shhhhhh secret wars is the big marvel summer event of 2015

http://howtolovecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/secret-wars-battleworld1.jpg?25da20

a lot of the tie-ins look great!

http://observationdeck.io9.com/inside-secret-wars-a-look-at-the-battleworld-books-1701934467

who am i kidding i'll probably read the whole thing even the inevitable shitty 'frontline' issues

haha yeah i'm sort of ashamed by how much of that i want to read

I am already financially committed to the first three months of this gargantuan endeavor, so here's to hoping it don't suck.

I think I'll buy the main series, as I feel like it's good karma for t0rr3nt1ng all of the Avengers run. Not really interested in the rest unless Al or Kieron Gillen are writing them.

Despite how much I hate big crossover events, there are just so many crazy silly ideas going on across some of these I reckon i'll try out quite a few

Official Boys II Men Twitter has been on it since '11

http://i.imgur.com/aaI32hY.jpg

In keeping with my inimitable tendency to overdo these kinds of things, I'm currently blowing through the entire Ultimate line front to back so that its impending demolition will have more narrative/emotional resonance. It's been a surprisingly quick trip thus far (the first five years during the past week's commute). I'll be following that up with the Marvel Now! Avengers stuff and then I think I should be relatively prepared for Secret Wars when I finally start reading it four months from now.

I've begun rereading the Hickman Avengers as well, but only three issues in. Looking at the start of it, I'm once again really impressed how tightly plotted it is. New Avengers 3 is referenced in Avengers 1 (which came out two months prior) for instance.

Generally I like comics that cross-pollinate and cross-reference... there's a puzzle-solving aspect that's fun and makes you feel pleasantly smart -- Seven Soldiers for example. Hickman's stuff can feel more like homework.

I think he did juggle a few too many things, although being able to let all the balls drop to the ground is somewhat satisfying.

Would anyone appreciate a page-by-page walkthrough of what's getting wrapped up and referenced in this Secret Wars comic? It doesn't have a lot of random material, but the character backgrounds strongly lean on Hickman's past work. Especially the Ultimate universe Reed Richards, it seems.

I've read rumors that Ultimate Reed was gonna figure in strongly, which is another reason I'm reading that stuff.

If this thread gets deeply spoilerific, I'll have to bow out until I'm caught up. But don't let that stop you.

Spoilers being from Secret Wars #1 onward, or past stuff?

Oh, feel free to talk about whatever. It's my own fault that I haven't yet read a Marvel comic published since 2012.

I think my main irritation with Marvel, some of which has been addressed in recent years, is the continual use of the "greater/celestial beings meddled with earth in the past and return to end their experiment or meddle further"
You have:
- The Celestials - linked to the Eternals
- The Builders (introduced by Hickman, it turns out they're in charge of the White Event junk that happened in the New Universe and now elsewhere)
- The Kree (Inhumans, apparently a galactic thing and not limited to Earth)

The whole Hickman Avengers/New Avengers arc has, to an extent, been used to bring all of these things into the same context, and show that the Beyonders (original version from http://marvel.wikia.com/Marvel_Two-In-One_Vol_1_63 as it seems the other Secret Wars "Beyonder" was an immature construct from their kind) are trying to stop the experiment that is existence.

The quality level has generally been really high at Marvel over the past decade+, but the main weakness I've seen is their focus on these huge stories at the expense of smaller, more character-driven stories (which does appear to be turning around some). On the one hand, you can only raise the stakes so high before there's nowhere left to go, and on the other, it's hard to care about the fate of the affected characters when far more time is spent watching them deal with cosmic threats as a paramilitary outfit than seeing how those events affect them personally.

To an extent the Avengers World title and some one-offs have been character stories. I think the World title is supposed to be vignettes into what the characters are up to.

I think the Future Foundation/Fantastic Four run had a lot of characterization, especially of the kids.

I really really want the final two issues of S.H.I.E.L.D. :(

Yeah, like I said, I'm still several years removed at this point and mostly reflecting on the direction the Avengers and X-titles had taken where they were just dealing with an escalating series of crises without taking a breath to say hey to one another.

I pointed out in another thread a while back that, after Onslaught, Marvel didn't have another major earth-shattering crossover for almost a decade (Avengers Disassembled or House of M, take your pick), at which point the major earth-shattering crossover became an annual and then a biannual and then a tri- or quad- or quintannual thing and lost a lot of its impact. I'm excited for Secret Wars but I'd be a lot more excited if the universe hadn't been on the brink of destruction 38 times over the past five years.

The last issues of SHIELD are apparently being released sometime just after Secret Wars, IIRC.

two things - first, this isn't really a "universe on the brink of destruction" story. it's a "the universe is destroyed and put back together" story. second, one of the regions in Battleworld is gonna be a House of M universe so that should be fun

Well, the currently existing universes are all going to be kaput, so there's some truth in there

the thing I think is kind of brilliant about Secret Wars is that it's a culmination of all of the other times the multiverse has been on the brink of destruction; effectively, all of those crises escalated and snowballed into this big wtf mess. The intricacy of the plotting, from Hickman's own work to fallout like Beast bringing the original X-Men forward in time in All-New and then not being able to send them back because the multiverse is broken, is outstanding.

One thing irks me though; Havok is still inverted but Bendis isn't really writing him that way.

Hopefully they at least touch on the fact that time travel was supposed to be colossally broken post Age of Ultron.

Actually, that could be why Doom's gambit against the Beyonders didn't work, in that he was trying to use their linear nature against them

*puts on nerd goggles*

Can't wait to time travel into the present day with y'all and put on my own nerd goggles.

I'm reading the first issue at work on my phone. It's pretty fun.

DJP - I thought Havok wasn't still inverted, only suffering the scars of it and the alt-future Janet stuff with the baby, etc. Totally possible I missed something though.

I take it this a different meaning of 'Invert' to Proust's usage

Havok is suffering from a condition that requires him to be hung by his feet at all times.

Havok was behind the same shield that Sabretooth and Iron Man were behind when the spell was cast to undo the inversions, leaving all three of them in their inverted state; unless something happened in a book I don't read, all three of them are still inverted (Sabretooth is being explicitly written that way in Uncanny Avengers; ditto Iron Man in The Superior Iron Man).

Ward: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AXIS_%28comics%29

Hmm. Yeah, he's totally not being written that way. But I'm sure if anyone pointed that out to Marvel they'd be like "LOL Havok. Whatever."

I thought Bendis might be hinting at it with Alex appearing to egg Scott's messiah complex on but I don't really see what he gets out of it other than maybe a dead brother

hey DJP, is that Superior Iron Man book at all good? I haven't read any issues

Maybe Bendis is using it to justify his X-Men/Mutants > Avengers attitude? I think it's just basically forgotten, because unlike Tony or Sabretooth he was pretty poorly defined beforehand.

I'd disagree; Alex used to be a massive control freak as a side-effect of not wanting his powers to erupt at the wrong time and obliterate innocent people but I don't know that anyone has picked up on that particular characterization since Claremont stopped writing him.

