This is "From a Different Point of View," a feature where I discuss a comic book series with other people. This time around, due to everyone having to self-isolate, I figured I'd do a special edition where I discuss the original Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars series with whatever readers that wanted to chat about it!

We continue with Secret Wars #7, "Berserker!" by Jim Shooter, Mike Zeck, John Beatty, Christie Scheele and Joe Rosen

Brian Cronin: That's quite a title.

Brian Cronin: Especially as we see it on a title page over the new Spider-Woman.

Brian Cronin: It'd be funny if she turned out to be a berserker type character.

Flavio Sette: Certainly not a reference to that scene from Clerks.

Avash: The new Spider-Woman kind of came outta nowhere

Avash: Unless we count the "cliffhanger"

Brian Cronin: Yep, and now she's shouting her name at people.

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Brian Cronin: "You're a different lady"

Brian Cronin: That's odd dialogue from Cap, right?

Tom A.: It's kind of funny how they after the fact came up with this idea that Spider-Man's black costume was inspired by her

Avash: Cap is reaaaally trusting here

Tom A.: But then the Knull dragon emblem retcon happened and now it's just a weird coincidence.

Avash: that was some odd logic

Brian Cronin: Good point, Tom.

Flavio Sette: Kinda weird that Cap's turning down help when they're dealing with an army of super-villains and freaking Galactus.

Tom A.: I wonder why the Beyonder picked Denver of all places for a chunk of Earth.

Brian Cronin: "Strength is not enough. We have Hawkeye on our team, after all."

Avash: I love the Spider-Man joke about suing for royalty though

Avash: people just keep borrowing his name and symbol willy nilly

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Tom A.: Just how fast is the Wrecking Crew's toyetic not a real toy tank? Surely Thor or Iron Man could easily chase after them.

Brian Cronin: It's hilarious that this is a toy tie-in comic book.

Brian Cronin: And here we have a villain tossing the dead body of a superhero at the heroes to taunt them.

Brian Cronin: A few issues after she had sex with a supervillain.

Brian Cronin: This book does not give a slightest fuck.

DavidJustDavid: I agree that Hulk looks like he should totally have caught up with the wrecking tank.

DavidJustDavid: But then he's back with the rest of the heroes who are all saying 'let's go after them!'

Avash: Thor is ridiculously underpowered here, he should be able to call on a lightning bolt and destroy that car easily

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Brian Cronin: One thing Zeck has excelled at in this series is panels of pissed off characters.

Tom A.: And Cap's lack of being pissed off.

Flavio Sette: Yeah, I definitely recall seeing a lot of panels of Cap yelling at someone from that run.

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Brian Cronin: I adore that She-Hulk has shoulder pads on her leoatard.

Tom A.: Not one of her most iconic looks.

DavidJustDavid: Cap suggests that Doom might be goading them into attacking Galactus...by having the Wrecking Crew throw the Wasp at them?

Brian Cronin: I think Cap rightly assumed that anything the Wrecking Crew do is not part of any actual plan.

Flavio Sette: So weird how the Avengers just assume Wasp must be dead.

DavidJustDavid: And Thor says a Victor Von Doom pun.

Avash: Cap is being really mature here though, unlike typical issues where he basically does nothing but everyone lauds his leadership abilities

Brian Cronin: It's funny how Zeck was stuck with some odd looks for both Wasp and She-Hulk.

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Flavio Sette: Also weird: again, no one ever bothers figuring out a way to communicate with Zsaji. Like, instead of assuming Wasp's dead, maybe you could, y'know, figure out a way to talk to the person who's treating her?

Brian Cronin: Yeah, it's weird that they automatically assume they CAN'T talk to her.

Brian Cronin: When Johnny obviously HAS communicated with her before

Avash: Especially we already established last issue that there is a vapor that can help you do this

Brian Cronin: That might be the problem.

Brian Cronin: She might only talk in recaps, though.

Avash: LOL

Flavio Sette: "We're all gonna die!" "Let's fight it out and see." See, Reed, that right there is why the Hulk shouldn't be the leader.

