shhhhhh secret wars is the big marvel summer event of 2015

Can't wait to time travel into the present day with y'all and put on my own nerd goggles.

I'm reading the first issue at work on my phone. It's pretty fun.

DJP - I thought Havok wasn't still inverted, only suffering the scars of it and the alt-future Janet stuff with the baby, etc. Totally possible I missed something though.

I take it this a different meaning of 'Invert' to Proust's usage

Havok is suffering from a condition that requires him to be hung by his feet at all times.

Havok was behind the same shield that Sabretooth and Iron Man were behind when the spell was cast to undo the inversions, leaving all three of them in their inverted state; unless something happened in a book I don't read, all three of them are still inverted (Sabretooth is being explicitly written that way in Uncanny Avengers; ditto Iron Man in The Superior Iron Man).

Ward: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AXIS_%28comics%29

Hmm. Yeah, he's totally not being written that way. But I'm sure if anyone pointed that out to Marvel they'd be like "LOL Havok. Whatever."

I thought Bendis might be hinting at it with Alex appearing to egg Scott's messiah complex on but I don't really see what he gets out of it other than maybe a dead brother

hey DJP, is that Superior Iron Man book at all good? I haven't read any issues

Maybe Bendis is using it to justify his X-Men/Mutants > Avengers attitude? I think it's just basically forgotten, because unlike Tony or Sabretooth he was pretty poorly defined beforehand.

I'd disagree; Alex used to be a massive control freak as a side-effect of not wanting his powers to erupt at the wrong time and obliterate innocent people but I don't know that anyone has picked up on that particular characterization since Claremont stopped writing him.

I'd agree with that. But that still leaves twenty+ years of meh Havok.

Despite having read at least 90% of all comics featuring Havok as a character (basically everything but Uncanny Avengers and Mutant X), he doesn't stand out in my mind as having many traits that make me say "That's so Havok!".

since Claremont stopped writing him, he's kind of morphed into "Scott, only not quite as much of a dick"

Not as much of a dick, not as inspiring a leader, not much of a character. It's sad.

Pretty much. His character, in my mind, is almost entirely defined in terms of his relationship to other characters (Scott, Polaris, Vulcan, the Living Monolith).

As such, though, I always thought he was due a turn in the spotlight by a writer who was looking to flesh out a crew of historically underdeveloped characters (like Iceman).

DJP, thank you, my brain froze over before I quite got to the end of that entry, but I take it this is something to do w/ a) the reversal of mutanthood and b) copyright/ownership/movie busine$$

Issue #1 kicked ass.

hey DJP, is that Superior Iron Man book at all good? I haven't read any issues

He was doing both, iirc, mostly getting his dyson sphere tech going on the side

jeez, the Axis+tie-ins torrent is 50+ books

Axis looked awful!

Secret Wars though - pretty great start I thought. I mean, it was probably unreadable for beginners, and the geographical of the action were impossible to follow (what happened to Nick Fury, or, indeed, anyone?) and apart from an appropriately cynical bit with the Punisher, there were basically nil character beats. But it was very intense, *very* pretty to look at (totally love this artist), and the cliffhanger totally nailed the fine line between grim and LOL. So good work, generally!

I hate the way Beast and the Hulk are drawn by this artist (Ribic?) - I liked them better earlier in Hickman's run.

thought it was fun, but yes geographically/universe definition is awful - its really difficult at a few points to tell who is meant to be the ultimate version of a characters vs normal 616, for example as far as i could tell
there was basically no explicit way of knowing that it's the Ultimate version of Iron Man that rocket is shooting at before it happens

also think those cast lists at the beginning are awfully spoilerific as to who might turn up...

also...

SPOILER BELOW

is black widow meant to be dead now?

I think everyone's meant to be dead now!

To tell characters apart: All caps dialogue = Marvel. Mixed case dialogue = Ultimate.

But yeah - lots of confusing bits:

* A big cylinder thing explodes and everyone looks sad,
* A giant pink snowcone appears, a bunch of rockets come out of it and do absolutely nothing
* You can tell a plane explodes, not because you see it exploding, but because the word "Boom" is written over some wavy lines

Also - we should assume spoilers is ok on this thread right?

