The Secret Wars universe has been a strange playground for the creative minds behind Marvel Comics.  While some series are tied to the comic book crossovers which inspired them, some are free from such restraints and get to become essentially whatever they want and thus to establish some interesting scenarios that we have never seen before.  One series that has thus not really suffered has been A-Force, the assembly of Marvel’s best superheroines into one place on one team.  Although this is not really the first time that this has been attempted, it is a fairly big application of the concept to the overall story of Secret Wars.

Thus far the story has to deal mostly with the characters trying to deal with portals and what comes from them and what is not allowed to go beyond.  After the loss of America in the last issue another heroine was found, this one with no name, but evidently one which Nico could make a fast friend with.  This issue, which is relatively heavy on action, deals with what this stranger brings, both the good and the bad, and the team’s reaction to her.  This series has been one which has focused more than the others on the politics of Doom’s Battleworld, and while this might not have worked so well in the first issue, its place here is a bit more substantive, which gives overall better weight to the entire series thus far.

The idea of an all-female superhero team, essentially a female Avengers, is one which appealing to many, enough to make this series one which will be revamped beyond the end of the crossover.  In the meantime this second issue salvages and reuses what seemed a bit stunted in the first issue and gives it a new direction.  It is maybe not as imaginative as the creative team could have gotten with these characters, but this is still a necessary series for the wider story arc, one which explains the inner workings of the system which will presumably be quickly torn down.

Story: Marguerite Bennett and G. Willow Wilson  Art: Jorge Molina
Story:  8.4 Art: 8.4  Overall: 8.4  Recommendation: Buy