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Brian Cronin: Professor X's strategies are all over the place, right?

Brian Cronin: "We need to be a third force for...reasons"

Brian Cronin: "Just spy on Doom's forces"

Brian Cronin: "Now capture them!"

DavidJustDavid: Guess he didn't have a problem with the volcanic chain reaction in the end.

Tom A.: "I really wish that Moira had told me about all this".

Brian Cronin: Hulk would be doing just as good of a job as leading the X-Men as Xavier.

Flavio Sette: No plan survives first contact with the enemy, but still, make up your mind, Charles!

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Tom A.: Once again, a character calls Volcana fat even though the art fails to convey it.

Brian Cronin: Yeah, the continued "Man, Volcana is fat, huh?" stuff is bee-zarre.

DavidJustDavid: Enchantress is all over the place in terms of characterization this series.

DavidJustDavid: Arrogant, grovelling, flighty, powerful, hair pulled by Nightcrawler...

Flavio Sette: Maybe Enchantress resents Volcana because she used to be the only woman on the team and her whole shtick is seducing men, and Volcana is dating the most powerful man here.

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Brian Cronin: It's fascinating how Absorbing Man thinks Magneto is scum like them.

Brian Cronin: Some extreme views out there in this series about mutants.

Flavio Sette: But I'm probably reading waaaaay too much into her characterization.

Tom A.: To be fair, his logic holds up, Magneto IS a mass murderer. Based on what Creel read about Magneto (especially Silver Age Magneto) in the paper, it makes sense he'd think he's scum.

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Brian Cronin: And then one of my favorite moments of the whole series.

Brian Cronin: Wolverine slicing off Absorbing Man's arm!

DavidJustDavid: I really loved that Wolverine scene the first time I read this.

Brian Cronin: That's such a great scene. The look on Creel's face is priceless.

Flavio Sette: That scene is amazing. And Wolverine does it so casually, too.

DavidJustDavid: I'm glad we have yet another issue making the X-Men look bad-ass...

Tom A.: Although one wonders why Creel didn't just absorb Wolverine's adamantium.

Avash: Who is supposed to be the berserker in this issue btw?

Flavio Sette: This fight scene as a whole is top notch. Some of Zeck's best work so far. Particularly the page where the X-Men finally start working as a team.

Avash: The fight choreography is fantastic

DavidJustDavid: And finally Magneto is actually being a factor in the fight (love how he handles Doc Ock).

Brian Cronin: "Spider-Man? How could we fight him? Four powerful supervillains at once? No problem!"

EricMichael: I think Creel was too surprised.

Avash: Finally X Men gets some love in this series

Avash: Although in the end they barely survive

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Brian Cronin: I love the scene of Magneto complaining about how this was no challenge

Dean: Surely the berserker is Spider-Woman and she'll get a ton to do in this issue!

DavidJustDavid: Nightcrawler is unconscious at some point but we don't see him get taken out.

Brian Cronin: While the bad guys are getting away.

Flavio Sette: Nice to see Rogue's character arc come to an end, I guess, even though there's not a real reason why she decided to stand by the X-Men other than "Eh, I guess being super indecisive was making me lose a lot of fights".

Brian Cronin: Ha! Yeah, Flavio.

Brian Cronin: And her decision boiled down to, "I picked the X-Men first, so I guess I'm with them"

Avash: I actually liked that bit tbh, it gives her personality more of a depth

Flavio Sette: "Dance with the one who brung you", is probably how she would've put it. Or something equally southern and folksy.

Tom A.: And he's hiding from Volcana's magma blasts.

Brian Cronin: How dumb does Magnto look that he follows up "This is no challenge to me!" with him seemingly just walking the other way?

Tom A.: Almost as dumb as Doom looks in the next page when he's telling himself that he's totally not afraid, just excited.

Avash: Professor X seemed a bit too optimistic about the outcome of this fight tbh

Flavio Sette: It's nice to see the X-Men kick some ass, but man, Nightcrawler hasn't done a lot these last few issues, has he? Heck, all he does here is hit Titania with a rock and then get knocked out off-panel.

