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Axel Alonso Opens Up About “Secret Wars”, Teases it As a Multi-Media Event

By | November 8th, 2014
Posted in News | 3 Comments

Well, we were waiting for it: after a bunch of teases and an odd little video, CBR interviewed Marvel EiC Axel Alonso about “Secret Wars,” and he was surprisingly forthcoming while being as dodgy and cryptic as ever. Oh, that Axel!

While the details about “Secret Wars” aren’t fully known yet (Earths collide in various forms and fashions; different heroes are brought together for some reason and decide to punch each other, probably to save their respective Earths), we do know a few new facts. For one, as we guessed, all those teasers were related to the event and each story resides on a new, freshly carved out iteration of Battleworld. Every teaser we saw represents a story that somewhere, somehow “exists” — and all of them are stories that will be told one way or another, as Alonso teases multiple one-shots and ancillary titles that will go over some of these things and how they’ve come to reside in Battleworld. He also teases that there may be more; after all, “Secret Wars” is a year long event.

But while Battleworld is not precisely the same as the one from the previous iteration of “Secret Wars” (where heroes were brought to battle, as opposed to this place where iterations of different stories seem to reside — I’d guess as remnants of the destruction of their original Earths?), the biggest tease of all was this, in which Alonso hints at some kind of a multi-media crossover (bolding is our own):

“Secret Wars” is an original story, and it’s unprecedented in its scope, because it has ramifications across all of our other media platforms. We’ve never done an event where the all the divisions were in the loop like this; where all were poised to tap into what it does.

Which strikes me as the most interesting bit of information to come out. Marvel has a few divisions, as we know; there is the comics one that we’re here for, but there’s also an animated division that does their cartoons and of course Marvel Studios, which is home to all those big blockbuster films and live action television shows. And don’t forget that in the original announcement, “Secret Wars” was touted as “an opportunity to just not celebrate this in publishing,” but to also “[extend] this in a year-long program into 2016 with our merchandising partners, digital partners and other partners” by Marvel President & Publisher Dan Buckley. There’s definitely going to be quite a lot of plate spinning involved in this one, to say the least.

If “Secret Wars” is as big as Alonso is saying, does that means that something that happens in the comic could in turn be reflected in other ways, such as on the big or small screen? This could be me overthinking and over-reading into his statement of what a media platform is, which I’m fine with, but with so much crossover already in place — a new black Nick Fury and the upcoming “SHIELD” and “Agent Carter” comics in the 616, plus the ever-changing costumes of characters to fit their onscreen personas, so of course shared ramifications could literally just mean more of that — it does stand as an interesting possibility. After all, there is an Earth-MCU (according to the Marvel Wiki, it’s Earth-199999) that could come in conflict with everything else, and Marvel has published MCU-related comics. I doubt we’ll see ramifications of “Secret Wars” in films and TV, especially with the recent Phase-3 announcements, but it’s an interesting possibility — and perhaps quite a viable option for the animated division, given the not-quite-a-crossover with “Spider-Verse” we’ll be seeing soon.

“Secret Wars” is also apparently unfinished as of now, as Alonso notes in the article that “there is still open real estate to be claimed in Battleworld, and any new piece of the puzzle could have a ripple effect on what’s already been claimed. So our next Marvel retreat is going to be very interesting…” Alonso also avoids the talk of this being some kind of Marvel Reboot as many fans and pundits claim it to be, despite Marvel being adamant about it not being so (and, it stands worth noting the current downfall of the Ultimate Marvel U does kind of show that going back to zero doesn’t really pan out all that well in the long run), but hey, you never know.

Still, when spring of 2015 arrives, we’ll be seeing something strange happening at Marvel across the board, to say the least. I’m sure more details will arrive sooner rather than later, but it’ll be interesting to follow the how and why of it all over the next year.


Matthew Meylikhov

Once upon a time, Matthew Meylikhov became the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Multiversity Comics, where he was known for his beard and fondness for cats. Then he became only one of those things. Now, if you listen really carefully at night, you may still hear from whispers on the wind a faint voice saying, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not as bad as everyone says it issss."

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