Retro Review Month: Fear Itself - Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

We've come to the low point of Retro Review month. Way back when I started this blog, one of my first reviews was for Marvel's "Age of Ultron" event, which I rightly trashed. Despite that, there's another Marvel event within recent years that I've read that I think is just as bad. Maybe not worse, but still bad and pretty much forgettable: "Fear Itself".
When it comes to Marvel events, they're usually good at having some build-up either through current ongoing series or being built off of previous events. "Fear Itself" basically came out of nowhere, and in the grand scheme of things, was really just a blip in Marvel's history, hardly being mentioned afterwards and any apparent ramifications being undone almost immediately. As much as I hated "Age of Ultron", it at least had build up and you could say it helped plant the seeds for 2015's "Secret Wars". Besides that, it was kind of apparent that "Fear Itself" was very similar to another event from another company, but we'll get to that later.

Unlike my other reviews his month, I will not be going issue by issue. While rereading this story, I found very little to talk about the issues individually, and will be talking about the story as a whole. I think the reason I'm not going by issue by issue is because there's very little substance. In fact, a thought I had reading through this was "This is what a Marvel comic written by Michael Bay would be like, isn't it?". I mean, if you think about the Transformers movies, there's usually no build up from the previous movie and the current villain comes out of nowhere. This is basically "Fear Itself"! Besides that, it's just non-stop action and any character interaction just feels off.
When it comes to the action, there are multiple moments throughout this story where there's a blinding flash of light, most of the time signifying a devastating explosion. After these explosions, we don't really see the effects of these blasts. Again, like a Bay-Formers movie, there's a lot of action where it's hard to tell what's going on and it's not very concerned with showing the devastation of these actions as long as it looks cool.

Let me go through the premise: The daughter of the Red Skull, Sin (who shares her father's complexion), unearths a being from Asgard known as the Serpent. Summoning hammers to falls to Earth, the Serpent imbues Sin and other heroes and villains across the planet with power, controlling them to spread as much fear and death as possible to make him strong enough to defeat his brother Odin and take Asgard for himself.
Now it may not seem like it based on my summation, but "Fear Itself" is basically Marvel's rip-off of DC's "Blackest Night" event, which came out over a year earlier. Let's look at some of the similarities, and honestly there's a lot more than I realized reading through this again.

1. The main villain has his right-hand general work to revive their master's power. (Nekron had Black Hand while the Serpent had Sin.)

2. The main villain uses objects to possess heroes and villains to do their bidding. (Nekron used rings to raise his Black Lantern Corps (which was more extensive) while the Serpent used hammers to create the Worthy.)

3. Among those possessed are a couple. (Hawkman and Hawkgirl became Black Lanterns while Absorbing Man and Titania were part of the Worthy.)

4. The main villain uses his army to spread as much death as possible to strengthen their power. (Given the Serpent's main goal was to spread fear, but he was doing it through death, so it's still similar.)

5. The main villain wants to expose an ancient secret hidden by their enemy. (Nekron wants to expose that life began on Earth rather than Oa as the Guardians of the Universe claimed whereas the Serpent is actually Odin's brother and possibly the true All-Father of Asgard.)

6. To fight fire with fire, the heroes get an upgrade to use similar powers. (Heroes and villains becomes deputized members of different Lantern Corps while Iron Man creates weapons in Asgard for the Avengers.)

7. Among the upgraded heroes is the wife of one the heroes the main villain has possessed. (Aquaman became a Black Lantern as Mera became a Red Lantern, whereas Bruce Banner/Hulk became part of the Worthy while Betty Ross/Red She-Hulk got a special weapon from Iron Man.)

I think I made my point.

As I mentioned before, character depictions are a little off. For example, Thor's speech pattern seems a bit modernized. In #1 he calls Odin a "one eyed bastard", and in #5, he calls Hulk "a giant pain in the ass". It isn't so much that Thor is cursing, but that is just doesn't sound like how Thor would speak.
When it comes to Odin, he's a real dick in this series. He basically plans to raze the Earth just to stop his brother from reaching Asgard, as well as ensure the prophecy that Thor dies in battle with the Serpent doesn't come to pass. Along with that, he keeps asking Thor to stand by with the Gods and not worry about the humans, with Thor constantly refusing him. I know it's supposed to add a father/son conflict, but when they keep having the same conversation with the same outcome, it loses some significance.

