I discovered the Wild Cards series back when I was still in high school and of course this was also before George R.R. Martin became a household name. Being also a comic book reader at the time, this series ticked all of the right boxes for me: it had superheroes, it wasn’t afraid of adult themes and featured characters who had to deal with complex psychological issues, and its storylines tied in with real world news and US-based politics. Being a fan of this series made me feel all snobbish about how sophisticated I was. I eventually bought the books up to the seventh volume but I was missing the second book that I was never able to find. I could infer the events in it from what I read in the subsequent volumes yet every once in a while I would still recall that I never managed to read this. Now with the entire series available on Kindle, I thought I’d remedy this little hole in my life.

First, a quick introduction to the backstory. Superheroes exist on Earth due to an experimental virus released by alien Takisian scientists shortly after World War 2. Most who are infected die, others are disfigured and are called Jokers. The few who superpowers are called Aces. A Takisian scientist with telepathic powers remains on Earth to help victims out of guilt and is known as Dr. Tachyon. In this volume, the alien Swarm arrives near Earth after a long voyage. It is a gigantic biological ship of monsters led by a central intelligence intent on consuming the planet. A Masonic cult anticipates the arrival and their leader, the Astronomer, hopes to gain control over the Swarm. Fortunato, the Tantric Magic-wielding Ace is already aware of the existence of the cult and is hunting them for revenge for the death of one of the prostitutes working for him. Jube the Walrus, widely thought to be a Joker but actually an extraterrestrial alien studying Earth, is the first to realize that the Swarm has arrived. An eccentric scientist creates the Modular Man just in time for him to help defend the planet against the first brute force assault of the Swarm. Dr. Tachyon has to deal with his Takisian family who arrive on a warship while also convincing the rest of the world that the Swarm remains a threat after the first wave of monsters has been defeated.

This is an anthology series with multiple contributing authors, so each of them concentrates on a character of their own creation and their individual story, while also helping to build the wider arc. This format meant that while the world is filled with superheroes, there are rarely large-scaled fights or team-ups as the authors are reluctant to tread into each other’s domains. As a kid, I looked forward to this volume in particular because surely the global scale of an alien invasion threat meant that it would be one massive team-up. Unfortunately my hopes were dashed as even here the authors play it safe and shy away from juggling too many characters. The initial invasion at multiple landing zones all around the planet is covered as part of Modular Man’s origin story. His ability to fly lets him quickly respond to the assault wave nearest to New York and reconnoiter just how huge it is. He rescues and links up with some isolated US military units but mostly fights alone with the other Aces only seen in the background. When Dr. Tachyon finally understands the threat of the Masonic cult, he does gather a large team of Aces to storm their compound. Unfortunately the reader gets to see the action from the perspective of a victim of the cult who barely knows what is going on. As for the climactic fight against the Swarm mother, the less said about it the better as it shouldn’t have succeeded at all with the absurdly weak force they send.

Back in the day, one way that Marvel differentiated itself from DC was by their characters needing to strike a balance between their costumed and civilian identities. This meant that in addition to fighting evil, they also need to worry about real life problems like money and relationship troubles. I thought that the Wild Cards series ramped this way up by tackling even more serious and adult themes. Reading this now however I found this excessively edgy and angsty. Martin’s own favorite character The Great and Powerful Turtle is all woe is me, I must live as a lonely loser while secretly being of the world’s most powerful and famous Aces all the time. The self-pitying male is a tired trope these days for a good reason. I was also irritated by Fortunato putting a civilian into such extreme danger by trying to infiltrate the cult. She predictably gets killed and Fortunato gets to double down on swearing vengeance against the Astronomer. As usual in such contrived plots, so many problems could have been avoided if these characters just communicated more with each another.

The prose reads smoothly enough and does a solid job at just getting the plot across. Still, between the weak story and the poor coordination between the writers, I’d judge this to be one of the worst of the Wild Cards books I’ve read. I suspect that my impression of the quality of the other books may degrade if I reread them now. This series may have been okay back then particularly to younger readers but the bar is so much higher now. The Worm webserial is probably the best superhero written fiction in existence and it has everything: characters with real problems instead of made-up ones, epic fights with moment-by-moment descriptions of the action, stakes that scale from the street level to multiple dimensions and much more. The quality of the writing in all of the popular webserials is much better than this.

Buying this was probably a waste of money and I confess that I struggled to finish the book as I was so bored. I know it would have bugged me my whole life if I didn’t eventually get around to reading it so that’s one goal down for good. I notice that they are still releasing new volumes even now. I’m guessing that these newer ones are probably better in order to keep up with the competition but I have no desire to check them out as there are far better things to read now.