I'd agree with that. But that still leaves twenty+ years of meh Havok.

Despite having read at least 90% of all comics featuring Havok as a character (basically everything but Uncanny Avengers and Mutant X), he doesn't stand out in my mind as having many traits that make me say "That's so Havok!".

since Claremont stopped writing him, he's kind of morphed into "Scott, only not quite as much of a dick"

Not as much of a dick, not as inspiring a leader, not much of a character. It's sad.

Pretty much. His character, in my mind, is almost entirely defined in terms of his relationship to other characters (Scott, Polaris, Vulcan, the Living Monolith).

As such, though, I always thought he was due a turn in the spotlight by a writer who was looking to flesh out a crew of historically underdeveloped characters (like Iceman).

DJP, thank you, my brain froze over before I quite got to the end of that entry, but I take it this is something to do w/ a) the reversal of mutanthood and b) copyright/ownership/movie busine$$

Issue #1 kicked ass.

hey DJP, is that Superior Iron Man book at all good? I haven't read any issues

He was doing both, iirc, mostly getting his dyson sphere tech going on the side

jeez, the Axis+tie-ins torrent is 50+ books

Axis looked awful!

Secret Wars though - pretty great start I thought. I mean, it was probably unreadable for beginners, and the geographical of the action were impossible to follow (what happened to Nick Fury, or, indeed, anyone?) and apart from an appropriately cynical bit with the Punisher, there were basically nil character beats. But it was very intense, *very* pretty to look at (totally love this artist), and the cliffhanger totally nailed the fine line between grim and LOL. So good work, generally!

I hate the way Beast and the Hulk are drawn by this artist (Ribic?) - I liked them better earlier in Hickman's run.

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

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.)

It was interesting to realize, reading the '60s Marvel stuff, that Galactus was presented pretty much from the start as a non-evil (and even cosmically necessary) presence. He's just a hungry dude, and if the lifeforms inhabiting his potential meals protest loudly enough, he's generally okay with moving on to another entree.

The Hickman FF bits that involve Galactus, and more importantly his relationship with the Franklin Richards who drops in from the future, show a more personal side.

It's a throwaway in that there's one panel and later one quote about it, but apparently Reed tried to see if Franklin could stop the incursions and Franklin feels bad that he couldn't.

Did Hickman ever explain how future Franklin exists (or indeed anyone) if everything is Secret Wars now? I know there was a lot of "Well, we're not worried about the incursions because our future selves are alive" - but I'm not sure if that got resolved (or, I suppose, if it's worth caring about).

I think that was one of the nice parts of Hickman's run, the idea that the multiverse is in flux and things will fall apart, sometimes at a galactic or multiversal scale, but there are some things in the future that are still going to happen. No matter how much things get fucked up now, Franklin is still going to be there in the far-flung future.

I mean, the counterargument is that all time travelers came from futures that no longer exist.

i assume franklin will have something to do w/ the general secret wars arc. hickman obv likes him, he's the most [potentially?] powerful mutant in history, etc.

I've always had a bone to pick with the concept of Planet-Eatin' Galactus, the big gaping story hole (imo) in his existence. Unless there's been some backstory that explains why he has to eat planets that have flora and (sentient) fauna, I don't see why he can't just eat life-free gas giants, and even stars that don't have habitable planets. It seems like bullshit to me that sentient life is less than an ant colony to him – if he has any kind of moral grounding at all, he would avoid ant colonies. If he doesn't have enough morality in him not to torture and kill bugs, I think he would have been taken out eons ago by a Kree/Skrull/Shi'ar/whatever gangpile. This paragraph may be gibberish; I blame poor sleep.

funny bc i just read this issue last night:

http://i59.tinypic.com/qn3azq.png

(Silver Surfer v.1 #01, 1968)

my understanding is that galactus feeds off life force in the cosmic sense so a dead planet won't work... best case scenario is that he gets there before the dominant species has evolved to the point of sentience. or, you know, that the planet can fight back.
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/uploads/WilliamRoberge/2012-12-21_093441_T161_EgoVsGalactus2.jpg

An element of Galactus that's fluctuated over the years is his scale with relation to lowly, mortal, planet-dwelling creatures. He's just kind of a big dude in his initial appearances, having conversations with the FF, but he's slowly become a more gargantuan presence who doesn't even seem to register the presence of the buzzing gnats inhabiting his meals of choice.

(And there's the whole complicated notion that his appearance varies wildly depending on who's actually beholding him at the moment.)

Galactus has been written (at least over the last decade or so) as a cleansing force of nature or Death. I don't remember which book that said it, but I believe that the planets that can sustain him are naturally the same planets that are habitable for sentient life... he's culling the universe of excess population, and writers like to neutralize him for these big space invasion storylines like Annhilation

Have to pick up the Ultimate Galactus stuff, I was curious about that; I just blew through all of U. Fantastic Four (great), U.C.Ultimates (first half great), U. Doomsday (wasn't wild about it, but good payoff) - basically all the Ultimate Reed stuff to get what was going on with that guy, since I had no clue what his deal was from the Avengers lead-ins. I get the impression that the Reed throughline is really the big Ultimate arc, which makes sense if he's a big player in SW.

The ability of Marvel to lay out these massive plans and arcs and actually carry through with them, in the comics and in the movies, is amazing really, especially in contrast to DC completely thrashing in the water. Remember that 'map of the future' in Avengers from 2010? It doesn't cover what's going on now, but it did cover Age of Ultron which happened three years later.

just cracking #2 open. lol "doom messiah"

and yeah the millar ultimates is legit great. borrows a ton from millar authority but also batshit in its own unique way.

I guess Doom's spent his whole life looking for this kind of worldwide adoration and now he sure as hell has it!

Dunno if I'm the only one but man, I really dig the way Hickman uses blank pages, titles, that sort of thing to provide beats in the story. When I first saw it in New Avengers I was really impressed, but SW is the apex of that, with the page actually finishing a character's sentence ('Battleworld'). Maybe it reminds me of the endpapers of the individual issues of V for Vendetta, leading you in and out of the story and providing punctuation.

Will track down Millar Ultimates stuff as well.

he's had that distinctive style for a while that i don't have the visual vocabulary to really describe but is def recognizable as a type:

http://media.insidepulse.com/zones/insidepulse/uploads/2011/12/120511_2251_TPBReviewTh3.png

http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/comicsalliance.com/files/2009/10/iron-man-covers-456.jpg

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/NightlyNews3-197x300.jpg

sometimes i like it sometimes it seems a little shticky (nb not sure if this is a part of what you're referring to ^)

http://www.spandexless.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/4083915-17030124-thumbnail.jpg

based on this i hope he one day redoes the entire marvel encyclopedia

Yeah, I'm thinking of title pages coming after a couple pages of story introduction a la the SW title pages, more than covers or infographics, really. So a few pages of comic then wham *big title spread* then back to the story. (I would link to images but they're hard to GIS.) I think Morrison tried something similar a few times but restrained himself to doing titles as drawn comic pages, not blank pages of title interrupting the illustrations. When I saw this in New Avengers I initially thought it was incredibly pretentious but over time I grew to really love them since the story was so cosmic and epic it seemed to deserve them.