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Brian Cronin: One of the good recurring bits is Doom consistently complaining about how he's not a bug

Brian Cronin: And then Galactus keeps treating him like he's a bug

DavidJustDavid: It looks like Cyclops has set a huge chunk of the planet's surface on fire.

Tom A.: So Galactus can't devour a planet if volcanoes are going off? Why?

DavidJustDavid: It's an inferno visible from space.

Avash: It's gonna give him a tummy ache

Flavio Sette: Magneto devours hoagies, not planets!

Brian Cronin: Yeah, seems like a big stretch just to excuse the delay.

Brian Cronin: "Okay, I will devour the planet this issue. Wait, my stories are on. Wait until next issue."

Avash: Ultimately that didn't do much though, Doom got detected either way

Avash: I love how he squashed doom like a bug though

Avash: You don't ever really see Doom that defeated

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Tom A.: So for the first time ever, a comic book scientist admits that he only has one field of specialty. I'm pretty sure that future stories have Doctor Octopus be an expert in medicine and biology as well.

Brian Cronin: Yeah, that was a nice thing to see.

Brian Cronin: He has to know that Marvel scientists are all experts in at LEAST three fields.

EricMichael: Science is science!

DavidJustDavid: Yes, you figure if Ultron says he can operate medical machines, Doc Ock could've given it a shot.

Avash: Well, he's a nuclear physicist, who made brain wave controlled metal legs

Avash: So obviously he's also a biomedical engineering savant

Flavio Sette: That panel where we see Battleworld from space, though. If literally half the planet was on fire, you'd think that'd be a mass extinction event right there, right? Nice going, Scott.

DavidJustDavid: Ultron doesn't seem naturally inclined to healing.

Flavio Sette: Ultron's pose looks so perfectly smug.

Brian Cronin: Yeah, he's such an odd character now, but he looks cool.

Avash: Enchantress seems to be on a quest for hoarding favors

DavidJustDavid: The planet on fire doesn't seem to bother anyone for the rest of the series.

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Tom A.: Absorbing Man thinks he has no choice but to try to turn into flesh while reattaching his arm, but he's too dumb to consider that he could just absorb water or something and then reassemble himself naturally. Either that or Shooter forgot he could do that.

Brian Cronin: I just adore that his moronic plan worked.

Brian Cronin: It's so cute.

DavidJustDavid: Yeah, it seems Absorbing Man has been broken to pieces a few times in the past.

Tom A.: I forget, did we ever find out what Doom wanted the Lizard for so badly?

Avash: Does Lizard's facination with Wasp come into factor in later stories?

Brian Cronin: I don't think either ever pays off, no.

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Brian Cronin: Bulldozer finally gets a scene!

Brian Cronin: Good for him!

EricMichael: Now, here comes Bulldozer's moment to shine!

Brian Cronin: "Everything's coming up Bulldozer!"

Tom A.: He somehow gets 2 entire pages just for himself without displaying a single unique personality trait.

Brian Cronin: I was thinking that exact thing, Tom!

Brian Cronin: About how we were all making fun of him not having any character traits

Brian Cronin: But now he has a full couple of pages to himself and...still nothing.

Flavio Sette: Bulldozer's apartment looks great, with that big round window. Not a lot of privacy, though.

Avash: How powerful are the wrecking crew supposed to be btw? Sometimes they take down Thor, and now She Hulk can take care of them alone

Tom A.: All I remember about him was that he was in the Army and that it was later established he had a daughter that got similar powers. That's it.

DavidJustDavid: In their first appearance, the Wrecking Crew beat up a whole team of Defenders, including Luke Cage and Hulk.

Avash: Finally, She Hulk vs Titania!

DavidJustDavid: And Bulldozer was huge, and shirtless for some reason.

Avash: A match up for decades to come

Flavio Sette: Another great fight scene here. Zeck's knocking it out of the park this issue.

Avash: The action scenes are excellent in this issue

DavidJustDavid: When this series was happening, the Marvel Role Playing Game was in full swing. It was fun to try to recreate a bunch of these match-ups with game stats.

