shhhhhh secret wars is the big marvel summer event of 2015

Yeah I had tongue in cheek when I asked if Esad Ribic gets all the blame for the lateness -- imo it's Brevoort, Alonso et al who have to take the blame. I have no idea how much of the book was done when #1 was solicited, but it should have been 60% or more at that point.

Interesting that Hickman is credited as writer/designer.

I believe he actually does a lot of the layout/design on his covers and title pages.

And I would guess he has a hand in all of the infographic-y stuff that makes its way into his books.

yup, they're pretty much the same design cues as the pages he used in his own books where he was the artist as well

on a not-really-relevant note, I credit the Planned Parenthood book sale of a number of years ago for my interest in Hickman's stuff, after I picked up one of his first couple Image series in TPB and ended up looking for more

I completely spaced on the fact that Hickman's ever drawn any of his own scripts. Which titles were these?

Just The Nightly News and Pax Romana, I think

Some of the titles are hit-or-miss, but occasionally Comixology will have this collection on discount:
https://www.comixology.com/Test-Pattern-Jonathan-Hickman-Collection/digital-comic/21528

I like his Marvel work a lot better than his indie stuff, which all seems a bit cheaply nihilistic and "adult". The Einstein thing looks interesting though.

He's definitely moved forward in plotting and themes, imo

So, based on the discussion in the Marvel thread I ended up reading this series and the Hickman Avengers run that lead to it, and they were... pretty good. Kinda like Morrison, if Morrison was prog rock instead of pop, but since his own work has been fairly erratic recently, this was about as good a substitute as one can get. (I did like some of the invidual issues in Multiversity, which had a suprisingly similar plot to Secret Wars, but the main story was a mess.)

I did wish there would've been more of the quieter character moments and less of the grandiose purple prose, though. Sometimes (particularly in Infinity) it felt like every scene could be soundtracked by Carmina Burana or the first five second of this. I never finished Hickman's Fantastic Four run, but from what I remember it was more character-oriented than his Avengers/Secret Wars, so maybe he just got carried away by the super-grandiose multiverse-trembling story he set out to tell?

I did like the characterization of Reed and Doom in the actual Secret Wars series though, and the way their 50+ year rivalry was brought to unexpected but totally logical end was pretty much the best thing in the whole story. Particularly that last page with Doom, it almost made me cry. I really, really hope Marvel won't erase this change and revert Doom back to his old ways, but of course they will, eventually. That's the saddest part of reading superhero comics: only minor characters are ever allowed to go through permanent changes, the major one will always revert back to the status quo.

Some stray observations:

* Hickman really doesn't care about female superheroes, does he? New Avengers was a total sausagefest, and the only woman to play any significant role in Secret Wars was Sue. As meh as Bendis Avengers run was, at least he put into some effort into fleshing out lesser-known female superheroes too, not just the male big guns.

* Some of the subplots Hickman established in Avengers didn't go anywhere. Like, the revelation that Black Swan was actually a member of a rebel offshoot of her cult, and that she was carrying the genetic code of her race inside her so she could resurrect them, that felt like it was something Hickman would follow on. But in Secret Wars she's now totally subservient to Doom again, and the whole gene thing isn't mentioned at all, and then she gets killed by Groot.

* Similarly, I thought Hickman would've done more with his version of Captain Universe, given how she was established as this mysterious and all-powerful new character... But she just defeats some bad guys, drops some cryptic hints, and dies in the final incursion along the other heroes. So what was the point of introducing this character again?

* Thanos was way out-of-character in both Infinity and Secret Wars. It's like Hickman never read the final issue of The Infinity Gauntlet nor any of the Thanos stories that followed, because his character development from those was completely ignored, and he was back to the way he was in Starlin's 1970s comics (right down to leading an army of intergalactic pirates). Yeah, I get it, strict adherence to continuity is boring, but if Hickman didn't want to use the post-Infinity Gauntlet Thanos, why use him at all? It's not like he was in any way essential to these stories, he could've easily been replaced by some other cosmic villain, of which Marvel has no shortage.

* The resolution to Cap/Iron Man conflict was pretty weak, especially considering how much space it took during the Avengers run. At first I didn't even realize they were supposed to die at the end of Hickman's final Avengers issue, until I noticed they weren't appearing in Secret Wars. And Cap in this arc was generally acting like an idiot, it seemed like he was more interested in feuding with Tony than trying to figure out who or what was causing the incursions, even though he was given the opportunity to do so during the time travel arc.

