I thought that was rather flat. Nice art, and nice story - for what is actually there, but the climax fades out and there's no sense of catharsis or conclusion, least of all 'an end'. The endless pages of transcripts and SHIELD files were just 'filler'. If you can't fill out the story properly, don't insult the readers by injecting the book half full of superfluous text and gimmicks. I didn't read a word of it. I wanted a graphic novel, not a novel.

It was a promising story, but only half explored, and the rest was just a waste of time.

I've been out of reading most marvel titles for a long time, keeping up with only spiderman. With the start of Civil War I was sucked into reading all sorts of marvel titles again, which lead to a question of where Nick Fury dissappeared too, and Secret War was the answer. Or so I thought.
The Artwork in this book is beautiful. Some of the story telling techniques were new and fresh (reading computer text files of recorded conversations) and the overall premise of the story seemed good, until about halfway through the story. At that point it seemed hurried and eager to finish as well as a bit inconclusive. And the Nick fury question of where was not answered, but it gave a clear indication of why.
All in all Amazon's price versus the cover price made the hardback version of this book worth the o-kay story (did I mention the awesome art?)

When I first started reading comics, I started with Marvel (specifically X-Men & Spider-Man). Throughout those early years, my interest began to wane. Starting with Infinite Gauntlet through the Gate-fold covers, the holograms, the special trading cards, the one-sided stories, the Rob Leifeld nightmares, and finally to the Infinite War, I lost all interest in Marvel,
Fast forward nearly a decade later, I'm reading Batman. Not just any Batman stories mind you, I'm reading Arkham Asylum, The Dark Knight Returns, Hush, all extremely good stories. I'm reading Crisis on Infinite Earths, Watchmen, I'm enjoying the media to a new level. A media for which I had long abandoned Marvel in as a "make a movie with Ben Afleck and sell movie tickets" kind of company, a company forgetting what makes a comic worth reading. I was wrong.
Enter: Secret War (warning spoilers ahead). I was at a local book shop this morning and happened to come across this book for half-price. "Why not?" I thought, and bought it. The plot goes something like this, Luke Cage (Powerman), is attacked in his apartment by persons unknown, prompting Nick Fury, leader of the organization known as S.H.I.E.L.D. to take notice and bring to light a secret he had been burring for a year. Turns out, Latvaria, the country once ruled by Dr. Doom is supplying advanced weapons to most, if not, all the super-villains in the United States. So, Nick Fury assembled a team of heros (including: Daredevil, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Captain America, Powerman, and Black Widow) to not just stop the supply of weapons, but to over-throw the government of Latvaria and assassinate the elected ruler of said country. But they went one step further and destroyed much of the country in the process and then erased the memories of the heroes involved (to which Wolverine didn't react too kindly to).
I'm giving this book 4 stars and not 5, though it was good, very good in fact. But it more then a little seemed too much like the recent Infinte Crisis storyline occurring in DC. That in no way should deter a reader from picking it up. It's a solid story with great depth and character driven force (something I long thought was dead in a Marvel comic).
I'm glad I took the risk and picked it up. I will no longer pre-judge Marvel for their gimmicky past again (which, to be fair, all comics in the 90s were guilty of).

I agree with other reviewers. This is a great story concept, but wasn't executed to its full potential. It feels like a short story, when it should have been at least twice as long. Maybe in a couple of decades somebody will do to this what was done to Squadron Supreme and make it better. The interaction and dialogue between people/heroes is great (the usual from Bendis) but seeing more would have been better.

The non-graphic pages (SHIELD interviews, bio pages) were really well done and are interesting, but are not a substitute for a story that's too short. In addition, the art really shined, and certainly helped the flaws.

I'm not a great fan of Bendis, but I do think he's a good idea man. The premise behind this series is compelling, the execution could be better. But the good parts first:

The artwork is perfectly suited to this story, gritty and blurry without being sloppy, it's an excellent moon setting. The moral ambiguity that the tale centers around was implict as soon as you open the trade and see the graphics. The storyline is a good look at some of the darker corners superhumans might find themselves in if they did exist, a nice realistic depiction over the idealized that overall comics are associated with. And this is an important trade that leads up to events going on now (Civil War). This use of superheroes starts the questions that really start getting asked in Civil War.

But on the negative side, the story really seemed to drag to me, when I read it. The action is nearly nonexistant, and mostly in dimly remembered flashbacks. You don't really see the actual war, just its fallout. The series starts out with a bang, in media res, but after that it goes downhill. The few issues it ran for would have been improved if the actual conflict took place in an ongoing narrative, in the middle of the story would have been fine, but it should have happened. This series was either not long enough, and should have had the story of the actual war, or way too long, as revelations are boringly dragged out. The all text "transcripts" of shield agents, as mentioned before, are way too frequently and lengthy to be interesting, and the "shield files" or whatever at the end of the series is reprinted filler.

It's a shame that they design "covert ops" costumes for the heros involved and we barely get a glance at them as well. This series did not live up to its potential