter David’s Incredible Hulk run.  At least, that’s where I know them from.  At least, Quatermain.

Quake is only 18, and has the higher security ranking.  She doesn’t want to answer any questions that are obviously discoverable in her file that Hill has in her hands.

Six Hours Earlier.  A bomb goes off in New York City, just like what would happen if you don’t successfully take down Lucia von Bardas in Ultimate Alliance 2.  Thing tries to fight her.  Von Bardas is harassing Fury.  She knows that he screwed up.  All of a sudden, she falls over dead.  Quake exploded her heart.

Captain America wants Fury to tell the gathered heroes what happened, as they don’t recall any of this.

As far as I can see, this is the only page Kitty Pryde shows up on.  The rest of the Astonishing X-Men cast show up from here but not Kitty.

So weird, in retrospect, that this is the only issue of the five that you really need.  Bendis recaps the other four issues over the next several pages and all of the pay off happens here.  This is the only issue you have to own.

Fury made it so that none of the heroes remember what happened in Latveria.  Cap knows as he does missions for SHIELD all of the time.  Wolverine is flipping angry to have someone he trusts muck around with his mind and memory.  Quake explodes his heart.  This displeases the assembled heroes.  Before that happened, he got a few slashes into Fury.  We learn that Fury is a LMD.  He promises this is the last anyone will see of him.  Which I checked his comicbookdb page and this issue came out in December 2005 and he shows up in Black Widow’s series the very next month and is seen at least somewhere once a month until July 2007 and then right back in issues again, so he never really goes away.

Issue ends with Fury paging Quake.

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