I'm going to be not entirely surprised if the Richards kids are fairly involved in pulling everyone's asses out of the fire at the end

i think spoilers okay -- maybe wait till Thursday tho each week to give people a chance to read?

or whatever. i mean we're all grownups. if you haven't read the latest secret wars issue yet maybe just don't open the thread

I like Jill Lepore usually but this is pretty stupid: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/marvel-a-force-female-superheroes

Secret Wars #2 is pretty good. Completely incomprehensible about what's happening with the Marvel Universe or how they'll ever revert back to having normal worlds for comics but whatevs.

no one is at work yet in my group, but comixology doesn't roll out new releases until closer to 9am

reading now! the biggest challenge is squinting at the characters and trying to figure out if _any_ of them are the versions we're used to from the 616 or ultimate worlds, or if these are all similar versions from the collapsed multiverse. also trying to figure out how much time has passed since the collapse

welllll the end of the issue answered that

they really missed a golden opportunity by not merging in some of the classic disney animated characters in battleworld

just imagine, DUCKLAND, an entire realm ruled by the Carl Barks version of Donald Duck and populated by all ducks and geese

also in duckland: a single Howard the Duck, wondering why he's still so damn out of place

one of the one-shots is called 'howard the human' fyi

there was a fairly long discussion of the avengers at work today and the whole time i was thinking 'do i want to bring up what's going on in the comics ... no'

well, then xp

Still pretty compelling second issue, albeit with a surprisingly Game of Thronesy vibe. The absence of the usual gang of idiots felt like an anticlimax after last week, but I suppose that's the point.

Not super happy that the medievalle worlde stuffe allows Hickman to further indulge his jones for cryptic overwrought dialogue. I guess that's Marvel for you. Still loving the art, mind.

The group popping out of the lifeboat ship at the end was reassuring in its own way

http://cdn.bleedingcool.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Image-118.jpg

Judge Captain Britain and the Golden Wang

so by issue two this has kind of become the most readable marvel crossover to a casual reader i can remember!! weird

Casual and non-casual readers, united in confusion at last

So is God Emperor Doom our Doom (with knowledge of the pre-Secret Wars events), or some sort of universal Doom like many of the other characters seem to be? I guess we'll find out, shortly!

I only bring this up here because it's part of the marathon binge I'm on in the lead-up to reading Secret Wars, but: I've read about eight years of Ultimate comics over the past couple of weeks, and with a few exceptions, they managed to hack out a coherent (if, perhaps, overly-derivative) world that feels of a piece and demonstrates some effort and communication on the part of the creators. And Jeph fucking Loeb managed to shit all over that with his first contribution (a few issues of Ultimate Power). And I haven't even gotten to Ultimatum yet. His consistency is comforting.

Were all the other Dooms taken captive + subdued by the different Reed Richards, w/ the exception of our Doom?

Yeah, most of them, at least. God Emperor Doom is probably our Doom, since he uses Dr Strange as an adviser, which he did during Hickman's Avengers run. So that's a clue (I've heard)

Also, as a member of the nitpickers' guild, I'd like to point out that the Beyonders' plan shouldn't actually work... It has the same flaw as the Anti-Monitor's plan in Crisis on Infinite Earths: you can't destroy an infinite amount of universes, one by one, in a finite amount of time. It would take an infinity to do that. For the plan to work, all the parallel universes should be destroyed all at once, but that's not what happens in either CoIE or Hickman's story.

That is an excellent piece of nitpickery Tuomas.

Great summary too! The sequence I never quite understood was the time travel story in Avengers - where Cap keeps moving further into the future. What was that about?

616 Thor does turn up in "Thors" although he doesn't really factor into the story, and never really explains how he got there - "because Thor" is basically the answer.

In general I thought Secret Wars was a great unit of story in itself, but unsatisfying as an ending to the incursion story in the Avengers run.

Great summary too! The sequence I never quite understood was the time travel story in Avengers - where Cap keeps moving further into the future. What was that about?

When the Illuminati used the Infinity Gauntlet to stop one of the Incursions, all the other Infity Gems broke, except for the Time Gem, which moves forward in time. And because it was Cap who was using the Gauntlet, it'll keep appearing close to Cap and moving him further and further into the future.

But one thing I didn't get, and which feels almost like a subplot Hickman abandoned or ignored, is that the various antagonists in the story try to stop Cap from going back to his own time, because at this point he has found out what the Illuminati has done, and he wants to stop them. So it's strongly implied that Cap's decision to go back and fight the Illuminati is what leads to (what's left of) the multiverse getting destroyed, which is why the antagonists try to stop him from doing that. But then Time Runs Out and Secret Wars we find out that Cap's role in this was meaningless, nothing he does or doesn't do matters, and the multiverse will be destroyed anyway. So the whole time travel story was kinda pointless.

616 Thor does turn up in "Thors" although he doesn't really factor into the story, and never really explains how he got there - "because Thor" is basically the answer.

Ah, I haven't yet read Thors, so I didn't know this! In Time Runs Out, the story cuts away from his and Hyperion's fight against the Beyonders before we see how it ends... Since the Beyonders survive it, it's strongly implied they killed the two, but I guess it's possible Thor somehow got away.

Great rundown, Tuomas, but I think you meant New Avengers rather than Secret Avengers as a companion piece to Time Runs Out?

But then Time Runs Out and Secret Wars we find out that Cap's role in this was meaningless, nothing he does or doesn't do matters, and the multiverse will be destroyed anyway. So the whole time travel story was kinda pointless.

