2 out of 5

These anthology one-shots hardly ever work out too well for Marvel or DC, especially ones like Secret Love that get shoved into the midst of a crossover arc like Secret Wars.  The characters just don’t lend themselves to story blips, with too much baggage to carry for the light and breezy vibe that’s generally sought after.  Sticking to oddball characters – Squirrel Girl, Ant-Man – helps, as well as allowing for the many multiversal worlds that’ll let things get weird, as in that Ant-Man story which takes place on “Bug World” – but still, you end up buying the issue for a particular character or creator (Michel Fiffe for me), or simply because you’re collecting the crossover, and I don’t think these issues get much play beyond the once-through.

Yes, all of this applies to Secret Love, which has as its theme hearts and flowers and whatnot.  You don’t really need to know what’s going on in Secret War, of course, or just not care (both of these apply to me): none of these stories have any consequence, so yer mileage may vary and whatnot.  Fiffe’s Typhoid Mary / Daredevil battle is wonderful, getting to see him play in the Marvel sandbox, and he makes the most of his pages by focusing on that battle and not so much the love, which is really just a framing device for him.  Jeremy Whitley takes a clever “fights bring us together” approach for his Iron Fist / Heroes For Hire bit, although the amount of cast seems excessive for the small space.  Guruhiru’s art is clean and fun, though.  Fan of a Fan is a little too hip and flashy: a meet-up between current Ghost Rider and Ms. Marvel, words and art by Felipe Smith, but it’s got a nice Saved By the Bell-crowd humor and pacing.  Marguerite Bennett and Kris Anka’s Squirrel Girl bit is silly and enjoyable, and Katie Cook’s Happy Ant-Iversary is dumb as mud but kooky enough to make it okay.

Doesn’t sound too bad, right?  Yeah, it’s not, I just didn’t really care about any of the bits, and admittedly if not for wanting to track down Fiffe’s work, take his name off of it and I wouldn’t have cared about it either.  It’s not meant to be a huge sleight against any of the creators, there’s truly just not enough space here for what these mash-up books want to do, and so the content suffers the fate of being uninvolving.  Better to go the mini-series route, like the Strange Tales minis, but Marvel / DC generally won’t risk the publication space when, really, they just need a filler book on which to slap their crossover logo.