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I’m not saying it’s wrong that Marvel built this event over different series for the past year, but it sure makes it weirdly impenetrable for the audience they’ve been pitching Secret Empire to in mainstream news outlets like Entertainment Weekly, ABC, and Time Magazine. And whether Marvel likes it or not, there’s also the audience attracted by the wide controversy about what the storyline has done to the symbolic appeal of Captain America as a pop culture icon—who I imagine would appreciate being able to pick up the first issue in an event like this and understand most of what’s going on and why.

Hell, I read a lot of Marvel comics, and have been following this story since it began in Captain America: Steve Rogers #1, and there were still moments that baffled me—like the A.I. recreation of Tony Stark just casually walking around working with his successor, Riri Williams, in his classic Iron Man armor early in the issue:

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Recent issues of Invincible Iron Man have shown the Tony A.I. capable of remote controlling suits of armor, but still, there’s not an inkling in Secret Empire #0 that this is the case, or even that, you know, Tony Stark has been in a coma (and still is!) for the past four months. These are little things, but when Secret Empire #0 is already doing a lot of work to set up the dominos it flicks over throughout the course of this issue, it makes for an intimidating read, and at times an impenetrable one, especially if you’re an unfamiliar reader jumping in to see what the fuss with this evil Captain America thing was about.

But those little moments of confusion among the drudgery also serve to help obfuscate what is one of the biggest moments of Secret Empire #0: another flashback to Steve’s altered past that seemingly sows doubts about the reality of everything we’ve ever known about the Marvel Universe.

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The flashback details Steve’s journey to meet up with World War II top Hydra muckety-muck the Kraken and a mysterious figure, who has a plan to protect Steve from the wave of reality-altering change the Allied forces are about to unleash by using their newly created cosmic cube to win the War. Steve is placed in a pool of mystical waters to protect him from the alterations in reality—which are shown as not just the Allies winning the war, but also Steve running into battle alongside Earth’s mightiest heroes and being the patriotic American superhero we’ve all known him as for decades. This is so that ostensibly, when the time comes for the reality-bending Kobik to “awaken” his identity as a Hydra agent in the modern day, he remembers the past where he was Hydra as the truth, and not the “fabrication” we’ve all read and known thought Marvel Comics’ history.

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There’s just enough obfuscation here that it already has people questioning if Marvel just re-wrote its own canon to reveal that Steve Rogers has really been Hydra all along, and that the history and continuity of the Marvel universe as we’ve known it has been a lie. But this is all revealed in a flashback—like all the others we’ve seen so far in the pages of Captain America: Steve Rogers, and we know that these flashbacks are a lie implanted in Steve through Kobik’s alterations, at the behest of the Red Skull.

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So the “revelation” here, about the Allies using a Cosmic Cube to win World War II and change the Hydra-aligned Steve Rogers into the superhero we’ve known him as, is a lie within a lie presumably implanted by Kobik and the Red Skull so that when Steve’s fellow heroes tell him that he was brainwashed by a Cosmic Cube, he can counter back with “They told me you’d say that!” Right?

This issue could be confusing and daunting enough at times, and that was before it invited you to question the veracity of the outcome of WWII, and the entirety of Marvel’s continuity for the past 70-odd years. It’s a largely unnecessary prologue piece that seemingly serves nothing but to further stoke the anger of people who see turning Captain America into a Hydra agent as a poorly-timed undermining of American ideals.

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Like I said, there’s enough obfuscation and confusion here, on top of all the weird buildup quibbles, that it makes Secret Empire #0 a slog of a read, even in its best, most tragic moments. But with all that out of the way, the die is cast, and Steven Rogers’ road to world domination has begun. Time will tell where it all goes, but for now the Marvel hero community stands shattered, separated, and confused as hell. In some ways, I imagine many readers are, too.