shhhhhh secret wars is the big marvel summer event of 2015

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)

Well, it depends. This new Battleworld has tons of Captain Britains and Hulks and whatever, but after the previous events, there should really only be two at most since all the other universes (or at least their earths) were destroyed. Whatever Doom did, presumably with time travel platforms, really fucked up the multiverse. So it's possible these characters didn't come from different universes across the multiverse. As far as they are concerned, Battleworld has always existed and they've always lived on Battleworld.

In the original Marvel multiverse, there were very few Dooms due to them all getting rounded up by the council of Reeds. There were also very few Reeds left, due to their internal battles.

and only one nathaniel richards in the whole universe!

yeah!

and (spoilers) apparently one Molecule Man, although he is present in all universes at the same time but only has one consciousness

Does Doom and associated heroes remember the original secret war and battle world? I keep waiting for Doom to be like "oh this is all very familiar."

Yup, they referred to the "Beyonder" of the Secret Wars being kind of an infant version of the multiversal Beyonders of this

where is that mentioned, do you remember?

i read the original secret wars recently and it's amazing how in one issue the new secret wars has developed the place 'battleworld' more than i remember any issue of the original (which did include that one village w/ the healer, and iirc spider-woman from an alternate dimension detroit or something?, but not much more besides the different hero/villain bases)

I appreciate your point, but besting a Jim Shooter-scripted action figure commercial is probably the least I could've asked of Hickman.

Mordy, I'm poking around on the web since I'm not at home, but I believe when Hank Pym comes back in the Avengers titles after traveling around the multiverse looking for answers about the incursions he finds this out

New Avengers #30

"I could tell you about the child unit from the secret wars, visually modified to mimic what it perceived.."

thx

I'm guessing Doom and Strange are the original 616 versions. And whether or not they remember the old universe is one of the mysteries to be solved in a future issue.

It's also where they revealed the "Ivory Kings" are the Beyonders.

They assumed Pym would eventually track down Rabum Alal since they thought he was responsible for things ending, but (and this is the part I had to read a couple times to catch) they had been misled by their Black Swan and her version of what the Black Swans were there to do. Originally they just went around killing Molecule Man, but their apostates started getting involved with the incursions and kind of unknowingly following the Beyonders around.

That Strange does not at all look like the 616 strange and he refers to Agamotto in a weird way

Could be artist's license. I guess we'll find out! For the first time I've removed a bunch of comics blogs from my RSS so I don't get spoiled three months early. (And also because they are a terrible waste of my life.)

I think it was intentionally vague so that it could be revisited, but does anyone have any idea what Doom's anti-Beyonders weapon was? It kind of looked like a stack of his time platforms

not NA #30 i don't think which is luke cage, daredevil + emma frost chatting and ends w/ cage quitting the avengers

New Avengers (2013) version
https://www.comixology.com/New-Avengers-2013-2015-30/digital-comic/192837

geez Mordy, I just retyped the dialogue from it, you would think I knew what issue I was reading :)

lol ok fair enough. first i read the new avengers 30 from 2007 and that wasn't it and then i was like oh it must be a newer one so i found the new avengers 30 from 2012 and i thought that must be the newest one but nope! a more recent #30 apparently

I should have said New New New Avengers

Marvel's relaunching fever over the past decade has surely and will continue to surely make catching up with this stuff a complete nightmare for anyone who doesn't have their finger firmly on the pulse.

i thought i read all the new avengers to prep for secret wars but i don't remember this issue :/

the later ones had a lot of stuff packed in, including setting up plot threads for the big ending
tbrr I will probably reread those again

can I just say that Hickman's ability to spin disparate-but-related plot threads over several years is awe-inspiring and I hope that one day he writes a critically-acclaimed television series

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