Secret Wars

Listen to me... You can't kill an idea. It always comes back. Resurrected.  

Or reborn into a different form.

Marvel has created three iterations of Secret Wars and a Secret War. The first two, labeled Secret Wars and Secret Wars II, from 1984-85, were designed primarily to sell toys. They are significant in how they kind of invented the idea of the crossover for Marvel Comics but from an artistic standpoint needed to accomplish little more than that. That's not to say they were not valid additions from the Marvel library. A cosmic team-up of all the popular super teams with dramatic consequences that would roll into the currently ongoing runs was unheard of. They changed the field and created a template that would be used for years to come. In the modern-day, this template is arguably abused, which is where 2015's Secret Wars came in.

The choice of title was symbolic. This was going to reset the vast, confusing mythos of Marvel and merge or do away with several parallel Earths, creating a fresh, easy-to-follow reboot for new readers to hop in on. It culminated years of buildup by writer Jonathon Hickman, which started in Fantastic Four before working its way into the post-Bendis Avengers era and eventually got the entire Marvel universe involved. It's hard for a character not to take part in the setup when the overarching label is titled "Time Runs Out" and the literal collapse of reality looms in the future. Yeah, something might need to be done about that. The result was Marvel's biggest event in years, a story built for the faithful followers that wasted no time trying to catch new readers up. The Marvel and Ultimate universe ended, and in their place, a new world was born. Welcome to Battleworld.

The build-up was a convoluted ordeal, requiring literal years of close monitorization of at least four separate runs (Fantastic Four, Avengers, New Avengers, and Infinity, and that's only if one is chasing the bare minimum to understand what is going on) which can make the first issue feel rather sudden. With no prior context, the world is just suddenly ending, and heroes are all over the place with new identities. Fortunately, this is kind of the idea. All the backstory is immediately thrown out and replaced by Battleworld. Every reader is back at square one, learning the rules of a brand new world with brand new characters. Every ongoing run was canceled and replaced with a series related to Battleworld, with each series more or less getting its own realm.

In-universe, this came to be because snippets of various Marvel dimensions and universes were quickly ripped from their realities, adjusted, and placed into Battleworld as one grandiose puzzle. The harbinger of this new reality was none other than Doctor Doom, aided in part by Stephen Strange and heavily by the powers of Owen Wilson, the Molecule Man. Doom's thirst for power had reached its ultimate zenith. He not only saved his old reality from folding but was able to rule over the new one as a god, although Doom refers to himself as God. Capital G. This world was his own inception, and he has the powers to give and take from it as he deems fit.

Much like how the movie Avengers: Infinity War comes closest to having Thanos as the main character, Secret Wars is a Doctor Doom story, a religious allegory and intriguing analysis of omnipotence. Religiously, regardless of wider belief, we can be prone to examining a higher power in a human context. This is a fair misconception, as we can visualize only what we comprehend, but a true higher power is not held back by frivolous human restraints like time and emotion. Events are neither literal nor finite, and the capacity for further growth can be difficult to grasp. Likewise, many have questioned the methodology of direct intervention. Some religions prefer to believe that God or his non-Christian equivalent would prefer to let humans choose their own path. He merely creates and then judges. Others believe our fates are predestined, each event is a careful result of his master plan.

Doom is a self-appointed God, confidently declaring himself so when Thanos implores a stance, but his actions do not reflect those of an unseeable higher deity. He has the powers of creation at his hand, but even those are a result of Molecule Man, and Doom, for as much good as he tries to do, behaves closer to a leader than a godlike figure. He intervenes when threats to his power arise, but at the same time allows certain threats to fester unchecked. The infinity gauntlet, for example, is left hidden in the crevices of Battleworld, a device whose power could unseat all Doom has striven for and rewrite his reality, and it almost does. His actions are catered towards citizen loyalty, which in itself inspires disloyalty.  Doom would prefer to call it heresy.

