shhhhhh secret wars is the big marvel summer event of 2015

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.

If the cover of the next Secret Wars is any indication, reading Hickman's Ultimate storyline with Reed Richards and his future city would be useful, along with the Fantastic Four/Future Foundation arc

Outside of Doom and his possible survival of multiversal hijinks, the two life rafts from the last two worlds were Reed and the FF from 616 and ultimate Reed and the Cabal (ultimate and 616)

thanks Chuck. there are actually so many reading guides on CBH that i didn't find those!

i'm a few years behind on Ultimate - I think I stopped before Cataclysm - but all the Ultimate Reed stuff was pretty awesome IMO

yeah thanks chuck!

Just finished the FF "Forever" storyline and it's really wonderful especially #604

so i've been catching up w/ stuff i missed and i'm reading some of the ultimate material atm (mostly the stuff that involves ultimate reed). before now the only ultimate comics i had read were the first few volumes of spider-man, which i thought was pretty okay. all the rest of this material tho... is the idea behind the ultimate universe that it's all the same characters but now 80% more jerky?

It wasn't supposed to be that way, but they let Jeph Loeb and Mark Millar write too many things so it became that way

mostly agree with that, though Millar had some good series here and there
Loeb's work with Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum was just awful, not even entertaining awful like Red Hulk

There were some interesting things done with Ultimate X-Men after that, but Ultimatum was basically the end of that comics line being a sleeker, more cinematic version of the Marvel Universe. The first Avengers movie pulled heavily from the Ultimates, but can you imagine them using any of the later Ultimate stuff for movie material?

As far as I've gotten into it (still inching toward Ultimatum), most of the Ultimate stuff is pretty perfunctory. Bendis has done well with Spider-Man in terms of personalizing the characters and raising the stakes, and Ultimates was good in terms of bringing the wide-screen cinematic bombast, but very little of the rest of it has much reason for existing. Far too often, the Ultimate stories I've read have hinged on familiarity with their 616 analogues and the reader's ability to spot the differences between the two. Too much fan service and not enough effort to make the stories stand on their own.

post-Ultimatum there's some major status quo changes and stories that got away from this with some interesting results. the end of the Ult. Peter Parker run, the second generation of Ultimate X-Men, and the Ultimate Comics: Doomsday miniseries of series. (I'm kind of ignoring the wacky New Ultimates/Ultimate Avengers and Captain America stuff, though I guess I give 'em some points for that weird Red Skull/Captain America II hybrid story)

ultimate comics X was interesting to me, between the concentration camp stuff and the SEAR govt, felt like this was territory that was hinted at but shunted off to "alternate future" storylines in 616 and pursued further. some good stuff here

Ultimate Doomsday was boss, hard to explain why without spoilers though. let's just say it picks up on a bunch of pre-Ultimatum threads and does well

Yeah, it's definitely starting to feel like the Ultimate universe was in need of an enema around the time Ultimatum was released. Loeb is like a creative Galactus, so he was kind of a perversely perfect choice.

who is loeb's herald i wonder

speaking of Galactus, I like the Ultimate Galactus trilogy.

the gah lak tus swarm? i think i prefer regular universe sentient chill-bro galactus

yeah, galactus as a guy in a purple tabard and impractical helmet with the space-munchies or gtfo afaik

as far as i'm koncerned

what are the best galactus stories? obv the original ff one is great, and i really dug his whole in the original secret wars. oh! he had a great appearance very recently in unbeatable squirrel girl.

john byrne's trial of galactus story was pretty great iirc

(in fantastic four back in the 80s)

Recently, old Thor vs Galactus in Jason Aaron's book was fun.

I've never really understood Marvel's big space God characters (e.g. Thanos, Celestials etc). It's like they're omnipotent, but completely useless at doing anything with it. Darkseid is the same as Thanos, right? But at least Darkseid has his own planet to attend to, which explains why he's not busy destroying the world all the time.

Anyway I guess this is a conundrum Hickman's Secret Wars is trying to wrestle with: What if a world-killing God was actually good at their job?

(I should probably get around to reading the 70s Starlin stuff I guess.)