Tom A.: She-Hulk beating up the entire Wrecking Crew off-screen forever established the Wrecking Crew as a team of jobbers that now only exist to get beaten up by heroes to establish their cred. Like in Thunderbolts and Runaways.

Brian Cronin: It makes Titania's power levels seem hard to place

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Avash: How peculiar is the enchantress monologue btw

Brian Cronin: Yeah, what the fuck, Enchantress?

Brian Cronin: That was some weird monologing.

Avash: So she wanted to "corrupt" Thor?

EricMichael: I wasn't reading Thor at the time, so I always wondered if this was what was going on in his book.

Tom A.: Titania's power level is stronger or around She-Hulk's, so she's in what the Handbook's classify as the 100+ tons class.

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DavidJustDavid: File the She-Hulk take-down as another scene that's pretty uncomfortable for a toy tie-in comic.

Brian Cronin: Yeah, that's some bleak stuff.

Brian Cronin: Where they all are just hovering over her batter body

Brian Cronin: Ooph.

Brian Cronin: And then we cut to brooding Captain America.

Avash: I love the panel where Doom walks in utterly defeated

DavidJustDavid: Do like the p.o.v. shot though, I was thinking more of the violence right before it...

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Avash: "It is over, finished" never seen Doom like that much

Brian Cronin: That's Doom's arc throughout the series. "I'm not nothing!" "I'm nothing!" "I'm not nothing!"

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Brian Cronin: It's fascinating to see the Hulk so under control when Cap says that they can't go rescue She-Hulk.

Flavio Sette: I like that Cap wants his team to be on the defensive (which contrasts nicely with the mutants' more offensive approach), but Shooter and Zeck keep coming up with ways to have Cap's team be forced into a confrontation. Not only does it give them something to DO, but it also sets-up that they can't really afford to keep picking fights with the villains.

EricMichael: and Cap making the tough call

Avash: Once again since excellent work with Cap

Tom A.: And Cap's facial expressions continue to paint a man that simply doesn't care rather than a man torn by the weight of his hard decisions.

Brian Cronin: Until that one panel.

Avash: He's always used to make decisions ignoring the big picture, bit this time he can't, and you can see it's killing him

Flavio Sette: Is this the first big, inspirational speech Cap's given so far?

Tom A.: And it's not really a big speech, just three sentences.

Brian Cronin: The one they reference on the cover.

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Brian Cronin: A word on the cover.

Brian Cronin: Tom Brevoort shared Mike Zeck's two original covers for this issue and the one before it.

Brian Cronin: And holy shit, it seems like Shooter had Bob Layton re-draw them just for shits and giggles.

Brian Cronin: Shooter would often have covers redone and artists would frequently doubt his motivations over the changes.

Brian Cronin: Thinking it was a case of asking for a change for the sake of a change

Brian Cronin: And man, the Zeck originals compared to Layton's published covers...

Brian Cronin: They're pretty darn similar.

Flavio Sette: I can see why that would create conflicts.

Brian Cronin: I can't imagine Zeck would be happy seeing the Layton covers published after his were rejected.

EricMichael: hmmmm...the one difference I see that matters, is Wasp's "body" on the cover. Maybe Shooter feared Code objection?

Flavio Sette: Shooter seems like someone who has a very fixed idea of what comic book writing and art should look like, and if it doesn't match that…

Flavio Sette: When it works, it works really well, but when it doesn't, it hurts rather than help the story.

Tom A.: Interesting how one of those covers has Klaw and Kang on the same roster.

Brian Cronin: Yeah, but no Bulldozer on any cover!

EricMichael: poor poor Bulldozer. should we just change his name to Zeppo?

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Brian Cronin: Next, we have Zsaji save the Wasp off-panel, because no one bothered to ask her, I guess, if she could do that.

DavidJustDavid: So Wasp should fall in love with her...

Brian Cronin: And then Xavier offers to help out, which, again, WHY ISN'T THAT ALREADY HAPPENING?

Brian Cronin: What benefit is there to be gained by the X-Men being a "third force"?

Avash: Can someone explain why they are using two different camp?