Thanks for reminding me about the Disassembled covers, I loved those when they came out.

yeah i found the art in nightly news way, way more interesting and compelling than the hacky sub-fight club story

i signed up for a free month's marvel unlimited in order to look at some of the background stuff, and i am .. confused by the interface. it seems like i have a navigation bar at the top and bottom its impossible to hide (and which .. barely works?) but which the resizing ignores so it's often cutting off the top and bottom five per cent of a panel, i.e., where .. most of the dialogue is

is it really this broken or am i being a noob

it's not the most intuitive thing, to be charitable. you have to click on the page itself or the black empty space on the sides to hide the interface buttons

some glitches will fix if you click the "smart panel <-> full page" button twice

love cap + devil dino in planet hulk

yeah dd is always welcome. hope he gets a vastly expanded role in the new mu. strong career move ditching moon-boy.

got confused for a moment and thought he was gertie's dino but no that was Old Lace - wonder where that dude is. nico is in A-Force. and i think SW is gonna have a new runaways series.

it's very weird to me that the runaways went from having a sorta ambushbugesque outskirts of the marvel u storyline to being embedded so completely in continuity

they did? when?

they're young avengers and shit now aren't they?

How often does that sort of thing really last, though? Howard the Duck is one of the few characters of that type who's managed to stay on the fringes for any real length of time, but even with him there seems to be a more continuity-centric push of late.

DC is certainly better about it i guess. haven't heard from this guy lately
http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20071010010819/marvel_dc/images/a/a6/

er:
http://blogintomystery.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/mazing5.jpg

though didn't it turn out that denton killed ralph dibney's wife?

i'm afraid to know of what you speak
i'm several years behind on YA but i thought the Runaways had pretty much disappeared from continuity, glad to find out they're still around

I need to reread the Avengers/New Avengers leadups to this. I read a bunch of yesterday's releases and still have some wtf?!?! questions.

Nico and Chase were involved in Avengers Arena/Avengers Undercover

DJP is our Area/Underground expert. I read the former once, but have forgotten most :/

"comic characters who live on the fringe of continuity" would be a good thread.
Ambush Bug (kinda pissed that no one ever points out that deadpool is basically Ambush Bug + Lobo)
Mazing Man
Conan the Barbarian
who else?

darth vader

Dracula

Arena was so, so, SO much better than it should have been

was that the one w/ arcade? if so, i liked it a lot too

and Undercover was so, so, SO much worse than it should have been

heh true, but by that point residual Arena affection made me forgive a lot of nonsense

Oh my fuck I just read the first issue of Ultimates 3 and it is sooooo much worse than the image I have in my head when I talk shit about Loeb's writing. I really think I might have to skip ahead. Especially if I'm going to get caught up with Secret Wars in anything resembling real time.

who is still alive, from the runaways? i think all the ones that i liked, died

it turned out that my problems with the marvel comics were problems with looking at it in chrome, on this computer. i am now using lol internet explorer to read the avengers. it's pretty impressively 'cosmic' and 'high stakes', though i think knowing that three years later they actually followed through on the implicit threat helps underwrite that. i would be interested in rereading morrison's jla after this, with its somewhat morbidity-free escalation of scale; i wonder who the comparison would favour

resurrected evil alex, karolina, molly, victor, chase, old lace (maybe not?), nico all alive i think

oh, alex is back, good

i finished the pre-infinity stuff last night and this morning i looked at the infinity reading list and ... oh hell no

If you're cowed by the Infinity reading list, you'll be heartened to learn that they'll be cranking out that much Secret Wars material every month. After looking through the solicitations for August, I think we're be nearing 150 issues. And this runs through..October, I think?

That's the thing--the SW enthusiasm had me going to the Hickman set-up reading list to see if I could get into it, but gaaaaah. Having said that, if you HAVE read all that, I can see why the payoff would be a hell of a lot of fun.

mmm but infinity is a crossover in the sense of 'go read this and then this and then this thing with a plot point you need to know about drawn haphazardly from a terrible script,' right? whereas the fun of the secret wars setup seems to be that the main series is its own thing but the miniseries are basically more ridiculous what if? stories that people felt like telling

There's nothing in Infinity you need to read except for Avengers, New Avengers, and Infinity (and Mighty Avengers, not because it's important to the story, but 'cause it's great).

I do feel bad for Jason Aaron, whose (good!) bestselling Thor book is being interrupted for several months by a (probably also good, but fanwanky) miniseries. Rebooting makes sense when a writer leaves, or if the sales are slipping, but rebooting in the middle of a successful run that seems to be pulling in a lot of new readers? Seems daft.

ok I feel like I have license to skip vast swathes of infinity now, ty

Secret Invasion was one of the only big Marvel crossovers I've read where the ancillary issues were fairly crucial to one's comprehension and enjoyment. Maybe Civil War, too. But, yeah, they're generally easily dispensible.

yes definitely - so just after the big Thor reveal, with that series going really well (art is consistently fantastic), he has to force back in tons of decades old boring MAN THOR continuity for 7 or 8 months

Infinity has a little diagram of the issues in the back of each chapter and afaik it only include New Avengers, Avengers, and Infinity

I think all you need to understand the swathes of titles out there for Battleworld is, at most, the Secret Wars title, if even that. Each issue seems to have the backstory of its "world" as a short feature at the end of the #1.

Captain America/Devil Dinosaur is a great team, why would he even want Bucky back?

to feed to DD

thanks to Marvel Puzzle Quest, my default paring for Devil Dinosaur is now Nick Fury

btw it's worth noting that with the multiverse collapsed, all the Runaways/Young Avengers/etc are fair game in Battleworld titles since they're not limited to the 616 :)

man i read the 'core' infinity story this evening and it was kinda frustrating -- like, oh, there's some guardians of the galaxy for a panel, or, something happened at the jean grey school but, who knows

it also felt weirdly low stakes, considering

I think that's true. All the actual battles don't take place in the core, just the story beats.

(Sorry, I should have mentioned as a proviso that Infinity is not very good, whichever version you read.)

I kind of get the impression that it's really three events that were shoehorned together. Black Bolt setting off the inhuman activation bomb really smells like an effort to force the Inhumans as a _thing_

well, yeah

MCU hijinks

Half of the last season of Agents of SHIELD was about the Inhumans. They're clearly working overtime to get them into the public's consciousness as soon as possible.

They're all over Hickman's FF and Avengers runs, but I've still never gotten a feel for them.

It's simple. Inhumans are the new mutants, because Marvel can't monetize the mutants in movie form. So they have to make them a "thing".

i don't quite understand how they pulled off putting quicksilver + wanda in the avengers movie

I'm guessing there is some loophole that allows them to use anyone who was ever an Avenger. Heck, in the comics they just removed their mutantdom - they're now apparently experiments of the High Evolutionary.

Are they no longer magneto's kids?