Yeah this kind of reminds me of Locke in Lost - where, in retrospect, the whole character arc is essentially pointless. I think that's part of why the ending to the pre-Secret Wars stuff in unsatisfying.

It's not that Hickman leaves tons of plot loose ends -- but that they just hacked off instead of tied up.

Great rundown, Tuomas, but I think you meant New Avengers rather than Secret Avengers as a companion piece to Time Runs Out?

Yeah, sorry about that! In my posts above I was talking about New Avengers, not Secret Avengers (which isn't even written by Hickman). It's just that because New Avengers involves a group of superheroes working in secrecy, I always conflate the two names in my head.

Yeah this kind of reminds me of Locke in Lost - where, in retrospect, the whole character arc is essentially pointless. I think that's part of why the ending to the pre-Secret Wars stuff in unsatisfying.

This was one of the reasons why I recommended just reading Hickman's New Avengers and not Avengers as a prelude to Secret Wars. Avengers does have some good subplots, but some of them are kinda long-winded and don't really lead to anything (the whole Builders thing and Infinity were essentially a looong interlude that didn't really matter that much, and ended in a rather unsatisfying finale)... Whereas New Avengers is tightly plotted and works nicely as a whole (of course it helps that it has only one long plot and a limited set of characters).

Another problem with Infinity (and Secret Wars too) is that Hickman doesn't really get Thanos at all. It seems he's just read the 70s Starlin comics and Infinity Gauntlet, and from them concluded that Thanos is a megalomaniac villain who wants to conquer the universe or something... He completely ignores all the character development Thanos has gone through starting from the last issue of IG, i.e. the last 20+ years of his publication history.

Lockes story is the best thing about Lost!

Also, I like the Avengers run, perhaps more than New Avengers. But it should probably be taken as it's own thing, that doesn't fit perfectly together with the incursion story. As a bunch of loosely related vignettes, with an enormous and ever-changing cast, it's quite good. Overall it's mostly a story of how the plotting of Iron Man and the idealism of Captain America, comes to blows yet again.

It also helps that the weirdest tangent, everything about AIM, is followed up in Al Ewings pretty great New Avengers.

I'd agree that Hickman doesn't really care about Thanos.

On the other hand, I reread most of the Fantastic Four/Future Foundation runs recently and I still got the chills when adult Franklin says, "To me.... MY GALACTUS!"

oh yeah, tiny correction to Tuomas's excellent summary:

Kid Franklin's roommate is Leech, not Artie. He was supposed to be keeping a damper on Franklin's powers, but the Richards family didn't realize Leech has a lot more control now and was letting Franklin cut loose for their little adventures.

Ah, you're right. I'm always mixing up Artie and Leech too.

IIRC years ago I read some Elseworlds type of story where it was revealed Galactus *is* Franklin... Or did I dream this up?

That sounds familiar, but Marvel's been playing so fast and loose with the glimpses into alternate realities in recent years that I can't even keep track anymore.

Ah, okay, yes. Earth X is what you're thinking of.

Oh yeah, that's the one!

Oh, and one further addition to the summary:
* Dr. Strange finds about Doom and Molecule Man's plan, and he's there with them when they attack the Beyonders. This explains why acts the way he does in Secret Wars.

wtf, something ate my post or maybe it ended up on the wrong thread

Earth X was kind of thrown in the trash as far as things go, but a number of the ideas in the series have popped up in different ways. It had an amnesiac Galactus who didn't remember he was Franklin Richards.

Hickman's timeline has Franklin living until the end of the Marvel universe, after which he will become the last surviving person and therefore become the Galactus for the next one.

I didn't know Valeria had such a fucked up character background!

I like the current take on her where they just write her as if she and Franklin are just a normal pair of siblings, with the caveat that one has the potential for godlike powers and the other is a three year old with an intellect nearly on par with her dad's who thinks of Doom as her uncle.

Wait, isn't Franklin's deal with Galactus that he'll be there with him at the end and they'll carry on to the next universe together?

Hickman's run is a great example of both a genuine universe-scale cosmic story and a great big box of tools for the next writer to root around in if they want.

Anyone read his Secret Warriors run - worth the effort?

It's what actually turned me on to his Marvel work, and it's pretty good! I'm not sure how much Bendis had to do with the initial plotting, but it has that wheels-within-wheels Hickman thing going, although all contained within one series. It also has enough callbacks for Nick Fury fans to make it worthwhile

Secret Warriors was decent but got completely fucked by forced crossovers and the like. I think his SHIELD series was great.

I've dug pretty much everything of Hickman's that I've read. Except maybe not so much his Ultimate stuff but that's more because it's Ultimate stuff than because of his contribution.

His Image series East of West is one of the only ongoing comics I still give a crap about.