* Speaking of Cap, would've it have hurt to explain in a footnote or one of those "previously on" texts why he turned into an old geezer in the middle of Hickman's run? Obviously it happened in some other story written by someone else, but it was pretty confusing, because it was not addressed at all.

Yeah. Effectively Secret Wars is terrific as a standalone story, or as a sequel to Hickman's Fantastic Four issues - but really shitty and unsatisfying as a resolution to the Avengers run.

Also the Beyonder stuff, and the boring Smasher/Cannonball/Sunspot subplot - all seemed pretty non-integral to the story by the end. I was sort of expecting a Beyonder to pop up at the end of Secret Wars, but I guess not.

Yeah, considering how important the Beyonders are to the premise of the whole story, it's weird that we see so little of them and don't really learn what was motivating them. Having Beyonder(s) show up a the end would've nicelly mirrored the originat Secret Wars, just like as the rest of story did. Maybe they could've even bring back the original Beyonder to help save the day, since he clearly wasn't one of these evil Beyonders.

And I was surprised too how much of a Fantastic Four story this was, give that the build-up to it was all in the Avengers titles. Okay, Reed played a fairly big role in New Avengers, but besides him, T'Challa was pretty much the only Avengers character who got to do important stuff. I guess Hickman felt it was symbolic, since this was supposed to be the "death of the Marvel Universe": it begins with the FF in 1962, and ends with them in 2016. (And then gets created again by them.)

Also he's been building towards this from his Fantastic Four / FF work for a while.

I remember his Fantastic Four having a super-long, complex story of its own, but like I said I never finished it... (Got as far as the first few Future Foundation issues.) Was he hinting towards the incursion stuff in that run already?

One thing that was also discussed in the Marvel thread: what exactly did T'Challa do at the end of the final issue? The way I read it, he used the Reality Gem to recreate Wakanda as it was before the incursions began. In New Avengers it was established that that Infinity Gems only work in their native universe. And Dr. Strange said Doomstadt was the only piece left of the universe where these particular Gems came from. So the Infinity Gauntlet only had power over Doomstadt, not the entire planet nor the universe. That's why T'Challa and Namor had to travel to Doomstadt after finding the Gauntlet.

So my interpretation was that T'Challa made Doomstadt into Wakanda as it was in the first issue of New Avengers, before the first incursion. Some people seem to have read it that he used the Time Gem instead to turn back time, so that the whole plot of the New Avengers run was effectively erased, and there were no incursions to begin with. I guess at that point, when the final universe collapsed, the limitations to the Gems would be gone too, which would also explain why T'Challa waited until that very moment to use the Gem. But I don't like the Time Gem explanation, because that would mean that none of the heroes involved (including T'Challa himself) would even remember what happened, making the whole thing a bit too much like Crisis on Infinite Earths. And certainly Doom on the final page seems to know what happened to him.

I never really read the plot arc of Black Panther wielding the gauntlet as anything more than "this thing can actually take on Doom"

Well that's how it was used until the final pages of the final issue, but clearly he does something with one of the Gems there, since after that we get a repeat of the first couple of pages of Hickman's first New Avengers issue, except that those Wakandan teens never die and the first incursion never happens.

In this review Hickman and Tom Breevort are asked about that scene, but they refuse go into detail, they just say T'Challa used either the Reality Gem or the Time Gem.

Let's back up a bit and talk about what exactly the Black Panther did near the end of the story. Was that the Time Gem he used there near the end?

Hickman: Maybe...

Brevoort: [Laughs]

Hickman: Did we ever agree on that, Tom? Did we ever come down on whether it was the Time Gem or the Reality Gem?

Brevoort: Boy, we went back and forth on that right up until the end. I think it was the Time Gem, but it's been a while now, and it was so last minute. You and I were chatting at 7:30 that night as the book was getting done going, "What color is the gem? It's this color now, but it has to be that color! What color does it have to be? Because it's got to work this way or that way."

I remember, we went back and forth between it being the Time Gem or the Reality Gem.

Hickman: It was colored wrong. It was colored green. And you called me up, and -- I won't say you were freaking out, but you were not happy. [Laughs]

Brevoort: [Laughs] It was late on a Friday! I wanted to be done with this!

Hickman: I actually went in and tweaked the color and changed it. Then we had a debate about whether or not it should the Time or the Reality Gem, because both of them work in terms of where we were going with the story and what it actually means.

