Secret Warriors #28 – Review

by Jonathan Hickman (writer), Alessandro Vitti (art), IFS (colors), and Dave Lanphear (letters)

The Story: 27 issues have led to this, the final issue of Secret Warriors.  Who’s left standing?

What’s Good:  As a final issue that came over 30 issues to soon, Hickman plays this one well.  There aren’t any other slam-bang events of climactic moments in this final outing.  Indeed, it’s important to recall that this was actually a “bonus issue,” and it certainly feels that way.  This functions as a sort of epilogue to Secret Warriors, and I’m really happy that it is, as were Secret Warriors to have ended last month, it would have been a disservice to the series.

In fact, this issue made me all the grumpier about Secret Warriors abbreviated run and consequently overly compressed story.  The series would have been a lot better served if it had more issues like this one.  You get strong character moments and time for the characters to reflect on and soak in recent events.  Instead of crazily rushing through big events, here we have characters able to outline the gravity of everything that’s happened.

The end result is that in retrospect, Secret Warriors ends up feeling less haphazard than it often was.  This epilogue manages to cast the series in better light, one that almost lured me into re-reading the entire run to see if it holds together better in such a format.  Hickman manages to retroactively inject more emotion into his story and its characters than we’ve often gotten.  It’s unfortunate, but in this epilogue, Secret Warriors is allowed to truly breathe for the first time in a while, and it’s elegant and affecting.