Avash: Shouldn't they coordinate as a single unit?

Brian Cronin: Clearly.

Brian Cronin: It doesn't do any good.

DavidJustDavid: At the very least, the X-base should share it's technology with Cap's team.

Avash: The reason heroes keep getting beaten is their lack of numbers

DavidJustDavid: Instead of making them sleep in the village.

Flavio Sette: I suppose there is some value to that. Fighting in multiple fronts, having a frontline force and a behind the lines force… but they do none of that.

Brian Cronin: But that's the value of two coordinating groups, not what Xavier is doing here, which is just being a third group period.

Brian Cronin: But whatever, it freed up the other heroes to attack, which is nice.

Tom A.: And this time, the end of the issue actually works, no more awkward non-cliffhangers.

Brian Cronin: Yeah, we finally get another good cliffhanger.

Avash: Not really a cliffhanger per se, but this ending works

Brian Cronin: I think, "We're about to go attack the villains" counts as a cliffhanger.

Flavio Sette: "Our teammate was captured, and we're going on a dangerous mission to rescue her" definitely counts as a cliffhanger, for sure.

Brian Cronin: And Zeck, again, excels at angry looking heroes.

Avash: They should do better coordination though, not just act completely independent of each other

Tom A.: While Spider-Woman just stands awkwardly in the background, since she doesn't really understand what's going on.

DavidJustDavid: The reason the factions split was shown to be anti-Magneto tension, but that never really goes anywhere in the later issues...

Avash: Prof X, so far, in particular has shown pretty weak leadership abilities and made bad judgement calls

EricMichael: "Feared and hated" but then refuse to play well with others.

EricMichael: it's why I always hated seeing the X-Men in crossovers.

Dean: so the berserker was She-Hulk?

Avash: Dean, I guess

Flavio Sette: The real berserker was all the friends they made along the way.

Brian Cronin: Huh, I guess She-Hulk would have to be it.

DavidJustDavid: Wolverine did chop off an arm, though.

Brian Cronin: True, good point, David.

Tom A.: And even though the X-Men rarely help out when the Avengers save the world from countless threats and are always willing to help the X-Men when asked, the X-Men always whine about the Avengers not helping them.

EricMichael: I came in late: isn't it always kinda charming to see a non-indestructible Wolverine?

Avash: The introduction of Spider-Woman kind of feel flat tbh. They built her up in the last issue cliffhanger, only to get lost in the shadows throughout the issue

Tom A.: Honestly, why did they even introduce her in this series? Did they even have any plans for her? All I recall her doing in the months after Secret Wars is her joining Mystique's Freedom Force, and then the West Coast Avengers several years later.

DavidJustDavid: Her only relevance is as "inspiration" for the black Spider-Man costume,

Avash: Especially when we had SO MANY characters already in this series

Brian Cronin: I think Shooter was just thinking of throwing out new characters and if other creators wanted to use them, have at it.

Brian Cronin: While Volcana, of course, was part of his sequel.

DavidJustDavid: Which turns out to be a symbiote, so shouldn't have much to do with her.

EricMichael: a series this big (sales-wise) is kinda the best spotlight for a new character.

Brian Cronin: Good point, EricMichael.

Avash: What was Jessica's status quo at that point of time btw?

Brian Cronin: Jessica was retired from superheroing.

EricMichael: Jessica had lost her powers, in Marvel Two-in-One, saving Bill Foster

Flavio Sette: She was working as a PI, right?

Flavio Sette: And that was around the time Secret Wars was coming out, I mean.

Brian Cronin: Correct.

Brian Cronin: Okay, folks, thanks for the chat!

Brian Cronin: Next chat will be Monday at 4:30

Brian Cronin: When some guy gets a new costume.

Brian Cronin: I don't remember who.

EricMichael: I don't think it made a big splash

Brian Cronin: It had a slightly less important impact than Spider-Woman did.

Flavio Sette: If Spider-Man's costume is inspired by Spider-Woman, then I guess HE will be the berserker next time? Or maybe, deep inside, we're all the berserker.

Brian Cronin: Bye folks! Thanks for coming!