At this point in the pretty horrible Uncanny Avengers story it seems like the answer is no.

from Wikipedia:

Quicksilver (Pietro Maximoff) is a fictional superhero appearing in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appears in X-Men #4 (March 1964) and was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. He is the twin brother of the Scarlet Witch and the son of Magneto as well as the paternal half-brother of Polaris. However, he and his twin sister were later retconned, in Uncanny Avengers #4, to be the children of Django and Marya Maximoff who were kidnapped and experimented by the High Evolutionary. After a failed experimentation that gave Pietro his power, the High Evolutionary returned them to their parents and they then grew up believing that they were common mutants.[2]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

yeah the wanda/pietro retcon is a strong competitor for all-time most horrible retcons

tbh I like to think that the Marvel 616 universe has been fucking itself up as of late due to the post Age of Ultron timefuck, and this incident was part of an alternate continuity that bled over

...wow @ that retcon

add to that the fact that Magneto does have at least one kid, but it's Polaris

hahaha I was wondering when someone was going to bring that up

just wait for the multiversal version where his first kid never died in a fire

hey, at least Polaris kinda made sense, they have the same powers
what's worse was the Ultimate version where it was in question whether the twins' father was Magneto or Wolverine, who had a tryst with their mother around the right time. thanks Jeph Loeb!

Mutants in the Ultimate world were a mess.

ironically since they had an (ostensibly) simpler origin. kind of? i don't know.

natural mutation vs. genetic manipulation via the Weapon X program and then somehow spreading via a "mutant trigger" thingamabob.

Give me stock 616. Even Earth X Celestial fuckery is better than the Ultimate Universe "messing with Wolverine" origin.

Yeah, the Ultimate version is "the US government made mutants"

616 Wolverine has been completely fucked continuity-wise, and oddly enough, *not* just by the Origin series (although the later issues of that definitely helped). Again, the guy who started the plot down that path was... Jeph Loeb. They at least reversed the idea that Wolverine and other lupoid characters were somehow descended from wolves instead of primates.

I really like what Jason Aaron has done with Thor, but there seriously was a plot where a group decides to get revenge on Wolverine and they hire a group of mercenaries, all of which Wolverine kills.... only to find out they were all his children.

oh yeah, and Wolverine wanted to become a horrible killing machine pre-brain wipe, and he was in fact partially responsible for the Weapon X program melding metal to his bones

wait, what was this "mutant" trigger thingamabob? i think that's where I got lost.

omg that story that sounds awful. how many pups can a Wolverine have?

stuff like that Wolverine story started the big push that moved me out of being mutant-exclusive and more towards following what the Avengers were doing (along with Sunspot and Cannonball being tapped as Avengers)

they'll always be magneto's kids to me

wait, what was this "mutant" trigger thingamabob? i think that's where I got lost.

omg that story that sounds awful. how many pups can a Wolverine have?

I think it was in Ultimate Origins? Magneto's parents were part of the program and the changed genome became airborne when Magneto freed Wolverine, thus triggering latent mutants or something? It's been a long time since I read it. It was a mess. Fury was involved too, and I think his blood helped make the Hulk and it's a clusterfuck.

Reading Ultimate Origins right now. Saying that it's the most coherent of the Ultimatum-related comics I've read thus far is damning with wafer thin praise.

I think Hickman is the person who loves Cannonball and Sunspot second-best in the world, after DJP

Now Sunspot is rich playboy AIM leader and Cannonball has a kid!

in fairness, Sunspot was always a rich playboy

they basically made him the mutant Tony Stark, which at the end of the day I'm okay with

I'm also glad they're remembering Bobby isn't a dummy, cf the most recent Avengers World and his manipulation of the deposed AIM leaders

He's the angry South American, Cannonball is the joking Southerner
-- most writers

Any more thoughts after week 3? Quality control seems to be irregularly high for a summer crossover. I'm enjoying it. Not too much gloom and gore - so far everything seems to be in a very Peter David-esque "cheerful adventure" mould. Battleworld seems like an interesting place to stop off for a few months - unlike most parallel universe stories, it doesn't feel like it's just marking time until the inevitable continuity reset.

And even though I'm not familiar with a lot of the characters, it's all quite beginner-friendly - in content, if not in marketing.

I'm racing toward the end of the Ultimate line (just about to start Death of Spider-Man) so I'll hopefully be caught up somewhat soon. Probably not, but hopefully.

(Relating to that: I should say that, while it was overall pretty bad and the infamously awful parts were just as awful as expected, Ultimatum wasn't quite the shitshow I thought it would be (and some of the non-Loeb stuff was all right). My expectations were perhaps a bit diminished, though, since Ultimates 3 honestly is one of the worst comics I've ever read in a lifetime of reading comics. But then I was pleasantly surprised by Ultimate X, which is easily the best Loeb thing I've read. Nothing particularly special but quite a leap in basic storytelling competence, and with some of the most gorgeous work I've seen from Art Adams. I guess even a stopped clock can accidentally crap out a decent story now and again.)

Can't remember if this has been linked yet -- http://www.vulture.com/2015/05/secret-history-of-ultimate-marvel.html

(I reached out to Loeb for an interview but was told he would only speak with me if we didn’t discuss Ultimates 3 or Ultimatum.)

thanks for the link, pretty good article

Yeah I enjoyed that too.

Holy shit that sounds like the worst run ever.

It's a good article, but it's hamstrung by its premise: this is what changed, and it worked, so that must have been what was wrong in the first place. In 1999, "Why has Franklin been a kid for 30 years?" wouldn't even have been in the top ten reasons why not to read Marvel.

Marvel's generally had the right attitude to its age: There's too much story for any even moderately old character, so you use what works, and ignore what doesn't, and if someone reminds you that Nick Fury fought in the second world war then CheesyGrin.gif. It's always DC that's had the fretting about generations and legacies.

I am a little surprised that they missed one of the funniest (because Marvel never has and never has had any shame) consequences of the Ultimate's successful influence on the MCU - Normal 616 Nick Fury's lovechild with an African American woman was found and rose swiftly through the ranks of SHIELD to director, bringing with him a likeness to Samuel L Jackson and his friend Phil Coulson.

that was a heck of a coincidence wasn't it

true - they neglected to point out the effects the movies have had on the books like that silliness

I wwonder if it's supposed to be the infinity formula that gave him African American sperm

Anal retentive comics query: anyone know how to pick up the Miller run of Daredevil with the old Lynn Varley colouring? I've tried with the reoloured version but it's just so bleargh. Even the torr3nce have the shitty 90s colouring.

quarter box iirc

LOTS OF REVELATIONS THIS WEEK

Lynn Varley didn't colour Miller's original Daredevil run (I think it was mostly Tatjana Wood) - Varley's first colouring work was on Ronin.

Marvel's generally had the right attitude to its age: There's too much story for any even moderately old character, so you use what works, and ignore what doesn't, and if someone reminds you that Nick Fury fought in the second world war then CheesyGrin.gif.