But probably my main problem with the character depictions in this series comes in #5, where the heroes seem to give up. It starts when the fully powered Serpent wipes the floor with the Avengers, and even breaks Captain America's shield.

I've come to notice that the breaking of Cap's shield is used to signify 'all is lost'. Even "Age of Ultron" did that. Both Dr. Doom and Thanos have managed to do it, and they're both some of Marvel's greatest villains. I'm not sure the Serpent, a character who has barely been relevant since his creation, should rank among them. It seems that the shattering of Cap's shield in this story was used purely for shock value.
Following this, Spider-Man helps Cap up and asks if he can head off to make sure Aunt May's okay. Cap allows it, and when Hawkeye asks why, Cap flat out says "Look AROUND you, Hawkeye...we're going to LOSE."
I guess I'll start with the Spider-Man part. I won't ignore that there were times when Spider-Man has put his Aunt May above everything else. There are two instances I remember from the early Lee/Ditko run. Amazing Spider-Man #9 showed Spider-Man swinging past a robber, who worries Spider-Man will catch him but then is confused why he doesn't, only to get arrested by a pursuing officer. It turns out Peter was rushing home to check on May, who had fallen ill. Later in #17, during a battle between Spider-Man and the Human Torch against the Green Goblin, Peter had overheard in the crowd that May had fallen ill (again; yeah this used to happen A LOT) and left mid-battle, leaving Torch holding the ball against the Goblin. I can forgive those because Peter was still a teenager. At the time of "Fear Itself", Peter was an adult and a full-fledged Avenger. I understand his concern for his aunt, but the way I see it, Peter leaving in the middle of a battle goes against his mantra of "with great power comes great responsibility". He should keep fighting and make sure civilians aren't hurt or killed when he could do something. And you know what? Aunt May agrees! In #6, when Spider-Man finds May is okay and tells her Peter wanted him to check on her. After telling her that Peter is safe, she says "Keep him safe. Keep EVERYBODY safe. You have a great responsibility, you know, and it wouldn't be right, me keeping you here away from it." Keep in mind that May doesn't know Peter is Spider-Man, so she may have just remembered Ben's line and wanted to say it in her own way. So in some sense this was kind of a waste of time in order to lengthen the book, but I'd be a hypocrite after saying in my Spider-Man Noir review how May acts as Peter's moral compass, and this moment shows that.
But back to Cap's line of defeat. With all the Marvel Universe has been through, I find it hard that Cap would be this beaten down that he's willing to accept fate. It doesn't help with his line in issue #6: "We need to start EVACUATING [...] We need to evacuate the EARTH. And I don't know how you do that." Is this all because his shield got broken? Despite this depressing behavior, Cap's still ready to fight to the end. So I'm not sure why it was decided to make him ready to lose too. At least in "Blackest Night", even when the situation seemed hopeless, the heroes were always trying to figure out a new plan to win.

If there were supposed to be two major ramifications of this event, it would be the deaths of Bucky Barnes and Thor. I say "supposed to be" because both deaths were undone almost immediately!
With Bucky, he had assumed the Captain America role while Steve had become the commander of SHIELD. So Steve becoming Captain America again was only a matter of when, not if, especially when a new solo series was announced and the first movie was coming out at the time. So yeah, Bucky's death in "Fear Itself" was pretty much given...only to find out a month later that they faked Bucky's death so he could resume his Winter Soldier persona for secret missions.
Thor does indeed die after defeating the Serpent. Back when I read this the first time, I didn't really feel anything, between the fact that comic book deaths are only temporary and that Thor has died before. It was a good sign that this death was temporary because his solo series was still going. How temporary? Well like Bucky, Thor was immediately brought back.
I guess if you read this story on its own, then these deaths might leave more of an impact, but knowing what happens afterwards really hurts the overall significance.

"Fear Itself" came and went, not leaving any real impact for readers or characters in the long run. If anything, I could recommend it if you want a pure action story, although it disappoints with its attempts to be something deeper. You'd really just be better off reading "Blackest Night".

STORY RATING: 4/10
RECOMMENDATION RATING: 2/10

We wrap up Retro Review Month next week as we take a look at another attempt to revitalize one of America's most beloved icons.