Secret Wars #1: "The End Times"

[superboyprime]

'My original chapter title for Secret Wars #1 was, "The Perfect Jumping Off Point." I was outvoted.' - Jonathan Hickman

The Marvel Universe vs. The Ultimate Universe:























Cyclops is the final person who Manifold teleports aboard the life raft:

Comments

[captainbellman]

Erm.

Is anyone else far from being whelmed?

[matrix_dragon]

Pretty much. At least the Punisher page was funny.

[cainofdreaming]

oz@amazinghair.net? Heh.

[espanolbot]

Okay, the Punisher killing the Kingpin and co at their End of the World Party was kind of hilarious, even though Sandman would probably have defeated him pretty easily.

[jekylls_salvation]

And Bullseye. I don't think he went there to kill them. I think he went there to kill himself.

[angelophile]

Uh... Well that certainly is an abrupt way to end the 616 universe. How very.

[captainbellman]

Like so many popular musicians who record two or three lyrics and then play them on a loop for three solid minutes, Hickman is a slave to the methodology of "I can't fill enough pages so let's just have a blank sheet with some words on it."

I mean, look at that mess up there. The penultimate issue of WATCHMEN ended on a similar note, sure, but at least something visual happened in the pages. We had characters to feel for, instead of blank whiteness and Doom's mask flashing up like Mr. Boogie in Sinister.

[captainbellman]

Tell me people, did we honestly and truly need "The Marvel Universe Presents Lars Von Trier's Melancholia Minus The Nuance"?!?

[espanolbot]

Less hilarious Udo Kier also.

Although everything is improved by the application of Kier, even Axe Cop.

[baihu]

Okay, I'm trying to figure out if Marvel knows or not, that comic fans of all people, can spot a fake-out.

It's like, who cares if I see them die, I know they aren't dead. I know this because these characters print money, like fucking hell Marvel would kill any of the big names off. And most of all, because we've seen this all go down before.

It almost feels like why are we wasting time when the only important part is the status quo at the end. What happens in the middle is nothing more than fanservice (and not great one at that) because the whole attitude of the thing from both Marvel and even the reader is so non-committal.

[jmacq1]

Yeah, when we pretty much knew from the jump that Secret Wars/Battleworld was going to be an Age of Apocalypse style temporary patch before we return to a Marvel Universe that's pretty much the same as what we had...it does lose pretty much all its' oomph.

I mean, they're already seemingly publishing "Post Secret Wars" stories. What's the point of this series after that? I'm sure they'd feed us some tripe about "it's the journey, not the destination" but seriously....

[grumman]

1. Are those superheroes really attacking a refugee transport?

2. Who invited the Black Panther? Shouldn't somebody be like "I don't know, T'Challa. We had a spot open for the guy who cured cancer, but he never showed up."

3. The bit with the Punisher was fun, at least.

4. Fuck Marvel.

[jekylls_salvation]

He was the leader of Wakanda. That takes management skills!

[wizardru]

So a couple of quick questions, since I haven't picked this up (but may):

what exactly is happening in regards to characters? Is this the 616 Universe at war with the Ultimate Universe (which unleashes some super weapon because they've lost) while the two planets are colliding?

Has it ever been established what the source of this threat is and what is causing it to happen? Has basically every alternate Earth been colliding with every OTHER alternate Earth and now they're all gone? Is this the result of 'the beyonders' that Hickman has alluded to?

This is actually better than I expected, but it feels very contrived (as has most of Hickman's Avengers stuff, IMHO). At least this feels like his heroes are actually DOING stuff and being heroic for a change.

[aperturedreams]

It's very complicated, but they did establish the answers in the final issue of New Avengers. The Beyonders created a weapon in the form of Molecule Man, who exists simultaneously in all universes. When he dies he takes his universe with him, and they wanted to see what happens when all of them blow up at once. To stop this, our version of Molecule Man recruits Doom to kill all versions of him. After killing thousands, an imbalance between the universes occurs and it results in the incursions. It is however implied that Doom has a way to preserve something after the universes die out. Finally, after all this, Doom attacks the Beyonders in that final issue, and in the process the number of universes goes down to about 22. Eventually it goes down to these two, and now it's down to 0.

[tigerkaya]

As to the story, well at least the Ultimate universe dies as well.

[stubbleupdate]

And all the new fans who joined Marvel whwn Ultimate Spider-Man #1 launched in 2000, will hopefully go away now, right?

[thanekos]

Fisk's email is particularly readable in the D'Onofrio voice.

" Like ALL of you, I dreamed of a.. GLORIOUS end. Standing over the vanquished as.. the WORLD looked up in envy. BUT. It seems time.. "

[lordultimus]

Yeah, this and the second issue are pretty much set-up issues. Wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that he's had three years to set things up.