^^^
frustrates me so much that the big two don't commit to this approach. continuity is so fucking stupid.

a little continuity is cool - i like it when characters refer to other characters and other stories i've read. it's just that it doesn't need to be 100% consistent.

yeah, it's fine to use continuity when it serves a narrative purpose - writer wants to refer to x event for y reason, to help frame the story or provide context, sure - but it shouldn't be restrictive or a built-in requirement

also having been blissfully unaware of Ultimates (I haven't read a Marvel comic since 1991 or so) that article was a helpful summary of what sounds like a bunch of horrible bullshit that I'm glad I avoided

OTM in general on just ignoring bothersome continuity. But Nick Fury having fought in WWII is awesome in my book. It might need a better explanation than 'infinity formula' but I like the idea of this immortal soldier who has been fighting against remnants of nazis for seventy years. Hickman's Secret Warriors was an awesome book with that idea. Someone probably needs to write a series about how SHIELD fits in with FBI and CIA and COINTELPRO and all that stuff, though. Secret Warriors vol 2! Hickman has time after Secret Wars.

I actually like the insanity of attempting to maintain continuity over a decades-long project. But at the same time, writers should be able gloss over the stupid stuff without having to do pointless retcons.

some of the coolest stories as of late have been continuity heavy - like RIP which wasn't just drawing from old stories but specifically from old stories that had never really been integrated into modern DC batman.

SHIELD was behind all that stuff except the bad stuff which was HYDRA behind SHIELD behind all that stuff.

Ultimate wasn't all bad - obviously Bendis writes a pretty good Spiderman (and a great JJJ) - but it was clear from early on (more so with Millar's X-Men I guess) that most of what was going to happen was that every piece of shit backstory was some writer's favourite, which they'd feel they needed to bring back (sometimes with a radikal remake) to make everything right.

I'd also rep for Ultimate Galactus trilogy, but I might be alone there.

continuity is great if it's a tool and not a fence

Millar Ultimates is p dope iirc

I'm up to Hickman-era Ultimates (alongside his FF run) and, while I'm digging his ultra large-scale storytelling and his willingness to radically change the landscape (entire portions of continents have been wiped out!), it suffers somewhat from the same taint as the Ultimate line in general. Namely, the need for unnecessary callbacks to 616 continuity. Like, great, you've created this radical new society of superpowered beings, but was it really necessary to call them Eternals and Deviants and have them ruled by the Xorn brothers?

At any rate, I really appreciate the bucketloads of ideas he's willing to pour into a single issue of comics. I'm trying very hard to keep track of all the moving pieces but I'm sure stuff is zipping past me.

Is this the best sentence ever written?

Like, great, you've created this radical new society of superpowered beings, but was it really necessary to call them Eternals and Deviants and have them ruled by the Xorn brothers?

Yes!

I think all the good names have been taken so you end up with completely different concepts using the same names in other Marvel universes

I guess, but then also Mike Carey came up with this character in his Ultimate Fantastic Four run who was fairly unique and a character unto herself who I then realized some time later was meant to be the Ultimate version of the Mad Thinker. I wish there had been a lot more of that kind of thing, but I don't know how much pressure there was on the writers to shoehorn pre-existing trademarks into their stories.

i loved that whole Eternals/Deviants thing

I think the complaint isn't the plot around them, but the fact that the Deviants/Eternals are something very different in the Marvel U

SW #3 is great. Kinda nervous that #4 is already getting bumped back and pushing all the other series too, I can't believe that they don't have the entire series done before they release the first one with the 'biggest Marvel event ever!!!!'

In a way SW#3 is typical event comic #3, in that nearly nothing happens. But the world building is so interesting, that I don't mind spending an issue hearing about the sun, or getting an update on Baron Sinister, or all that stuff.

Yeah. Shame about the delays but I'm enjoying everything about this so far.

I did notice, though, for that third issue, once you get rid of all the meta title pages, it's only 18 pages long!

Battleworld #1 has the Punisher possessed by Doctor Strange fighting a demonic Hulk, Ghost Rider, Wolverine and someone else. I think the editorial meetings for some of these series consisted of "sure, why not?"

Skottie Young's Avengers vs X-Men is as awful as you might expect. Kiddie avengers vs kiddie X-Men battle it out selling food from street carts, pretty much just an excuse to show you all the major characters drawn in Young's style.

A-Force - mostly C-list female superheroes protecting an idyllic island nation, Doom's absolutism pisses off the A-Force, Captain Universe is baaaaaaack
kind of meh, but I guess it's a lot to expect these setup issues to be great as story.

Spider-Verse - Gwen Stacy has memories of her death, kinda, then we find other Spideys then the Green Goblin is the leader of Battleworld Manhattan... then there's Spider-Pig.

that's Spider-HAM thanks

I don't think any of the related series have been worth the time. Loving Secret Wars, but these other stories are wanky fan service.

Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars - Deadpool gets dropped onto a Battleworld that is the original Secret Wars (or this is just entirely a separate thing) and makes a bunch of awful jokes.

I'm exhausted without even hitting the halfway point of my pile.

I want to give Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows a shot, but after that awful Deadpool comic I'm done for the day.

It just occurred to me that Marvel really missed a trick by not calling the last miniseries in the line Ultimate Nullifier.

The Ultimate line, I mean, obvs.

lol, yes

haha yup. and they could have brought in the jabroni from the VENGEANCE mini

For completely selfish reasons, I'm okay with all of the announced delays. I'm only just inching towards 2013 in my catch-up.

Hickman's Fantastic Four stuff has been ridiculous. He spent a full year across two titles basically documenting a single day when the bottom dropped out of the Marvel U. I hope he didn't out-epic himself too early. But I'm definitely primed to dig into to his Avengers work now, and even more excited for Secret Wars

A police procedural with a bunch of Thors as hardboiled cops is my favorite thing out of this so far.

the forensics team is top notch

yeah csi: asgard is fucking hilarious

btw I guess Secret Wars (specifically Ultimate End #3) is where "god damn" finally made it into a regular ol' Marvel comic, unless there's an earlier example I don't know about. I'm not a Christian but it still feels a little weird -- that was worse cussing than "fuck" when/where I grew up.

Btw #4 was pretty great, right? It's as if Hickman knows his story doesn't 'matter' so he has to infuse it with feels to make it work. Which obviously is what every art needs.

feelings, Frederik. they're called.... feelings

The Ultimate line has previously been pretty liberal with the g-d's, IIRC.

lol @ the culture slice where "fuck" isn't so bad compared to taking the lord's name in vain

that's probably the way it should be tbf

to be fucked

I mean, respect other people and their religious beliefs in vocalized language but tbh the people who are angry about "God damn" generally think their God damns a lot of things!

i was more thinking that fucking happens a lot and in the scheme of things shouldn't really be a powerful curse word. at least theoretically if you believe in God there's some weight to it

fucking happens a lot

#humblebrag

lol not to me but in the world, goddamnit!

So, gossip fans, now that the All-New All-Different titles are rolling out and it's still a couple of months before The Secrecy Wars are over, are the delays all on Esad Ribic's head, or is there enough blame to spread to everyone involved?