Doom is not necessarily the villain, even if the story and conflict center around him and Reed Richards. He saved reality and created a new one, but in doing so stole Mr. Fantastic's history and identity. Susan Storm is now married to him, not Reed, and the children are implied to be his. Reed is forgotten, a nameless footnote in the creation of the world. Doom's decision making is inspired heavily by his own character conflict in comics since his inception. He is a foil to Reed Richards, but Reed has everything he wants. The affection of Sue, a loving family and the fearless adoration of the public. Doom's jealousy pushes him to chase the highest power possible, and when he seizes it the first thing he does is take all of these things from Reed. As he rules he is crippled by an internal fear that he has accomplished nothing Reed would not have already done but better, a gnawing subconscious vein of envy that ultimately becomes the key to his downfall.

The heretics themselves would be the protagonists of Secret Wars, a cast that brings somewhat of a departure from the usual core of Marvel heroes who head crossover epics. Captain America and Iron Man are nowhere to be found. Instead Mr. Fantastic gets the spotlight, an unusual position for him to be in modern Marvel comics. From a reader standpoint, the Fantastic Four had become obsolete, replaced by more exciting teams like the Avengers. Further hindering their popularity was the lack of movie rights, as readers, especially new ones, gravitated towards the characters who had been featured in the bevy of successful Marvel Cinematic Universe films. Interestingly, the 20th Century Fox flick Fantastic Four did release in 2015 while the series was ongoing, but was critically panned.

Other heroes pull from all aspects of the Marvel teams. There is the severely radicalized Cyclops from his own band of X-Men extremists, whose character arc of chasing the Phoenix force finds both conclusion and ultimate irrelevance given the collapse of reality. Thor, but Jane Foster, is pulled from the Avengers. Black Panther has a rather touching journey, a ruler of a non-existant nation. "King of the dead." Star-Lord from the Guardians of the Galaxy. Peter Parker and Miles Morales are able to work together (Miles is the only hero from the Ultimate universe who survives the incursion and is shown in the main story, a possible comment on the notoriety of the two universes and their respective characters).

The heroes' presence and their seemingly random selection from all folds of the Marvel universe represent the blank template Battleworld offers for Secret Wars, one Hickman explores eagerly. Doom, questionably, brought elements of as many famous Marvel runs as he could into Battleworld, even though some of them threaten its entire existence as a whole. The southern hemisphere of the planet is walled off and guarded, protecting the rest of the realms from the Marvel zombies, Ultron AI, and Annihilation wave. These apocalyptic threats are explored in spin-offs, and they eventually do break containment to add more chaos to a massive war unfolding as the story goes on.

The catalyst for this war is an uprising against Doom's god-dom, a question proposed to several prominent players he had established asking whether or not his rule is valid. Hickman spends most of the story exploring this theme, and not just as internal conflict. Doom's ineffectiveness at being God brings about dissent from his cohorts, am uprising he then attempts to see himself above quelling, a prideful and very human mistake. This rebellion is brought about both by the heroes carried over into Battleworld and a Cabal of villains largely formed during "Time Runs Out." The contrast between the villains and heroes is simple, an effective difference between character archetypes as old as literature itself. The hero seeks liberation and freedom, the villain craves power. The clash of morals creates a greater sub-conflict in their uprising against Doom.

This is beautifully rendered by artist Esad Ribic. He goes for a lighter, sketch style of portrayal, which lends itself to a simple yet very pleasing feel as the story goes on. It captures environments perfectly, creating a distinct difference in setting whenever the story moves to a new location, which it does so frequently. Colorist Ive Svorcina compliments this beautifully, using softer tones and creating a colored-pencil sort of feel to the design. Though Ribic occasionally falters on facial expressions, his biggest weakness being lips, Secret Wars is one of those rare comics where the art and colorwork are so phenomenal that individual panels can be isolated and made into wallpapers. Read it, if nothing else, for the visuals.

Past the visuals, it is a stand-up story in its own right. Engaging, thought-provoking and splintered with plenty of action. The character dynamics, several of which had been unexplored before in comics and several that harkened back to some of Marvel's oldest rivalries (particularly the Doom v. Richards dynamic) carry the tale, and even if they possess no prior context regarding the massive build-up all readers can follow along just well enough to get full entertainment value. Secret Wars was a publishing mess, a promised company-wide reboot requiring a very tight scedule that couldn't be met. Disappointingly, it also changed very little in the status quo, which begs the question as to why all the dramatic flair was necessary in the first place. As a standalone story, however, it is a true masterpiece, a Marvel must-read.