The point of it, though, was to get T'Challa back to where he was in "New Avengers" #1, so he could act as an advocate for doing things a better way. To carry the weight of it.

there's the answer: it's whatever gem made him reappear at the beginning of the plot arc

My reading was that everyone dies except for Multiple Man, T'Challa, and Reed (or thereabouts) and that everyone in the new multiverse has been recreated by Franklin.

So basically everyone alive now is a Franklin zombie, which is sort of existentially creepy, but hey, you know, comics.

I had Chuck's take on it

Yeah, I agree it's creepy. Though I guess you could argue that all those Molecule Men stored the information of their respective universe inside them, and when they died, that information collapsed into the one final Molecule Man left, and the multiverse was then reproduced based on that information... Because otherwise we'd have to think things were recreated based on what Frankling remembers of them, and if he has less than perfect memory, that might lead to... some interesting results.

But it's still better than Superman wishing the universe back via magical wishing machine, or whatever it was that happened at the end of Final Crisis. (Hickman really is the Marvel Morrison, isn't he?)

Though if it was the Time Gem T'Challa used, and he turned back time to before the first incursion, that would mean that the 616 universe is still exacly as it was before, and it's only the other universes that are populated by Franklin zombies.

Crisis has a similarly confusing ending: Psycho Pirate is locked in a padded cell and he's all "I'm the ONLY ONE who REMEMBERS!!!". But the rest of the book doesn't mention anything about anyone else forgetting anything, it's just implied in a kind of weird, squirrelly way.

(I love that ending, though - it haunted me as a kid, and it's one of the rare examples where a completely nonsensical ending works much better than tidying up the lose ends.)

(x-post)

Sue mentions the incursion though, so presumably that means he doesn't turn back time?

Maybe it's not supposed to make sense. On the positive side: This is the kind of thing Al E lives for resolving.

Yeah, I loved that ending too, and Morrison's later use of it in Animal Man was brilliant as well.

Though IIRC the original idea was that all the heroes who battled the Anti-Monitor at the beginning of time were supposed remember what happened, not just Psycho Pirate. But they retconned that idea soon after CoIE, I guess because it would be pretty weird to write Superman or Batman stories where they know the world they're living in now is not their original one.

(xpost)

iirc Franklin is just designing them, the Beyonder power is actually creating them

Sue mentions the incursion though, so presumably that means he doesn't turn back time?

I think in that final scene the FF are supposed to be outside the multiverse. So whatever T'Challa did to the 616 universe, it wouldn't affect them. Though no one else should remember the incursions, if he used the Time Gem. And it wouldn't explain how Miles Morales is now living happily on the 616 universe without being all "wtf happened?!".

So yeah, it's pretty much in the same category as the Final Crisis ending, "don't think about it too much, just accept it".

But the Richardses are in some sort of extrauniversal space that the time travel/reset didn't (imo) apply to. After a few minutes of pondering it all I just decide that Hickman is yanking my chain and I go on to other topics. What is interesting is that a few combined-universe characters know about the multiverse collapse, Battleworld, etc. Miles Morales...T'challa...Dr. Doom...who else?

xposts

Apparently the Ultimate Reed Richards survived this even though it looked like Molecule Man turned him into pizza slices? I read somewhere that he's appeared in some of the All-New Marvel comics. So presumably he would know that he's not living in his own universe anymore?

Don't think about it too much

Picturing Tuomas leaning on his stack of no-prizes, pondering

I can't help it!

One also has to wonder, if Franklin/Molecule Man had the power to create the multiverse again, why didn't they also recreate the Ultimate universe, instead of putting the surviving Ultimate characters in the 616 universe?

(xpost)

I'm sure they'll get around to it when it's rebootin' time again.

I hope the reboot takes place soon. I'm hoping for a third number one issue of A-Force and Weirdworld before twelve months have elapsed.

One of the plotlines of New Avengers is Ultimate Reed trying to work out why the world is suddenly different. And then over in the Ultimates, they're following up Bendis's "time is broken" thing that got forgotten about. Al is basically in crossover plot-patch-up mode. (He's good at it though.)

self-confident chill Victor Von Doom can only last so long

tried reading secret wars for the third time last night, simply uninterested. it's kinda garbage.

I was going to "ok, shakey" you, but you did try

multiple times! hickman's penchant for multiple blank pages bookended by reams of unrevealing dialogue did me in.

he's guilty of having dialogue or plot beats that only resonant two issues later

*resonate

Or two years later, as the case may be.

By Hickman's usual standards, SW is about as accessible as it gets.

I read Secret Wars but found it quite hard to follow. The most notable thing about it for me was that the characters kept doing this facial expression.