Secret Wars

SECRET WARS

Felicitous greetings and fanciful salutations fans and friends! It’s a brand new month and that means it is time once again for the greatest online experience you could ever ask for: the Odd Review! And this is everyone’s favorite online idiot intoning (or typing) the unmistakable invitation: welcome to the column!

If you’ve been here before, then welcome back! If this is your first visit, what took ya so long? Well, nevermind that, I gotta let ya know what goes on around here.

Basically, I pick a subject, which could be a TV show, or movie, or novel, or musical band, or whatever, and tell you stuff about it. Why it’s cool, or why it isn’t cool, and whether you should experience it or avoid it like the plague! Then, to support the fragile veneer of the review column, I use a highly scientific method (lol) to devise a rating, but I’ll explain that later on.

This time around, I’m gonna talk about a comic book. Well, a mini-series from the mid-80’s. Its full title was “Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars”. Of course, it wasn’t the first superhero team-up, but it is generally regarded at THE very first company-wide cross-over, paving the way for all those “Crisis on Earths Q Thru Z-Squared” and “Super Zombie Civil War” or whatever.

Wow, I remember when I first found Secret Wars. I was about ten or eleven when it came out in ’84-’85. We weren’t wealthy, but we weren’t poor, either, and we usually spent our mad money on Nintendo games, but there was usually a little cash left I could throw away on comics. The problem was it WAS only a little cash! I was no afficianado, and I had NO idea which ones to get. So I only had a couple issues of this guy and a couple issues of that guy. But then they came out with Secret Wars and EVERYbody was in it! I dutifully purchased the first five issues, but then the rat-finks at my local 7-Eleven stopped ordering it! For YEARS I had only read half the story!

Fear not, eventually I did get to read the rest of the story! In fact, I even own all 12 issues collected in one convenient graphic novel. More than that, I learned about the interesting events that caused its creation!

Without anything as sophisticated as Mr. Peabody’s Waybac Machine, we’ll flash back to the mid-80’s. Now, at the time, action figures were REALLY hot! There was Star Wars, G.I. Joe, He-Man, Thundercats, and I don’t even know what else! Well, some smart guy at Kenner thought it would be cool to have action figures based on comic book characters…so he went to DC, made a deal and got production started.

Well, the line of DC superhero action figures did pretty well, so some other guy at Mattel said “Hey! We need to start making superhero figures too!” So they went to Marvel with a boatload of phoney-baloney marketing research. They said “We wanna make action figures of your comic book guys! …But we only want the best-of-the-best, with a HUGE media tie-in that supplies a convenient blanket concept, cool vehicles, weapons, and headquarters so that we can expand the product line with superfluous playsets!”

Marvel liked the idea of the toy line and worked up a nifty concept that offered convenient excuses to include all the conditions the toy company demanded. Some super-duper, extra-dimensional godlike entity called the Beyonder has been pulling a peeping tom on our universe and does not get the concept the desire. So he collected the best of the best Marvel heroes and the best of the worst Marvel villains. He wiped the galaxy away and used fragments of various planets to create a patchwork “battleworld” where the two teams could fight, the winners are promised “anything they desire”.

The toy line SUCKED and didn’t sell very well, but the mini-series did great! It was, like, THE highest sold title at the time.

The story was written by Jim Shooter, who was editor-in-chief of Marvel at the time. It was drawn by Mike Zeck and Bob Layton. The good-guys include Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Spider-Man, and members of the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and the X-Men! Oh yeah, and Magneto was with them, too. Like I said, EVERYbody was in it! And BIG-name guys, even I recognized most of them! I didn’t know as many of the villains, though. Sure, I knew Doctor Doom, and Doctor Octopus, but that was about it. But with them were the Enchantress, Ultron, the Wrecker and the Wrecking Crew, Kang, the Lizard, the Molecule Man, and Galactus.

So the villains are all like “Oh boy, let’s fight!” The heroes automatically go on the defense and drive them away. But the heroes don’t trust Magneto, nor the X-Men cuz they try to stick up for him, so the mutants disenfranchise themselves to become a non-aligned third force. Galactus summons his homeworld, intending to devour the Battleworld, thus winning the Beyonder’s game. And Doctor Doom makes plans to confront the Beyonder himself!

And BIG things happen to just about everyone through the course of this storyline. The super-villains Titania and Volcana are created by Doctor Doom. The Molecule Man discovers that he was limiting his powers with a self-imposed mental block. Professor X assumed a more direct leadership of the X-Men. Collossus fell out of love with Kitty Pryde. She-Hulk joined the Fantastic Four cuz the Thing didn’t wanna leave Battleworld (cuz he could change back to human). And perhaps BIGGEST of all: Spiderman got the black suit that would eventually become Venom!

Anyway, it’s a wild ride, and pretty cool, although I must admit that the Beyonder’s motivation is not very clear in the story itself. But it says online in a couple of places that he did this in an attempt to understand human desire, and that makes as much sense as anything else. Besides, it’s a comic book, how much of a reason does he need, right? I always thought it was a boring ol’ Tuesday night and he didn’t have anything to do so he did this for a moment’s entertainment.

So, I guess continuity-wise, it’s kinda outdated now, but if you’re interested in the history of super-mega-crossover-comics-events than you ought to check out Secret Wars! *sigh* Except, of course, I can’t just SAY that, I have to include a rating in order to maintain the thin disguise of being a legitimate review column.

To determine the rating, I use a pair of percentage dice. Percentage dice, in case ya don’t know it, are two ten-sided dice used in various role playing games to determine a random number between 0-1 (I’d rather have a sharp stick in my eye) to double-0, which actually means 100 (even better than finding out your pristine copy of Mickey Mouse is worth over a grand!). See how it works is one die represents the tens place and the other die represents the ones place. Here, let me show you. I just give my totally un-biased dice a roll just like that…

…and end up with an 85! I can live with that, but you don’t have to! You could check it out for yourself and form your very own opinions! The original issues can still be found through various online comics sources, and eBay, and Amazon. Plus you can get the collected graphic edition, maybe even in a brick-and-mortar bookstore (that’s where I found mine).

And then, if ya want get radical about it, you could even come here and share your opinion! Have you read Secret Wars? Have you read Secret Wars 2? Did ya like it? Did ya think it sucked? What’s your favorite comics super-crossover story? Leave a comment below and share it with all of cyberspace!

Well, we’ve gotten to the end of another one. This is where I usually tell you to tune in again next month to find out what my next Odd Review will be about. But I don’t know if I’m going to do any more. Why not? Read this Special Announcement for details! Be there and be square!

-----Your Buddy, Oddcube