Still an improvement over AXIS.

[burkeonthesly]

I would like to coin the phrase "Jonathan Hickman Device" as a sort of cousin to the "Rube Goldberg Device." Instead of the RGD, where we watch a needlessly complicated chain of triggers tripping each other in entertaining sequence to ultimately achieve some mundane result, the JHD is where you sit and watch all the hours it took to set the RGD up in the first place. In real time.

[mjscheer]

"It's love" gave me chills, though.

[tpsreports]

I've been reading comics since I was able to read more than 40 years and I've never been less interested in comics as a whole as I am right now. Especially Marvel and DC stuff.

[obsidianwolf]

Same though I do find it funny that Archie comics managed to have a crisis style event happen in Life with Archie of all things that made more sense and had more gravitas than this whole mess as a b plot and the a plot in a few issues than Hickman managed in all of his Avengers run.

[ebailey140]

Makes one nostalgic for CoIE, doesn't it? THAT'S how you destroy your multiverse. The destruction of Earths 1 & 2 was much better in that, as I recall. But then, it was George Perez doing it...

[obsidianwolf]

Even though it is the grand daddy of them all like most big comic events IMO Crisis doesn't hold up as well on reread (You notice mistakes, bits of bad writing, general stupidity). However it sure as heck is so much more memorable than the other universal resets that have come a long the line after it.

Honestly Hickman's epic and this whole secret wars mess reminds me most of Avengers the Crossing(Which occured Just before Heroes reborn which despite sucking was more memorable than the crossing). It was meant to be such a shocking memorable moment and instead it was just bleh and IMO Hickman's mess is going the same way.

[violetclm.livejournal.com]

Reed, might I suggest some ideas that might have worked better than a giant flammable helicopter carrying every single person in the world that you wanted at once:

Cloak.
Magik.
Lockjaw.
Lila Cheney.
That giant door guy from the Inhumans the other month.
Time travel.
Multiple Man or someone retrieving the people instead.
Purple Man's kids or whoever making them show up on their own.
Shadowcat making the helicopter intangible.
Your wife putting a force bubble around it.
Magneto or Polaris keeping other metal things away from it.
Some speedsters (who are apparently so common that law firms can engage them as couriers) pulling it along.
Anything at all other than an easily explodeable flying vessel at the very last minute piloted by two people with no useful super powers and without any external defense forces because you clearly WANTED the plan to fail.

[deh_tommy]

Forgive me if I'm mistaken or outdated in any of this, but I hope that this will help you in some way.

Didn't Cloak and Dagger switch powers at the end of Spider-Island?
Magik is with the X-Men, not the Avengers.
Lockjaw is under the custody of Kamala Kahn.
The timestream is broken arfter the events of Age of Ultron and no one wants to cause any more damage.
Invisible Woman dies along with nost of the Fantastic Four.
I'm not sure if anyone, regardless of speed, could outrun the erasure of everything.
Kitty Pryde is engaged to Star Lord now, and so is presumably helping the Guardians on Earth or is in space.

Phoenix

[kuratowa]

For one brief, shining moment, I thought Scott was going to save the universe while yelling "Steve! See? I was totally right, you jerk!"

Re: Phoenix

[chrys]

Ha. That would've been precious. Could still happen too, since he didn't die.

[burkeonthesly]

I take comfort in one thought: even Bucky came back.

[silverhammerman]

I just realized how odd it is that that is straight up the Punisher's logo above the totally for real epitaph for the Marvel U.

[glprime]

Maaaan. Spidey's gonna feel even more guilt-ridden he survived when so many others didn't.

[theflames]

Anyone else find it a little unnerving that a good deal of this issue was just heroes outright killing each other?

The Hulk, She-Hulk and Colossus from 616 literally tipped over Ultimate-SHIELDs entire building, killing their Hawkeye and Nick Fury and countless Shield operatives. It wasn't unprovoked of course... but it was just odd to read about.

Then Ultimate Tony Stark shooting at civilians of 616... and not a word of remorse from either side.

Plus if the objective was to 'destroy the other earth' they were going at it in a very slow and pointless way.

[deh_tommy]

Our worlds are about to break...

[lbd_nytetrayn]

So... anyone else get whiplash from trying to follow which universe was which in this?

I thought the Ultimate one would have lowercase text, too, but... was that the case? I mean, there was only that one little bit in here. Was everything else 616?

[shadowpsykie]

.... don't get it... i mean i know the universes have been destroying each other...

or are we going to learn that they HAVEN'T been destroyung each other

[glprime]

So to catch up to issue 4 posted just recently, I got started reading my issue one, and just above that bit with Johnny and Ben getting ready, there's a shot outside the Baxter Building of the city street, and a sign of a random restaurant called "NONOFUKU".

I'm actually really surprised they slipped that in.