Two issues got added to All-Secret All-War after the solicits for #1 had come out (which based on the amount of padding it hasn't felt like it needed tbh) and nothing else got slipped despite all that time to do it, so it just smacks of inept publishing/editing to me.

I think it's weird that Marvel are now on their third soft reboot of the MU since DC created the Jhnsiverse. And solicits like "Enjoyed Old Man Logan #5? Then follow the adventures in Old Man Logan #1!" are just completely confusing.

This always happens with these big events, no artist hyped enough to be on one of these books is actually able to finish 8 books in 8 months, and Esad Ribic was never going to be able to do it. I'm guessing they decided they wanted what he brought to the book anyway, and that the story was divorced enough from what follows that it wouldn't be catastrophic if/when delays came in. I prefer them doing it this way, rather than getting some back-up artist in to do some parts, or rushing it so that the art suffers. It's worth the wait.

The delays have sapped the story momentum, but still, respect that they're just letting the story go where it wants, with a single artist.

appreciating the slow reveal of where Doom's "family" came from, especially Sue, Johnny, and Ben having come from a universe without a Reed Richards

so the Val and Franklin aren't actually from the same reality as his Sue

I don't understand how they don't have this completed in advance. Hickman and Marvel have known about Secret Wars for 2+ years, they should have it finished and in the can before publishing isssue 1 IMO. The number of people with details before actually going to print should be small enough (and well known enough) to minimize leaks.

^^^ This is my take on it too. As someone who's worked in the print periodical biz for 20+ years, I'm always baffled and vaguely upset by blown deadlines. I think I was traumatized by one too many Dreaded Deadline Dooms in Marvel's pre-Shooter era.

comics is the only publishing field i can think of that regularly sells completely unfinished work and either doesn't create it or revamps the work entirely based on creative availability of the moment

Blown deadlines suck, but it's unrealistic to expect regular monthly comics (at least from certain artists) without implicitly condoning the comics biz's poor workplace practices: insane working hours; unachievable deadlines; constant threat of dismissal for being unable to meet said deadlines.

I used to work in print periodicals too - not exactly an industry well-known for its healthy working practices, or respect for the wellbeing of its drones.

That said, always a bit strange when a big event like this, what should be a well-oiled machine, coming unstuck.

i don't think it's condoning poor workplace ethics to expect a publisher to print the books they solicit
set your deadlines more realistically, hire a larger group of creatives, ship bi-monthly but stick to the dates, do something different
random fill-ins in the midst of serialized stories certainly contributed to my being phased out of the monthly market; it's impossible to take your GRAND COMPLEX SAGA even a little seriously when a multi-month hiatus, drastic change in creative team or flashback ish is necessary

agreed. even reading them in trade format with the art changes is disturbing and weird

The major issue is lack of respect for staff's wellbeing resulting in insane, unachievable deadlines

But fanboy (and non fanboy) expectations are part of the problem too - blaming the artist or writer when they should be blaming the editors/publishers who sat these ridiculous solicitation dates (not saying anyone here does this!)

But yeah, bimonthly or the Saga/Southern Basatards system (monthly for 4-6 issues, then a break) seems like the way forward

idgaf and just want Secret Wars #7/#8 in my grubby little hands at some point

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.

i liked his FF run just fine! Don't see why he got given the keys to the kingdom based on that though. Woulda much preferred, say, Remender's vision of a revamped Marvel world. Hickman's is so convoluted and presumes you know SO MUCH about continuity... which I do! It's still too much of a slog to have a go at. Plus it fucked up any number of perfectly good series by spiking them with universe killing continuity. Ant Man / Howard the Duck were just about at a solidclip and then this nonsense forces them to restart.

The writers would have known years in advance.

I thought his F4 was solid but at least the first half of Hickman's Avengers run seemed like an amalgam of already existing stories. Its pretty much a darker The Authority/Crisis story told with the Marvel characters. It would have been better to have used the actual existing Marvel cosmic cosmology instead of adding this whole other layer.

I agree that the Builders were an unnecessary addition, when Hickman could've used Celestials or something, but the rest of the story did use existing cosmology. Even the existence of multiple Beyonders was apparently established in some older story, though I've never read it. The only problem I had with it was that their increased power level and motivation for destroying the multiverse was never properly explained... Though I guess that was part of the concept: these are vast cosmic beings whose minds operate on a whole other level, so their motivations would be inexplicable to us.

Also, while I get it that the story Hickman wanted to tell eventually had to deal with the Living Tribunal in some way, I didn't like the idea that Beyonders fight it and beat it. IMO the whole idea of the Living Tribunal is cool in that he has the highest judgment in the entire Marvel universe, and everyone and everything else should acquiesce to that. If he's just a big cosmic guy you can fight, that kinda ruins the concept.

I think a better way of dealing with the question "what would Living Tribunal do?" would've been that he simply doesn't interfere. Since he represents the Marvel universe God, and the Marvel universe God are the people who write these comics, the Living Tribunal would know that the multiverse won't be destroyed permanently, so he doesn't have to do anything with the Beyonders. Or would that have been to meta?

Beyonders as the cosmic versions of The Punisher... who kill the Marvel universe

so what was good in the tie ins

Thors

xpost
I can barely remember any of them... A-Force and Thors were decent IIRC.

yep, A-Force and Thors. None of the others were/are necessary.

(And, strictly speaking, only Thors contained a plot element that had a material impact on the main story line so that's the only one I'd call "necessary". I did enjoy the team configuration of A-Force though and hope it leads to Nico becoming more prominent in the mainstream Marvel universe.)

Siege and Angela were both good.

E for Extinction was a fun take on Morrison's x-men

I read one issue of E for Extinction and wasn't really interested *shrug*

It took me a couple to get into it

Enjoyed Weirdworld too.

Weirdworld might have been my favourite,

weirdworld isn't the garth ennis island of the amazons masturbation fantasy is it?

oh nevermind, that's "where monsters dwell" and it's shit.

Weirdworld was the only one worth a toss.

Marvel's UK franchise Panini Comics repackage American serial comics in bumper 100 page comics. So the other day I picked up Avengers Universe #26, which contains Hickman's Secret Wars 1-3. On a quick skim it fairly incomprehensible to this casual reader - are there previous comics that might help me a bit (nb I don't really have the time to read a HUGE run of other Hickman comics etc)?

Time Runs Out, specifically the Avengers/New Avengers issues, probably

although I don't think Secret Wars 1 - 3 is particularly incomprehensible on its own -- it might just be that there are a lot of completely new situations that become clear as the series continues

or you could scroll up and find our summaries :)

There's years of Hickman preamble but his Avengers and New Avengers basically serve as the main prelude. But that's still like over 60 issues cumulatively.

actually, that may have been on a diff thread xp

ty, maybe I will just be more attentive reading the cheap comic I already bought

It's standalone but the first issue is kind of a fight scene clusterfuck, the second is just setup and the third is where stuff starts happening. If you're not a regular marvel reader it might also be confusing sorting the analogues from the actual earth-616 characters. So, er, you are correct - but I'd still say it's worth persevering.

