Comic Info
Comic Name: Chaos War
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Greg Pak/Fred Van Lente
Artist: Khoi Pham
# of Issues: 5
Release Date: 2011
Chaos War #2
Reprints Chaos War #1-5 (December 2010-March 2011). Amatsu-Mikaboshi the Chaos King has thrown the Earth into madness by killing Nightmare. The dead have begun rising, and it is up to the heroes of the world (the living and the dead) to stop the Chaos King before the entire universe is destroyed. With the fate of the world in his hands, Hercules might become the world’s last chance to stop Mikaboshi and end the war.
Written by Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente, Chaos War was a five issue limited series event series for Marvel Comics. The core limited series spawned a number of one-shots and an Incredible Hulk tie-in. The series received mixed reviews by critics and fans and the core series has been collected in Chaos War with Chaos War: Avengers and Chaos War: X-Men collecting the one-shots and limited series and with Chaos Wars: Incredible Hulks collecting Incredible Hulk (3) #618-621.
I liked Pak’s Planet Hulk and I loved Incredible Herc, and I really looked forward to Chaos War and the prospects of bringing back a lot of heroes. After reading Chaos War, I kind of wondered what the hell happened. The story was confusing and the multiple limited series that are merged into the final issue of the series don’t always make sense.
Chaos War #5
Pak’s Planet Hulk was a surprise and impressed me. The comic wove a story through multiple issues and had a big payout. I kept hoping that this was going to happen while reading Chaos War…it never seemed to develop. It was a lot of fighting and not much came out of it.
Chaos War was the perfect opportunity to bring back people’s favorite heroes and villains to the Marvel Universe in an acceptable way since it was the central to the plot of the story. Despite that, I wasn’t even sure if the characters resurrected in this series (besides Alpha Flight) remained alive after the series. It felt like there should have been one or two extra issues if they wanted to have a bigger impact on the Marvel Universe as a whole, but Chaos War didn’t seem to make very many ripples. The related limited series and one-shots dealt more with the resurrected heroes, but the core book dealt with the battle.
Chaos War was really of a letdown. It is kind of confusing, and the results of the battle are a bit unclear. It also ends the whole Hercules storyline that had been building for issues and issues…and it ends poorly (also leading into the rather disappointing Herc series). It isn’t the worse series you’ll ever read but by far it isn’t the best.
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