shhhhhh secret wars is the big marvel summer event of 2015

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

he does kind of suffer from the fact that I don't care about some of his characters at all until I've read the whole thing all the way through the third time and appreciate their plot arc

that makes him perfect for TV IMO

I guess his Pax Romana series was optioned by SyFy but they must just be sitting on it

I'm really looking forward to knowing what Hickman will do afterwards. This is basically as big as it can be, who think Marvel will let him do the same thing all over again? And writing three Avengers books a month must be one of the highest paying positions at Marvel as well, he won't get the same money by writing another Secret Warriors. He has kinda climbed as high as you can in comics, so what do you do then? He can't really do the Bendis, he isn't really an X-men writer.

go work for dc?

he was asked about it in interviews, basically said he's going to take a break and then maybe only do 12 issue self-contained series

i don't suppose you guys have a convenient link to a Marvel Unlimited reading guide for all the crazy Hickman stuff

yeah, that would be super-helpful - i wanna catch up on this stuff too

This is pretty good:

http://www.comicbookherald.com/the-complete-marvel-reading-order-guide/secret-wars-reading-order/#secretwars6

Like the writer says, you don't really need to read Avengers World. It's not written by Hickman and doesn't affect the main run.

And an FF reading order here: http://www.comicbookherald.com/fantastic-four-reading-order/

That's the exact guide I've been using to catch up. The one that off-handedly says you could read the entire Ultimate line to get caught up and which I apparently took super seriously.

You're totally right about the Loeb stuff.

(As a proviso to Nhex and Bizaaro, you really don't need to read anything on those lists that isn't writen by Hickman. Contextually the Millar run on FF sets up Hickman's storyline, but it's not especially good, and you can fill in the blanks.)

The guy that writes those lists should be put in charge of Marvel's reprints.