Keeping up with the Marvel U is a full-time commitment with lots of unpaid overtime.

I'm not caught up to Secret Wars yet but based on what little I do know, it may be worth brushing up on the backstory of The Maker. And as far as I know, that's not actually a BM joke.

I lost track of Secret Wars about halfway, I think I rushed through the Avengers/New Avengers dual storylines too quickly (without reading all the other Marvel books) to really understand what was going on and then Secret Wars was a giant shitshow of delays and confusion.

are the compiled uk versions just thick floppies or are they square on the spine? would love big old floppy comps, easier to read than trades

Thick floppies with slightly stiffer card covers

I recently reread the Hickman stuff leading to Secret Wars, so I'll try to summarize the things you need to know to understand SW...
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(WARNING! Spoilers for Hickman's FF and Avengers runs!)
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Fantastic Four/FF
* Franklin Richards' reality-altering powers were been mentally locked away to prevent misuse, but an adult version of Franklin travels back from the future and helps his kid version to learn how to use his powers again. Kid Franklin creates a pocket universe where he and his best friend Artie have adventures. Adult Franklin says that kid Franklin's powers will soon be needed, though he doesn't explain what this refers to.
* Valeria Richards (an alternate universe version of the kid Reed and Sue lost during Byrne's run, who's now living in the 616 universe with the Richardses as her parents) manipulates things so that he will go to live in Latveria for some time, with Doom acting as her guardian. She and Doom bond. Val is already almost as intelligent as Reed, and it's expected she'll grow up to be smarter than him.

Avengers/Secret Avengers
* The Illuminati (Black Panther, Reed, Namor, Iron Man, Beast, Captain America, and Dr. Strange) discover "Incursions", events where two parallel universes clash, and both are destroyed. They are happening at a growing rate, and ultimately the entire multiverse will be annihilated, if the Incursions aren't stopped. The collision point between two universes are always their respective Earths.
* The Incursions start to threaten the 616 Earth too. The Illuminati manages to stop one of the Incursions, without destroying either Earth involved, by using the Infinity Gauntlet. But this destroys the Infinity Gems, so the same trick can't be done again. The Illuminati gradually start to realize the only certain way to stop an Incursion is to destroy either of the Earths involved, which will stop the collision, and both universes will be saved (except for the one destroyed Earth, of course).
* Captain America doesn't agree with the idea that in order to save the 616 universe the Illuminati would need to destroy parallel Earths and kill of their inhabitants. The rest of the Illuminati feel that Cap's resistance to this idea will hinder their plans to save the universe, so Strange erase Cap's memory, making it so that he doesn't remember anything about the Incursions at all.
* When the first Incursion on the 616 Earth happened, a woman named Black Swan jumped from the parallel Earth that was about to collide with its 616 counterpart and destroyed the parallel Earth, thus saving both universes. The Illuminati capture him and she tells them that she is a member of a larger group of Black Swans, who worship a deity named Rabum Alal. Their task, given to them by Rabum Alal, is to try to stop the Incursions by any means necessary.
* When the next Incursion threatens the 616 Earth, the Illuminati can't find it in their hearts to destroy a whole parallel Earth... Except for Namor, who has founded a new Illuminati-like group called the Cabal (which included people like Thanos and Black Swan). The Cabal destroys the parallel Earth, saves the 616 universe, and continues destroying other Earths any time an Incursion is about to happen.
* It is revealed that the Incursions are caused by the Beyonders, who are not from the Marvel multiverse but from beyond it, and want to destroy it as an experiment. The Beyonder seen in the original Secret Wars was merely a child version of these Beyonders, so they are extremely powerful. They go on to defeat Eternity and even the Living Tribunal, so it seems no one can save the multiverse.
* But then it's revealed that Rabum Alal is actually Dr. Doom! He has discovered that the Beyonders are using the Molecule Man as living weapon with which to destroy universes. They created the Molecule Man, made sure he is in every universe, and every one of these MMs are connected to each other via a psyhic link. However, this also means that MM knows what the Beyonders are doing, and he's not happy with it. He helps Doom to come up with a plan to defeat the Beyonders.
* Doom travels back in time and creates the multiversal cult of Rabum Alal. The Black Swans' task is to kill the Molecule Man of each universe before the Beyonders use him. This transfers the dead MM's power to the other MMs that are still left, or something like that (this bit is kinda unclear in the story).
* Meanwhile, Cap's memory has returned, and he's not happy to learn what the Illuminati have done. The Avengers are split into two groups: those lead by Reed, who think that the 616 universe need to be saved by any means necessary, and those lead by Cap, who feel sacrificing other Earths is immoral, and some other way of saving the multiverse must be found.
* The number of universes dwindles to just a handful, then just to two: the 616 universe and Ultimate universe. At this point Doom and the 616 Molecule Man launch an attack against the Beyonders. It all seems hopeless, but turns out they have a secret weapon, and the attack ends in a huge white blast. What the secret weapon is is not revealed in the issue where the attack happens, but it'll be revealed in a flashback in Secret Wars. The Beyonders are dead.
* At the same time, the Incursion between the final two Earths (616 and Ultimate) begins. The Ultimate Reed (who's essentially a villain) has also figured out what the Incursions are, and has been destroying other Earths to protect his own universe. Ultimate Reed tells Ultimate Nick Fury what is about to happen, and they figure out the people the Ultimate Earth need to attack the 616 Earth and destroy it, before the 616 folks do the same to them. The Cabal moves to the UItimate Earth, planning on destroying it.
* The Ultimate superheroes and SHIELD attack the 616 Earth and a war breaks out between the two. Meantime, Cap has found Iron Man, and he's pissed off about the whole Illuminati thing. As they are fighting each other, the Ultimate Earth's forces bomb NY, and the two are killed in the esplosions. Among other major superheroes, Thor was already killed earlier while trying to fight the Beyonders. That's why you don't see the 616 versions of Cap, Iron Man, or Thor in Secret Wars.
* Reed has asked Valerie to figure out how to stop the Incursions. She tells him they can't stop them, so they should start to think how to survive them. The Ultimate Reed has also come to the same conclusion as Val.

Thanks Tuomas, you're the Watcher of ILC

Oh, one more thing:
* The Illuminati find out that each Universe has its own Infinity Gems, or something resembling them, but they will only work in their own parent universe. In another universe, they are useless.

If you want to read just some of the stuff leading to Secret Wars but not all of it, I'd recommend just reading Secret Avengers + Time Runs Out. Almost everything you need to know about the whole Incursion thing happens in SA, the main Avengers book is mostly dealing with other plots. And the whole SA + TRO run is essentially one big arc, which is really quite a thrilling read, especially when the heroes start to get more and more desperate, and hey have to figure out what they're willing to sacrifice to save their universe.

Also, as a member of the nitpickers' guild, I'd like to point out that the Beyonders' plan shouldn't actually work... It has the same flaw as the Anti-Monitor's plan in Crisis on Infinite Earths: you can't destroy an infinite amount of universes, one by one, in a finite amount of time. It would take an infinity to do that. For the plan to work, all the parallel universes should be destroyed all at once, but that's not what happens in either CoIE or Hickman's story.

That is an excellent piece of nitpickery Tuomas.

Great summary too! The sequence I never quite understood was the time travel story in Avengers - where Cap keeps moving further into the future. What was that about?

616 Thor does turn up in "Thors" although he doesn't really factor into the story, and never really explains how he got there - "because Thor" is basically the answer.

In general I thought Secret Wars was a great unit of story in itself, but unsatisfying as an ending to the incursion story in the Avengers run.

Great summary too! The sequence I never quite understood was the time travel story in Avengers - where Cap keeps moving further into the future. What was that about?

When the Illuminati used the Infinity Gauntlet to stop one of the Incursions, all the other Infity Gems broke, except for the Time Gem, which moves forward in time. And because it was Cap who was using the Gauntlet, it'll keep appearing close to Cap and moving him further and further into the future.

But one thing I didn't get, and which feels almost like a subplot Hickman abandoned or ignored, is that the various antagonists in the story try to stop Cap from going back to his own time, because at this point he has found out what the Illuminati has done, and he wants to stop them. So it's strongly implied that Cap's decision to go back and fight the Illuminati is what leads to (what's left of) the multiverse getting destroyed, which is why the antagonists try to stop him from doing that. But then Time Runs Out and Secret Wars we find out that Cap's role in this was meaningless, nothing he does or doesn't do matters, and the multiverse will be destroyed anyway. So the whole time travel story was kinda pointless.

616 Thor does turn up in "Thors" although he doesn't really factor into the story, and never really explains how he got there - "because Thor" is basically the answer.

Ah, I haven't yet read Thors, so I didn't know this! In Time Runs Out, the story cuts away from his and Hyperion's fight against the Beyonders before we see how it ends... Since the Beyonders survive it, it's strongly implied they killed the two, but I guess it's possible Thor somehow got away.

Great rundown, Tuomas, but I think you meant New Avengers rather than Secret Avengers as a companion piece to Time Runs Out?

But then Time Runs Out and Secret Wars we find out that Cap's role in this was meaningless, nothing he does or doesn't do matters, and the multiverse will be destroyed anyway. So the whole time travel story was kinda pointless.

Yeah this kind of reminds me of Locke in Lost - where, in retrospect, the whole character arc is essentially pointless. I think that's part of why the ending to the pre-Secret Wars stuff in unsatisfying.

It's not that Hickman leaves tons of plot loose ends -- but that they just hacked off instead of tied up.

Great rundown, Tuomas, but I think you meant New Avengers rather than Secret Avengers as a companion piece to Time Runs Out?

Yeah, sorry about that! In my posts above I was talking about New Avengers, not Secret Avengers (which isn't even written by Hickman). It's just that because New Avengers involves a group of superheroes working in secrecy, I always conflate the two names in my head.

Yeah this kind of reminds me of Locke in Lost - where, in retrospect, the whole character arc is essentially pointless. I think that's part of why the ending to the pre-Secret Wars stuff in unsatisfying.

This was one of the reasons why I recommended just reading Hickman's New Avengers and not Avengers as a prelude to Secret Wars. Avengers does have some good subplots, but some of them are kinda long-winded and don't really lead to anything (the whole Builders thing and Infinity were essentially a looong interlude that didn't really matter that much, and ended in a rather unsatisfying finale)... Whereas New Avengers is tightly plotted and works nicely as a whole (of course it helps that it has only one long plot and a limited set of characters).

Another problem with Infinity (and Secret Wars too) is that Hickman doesn't really get Thanos at all. It seems he's just read the 70s Starlin comics and Infinity Gauntlet, and from them concluded that Thanos is a megalomaniac villain who wants to conquer the universe or something... He completely ignores all the character development Thanos has gone through starting from the last issue of IG, i.e. the last 20+ years of his publication history.

Lockes story is the best thing about Lost!

Also, I like the Avengers run, perhaps more than New Avengers. But it should probably be taken as it's own thing, that doesn't fit perfectly together with the incursion story. As a bunch of loosely related vignettes, with an enormous and ever-changing cast, it's quite good. Overall it's mostly a story of how the plotting of Iron Man and the idealism of Captain America, comes to blows yet again.

It also helps that the weirdest tangent, everything about AIM, is followed up in Al Ewings pretty great New Avengers.

I'd agree that Hickman doesn't really care about Thanos.

On the other hand, I reread most of the Fantastic Four/Future Foundation runs recently and I still got the chills when adult Franklin says, "To me.... MY GALACTUS!"

oh yeah, tiny correction to Tuomas's excellent summary:

Kid Franklin's roommate is Leech, not Artie. He was supposed to be keeping a damper on Franklin's powers, but the Richards family didn't realize Leech has a lot more control now and was letting Franklin cut loose for their little adventures.

Ah, you're right. I'm always mixing up Artie and Leech too.

IIRC years ago I read some Elseworlds type of story where it was revealed Galactus *is* Franklin... Or did I dream this up?

That sounds familiar, but Marvel's been playing so fast and loose with the glimpses into alternate realities in recent years that I can't even keep track anymore.

Ah, okay, yes. Earth X is what you're thinking of.

Oh yeah, that's the one!

Oh, and one further addition to the summary:
* Dr. Strange finds about Doom and Molecule Man's plan, and he's there with them when they attack the Beyonders. This explains why acts the way he does in Secret Wars.

wtf, something ate my post or maybe it ended up on the wrong thread

Earth X was kind of thrown in the trash as far as things go, but a number of the ideas in the series have popped up in different ways. It had an amnesiac Galactus who didn't remember he was Franklin Richards.

Hickman's timeline has Franklin living until the end of the Marvel universe, after which he will become the last surviving person and therefore become the Galactus for the next one.

I didn't know Valeria had such a fucked up character background!

I like the current take on her where they just write her as if she and Franklin are just a normal pair of siblings, with the caveat that one has the potential for godlike powers and the other is a three year old with an intellect nearly on par with her dad's who thinks of Doom as her uncle.

Wait, isn't Franklin's deal with Galactus that he'll be there with him at the end and they'll carry on to the next universe together?

Hickman's run is a great example of both a genuine universe-scale cosmic story and a great big box of tools for the next writer to root around in if they want.

Anyone read his Secret Warriors run - worth the effort?

It's what actually turned me on to his Marvel work, and it's pretty good! I'm not sure how much Bendis had to do with the initial plotting, but it has that wheels-within-wheels Hickman thing going, although all contained within one series. It also has enough callbacks for Nick Fury fans to make it worthwhile

Secret Warriors was decent but got completely fucked by forced crossovers and the like. I think his SHIELD series was great.

I've dug pretty much everything of Hickman's that I've read. Except maybe not so much his Ultimate stuff but that's more because it's Ultimate stuff than because of his contribution.

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