The Marvel Universe has another set of “Secret Wars” to look forward to in May 2015, following the Avengers “Time Runs Out” storyline’s conclusion in April. This year-long event, written by Johnathan Hickman and drawn by Esad Ribic, was announced tonight in New York City, although at an event in Times Square rather than at NYCC proper. Marvel President & Publisher Dan Buckley told CBR that Hickman’s idea of revisiting the original 1984 mini-series in “a different way” gave the company “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.” Buckley went on to mention Hasbro, Gentle Giant, and Hot Topic as examples of merchandising partners committed to the event.
Since that’s all we know at this point, other than the Alex Ross image Marvel has released, let’s feel free to engage in some free-form speculation on where that different way might lead:
One interesting thing to note that has been somewhat overlooked in the 30 years since the original mini-series is that readers know almost all of the repercussions of that story before issue #1 hit stands. “Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars” (or MSHSW, to simplify things a little) followed a group of heroes & villains plucked from Earth and transported to Battleworld, a patchwork planet literally built before their eyes, to fight in their wars under the auspices of The Beyonder. The April 1984 issues of the main Marvel books all had a last page where their hero walked into a strange building that had materialized in the middle of Central Park, and then vanish. The May 1984 issues had that construct returning and the changed hero emerging. So December 1984’s “MSHSW” #8 may have been where Spider-Man got the black symbiote costume, but readers had already seen it in May 1984’s “Amazing Spider-Man” #252. Now, Marvel figured the mystery of how everyone got from point A to point B would be enough to sell the miniseries, and they were right. But it will be interesting to see if Marvel 2015 takes a cue from Marvel 1984 in that regard.
The first thing that I thought of when I saw the Alex Ross image was that this was the closest Marvel can get to DC’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, in that you have characters from all across the Marvel Multiverse (and whether they call it that or not, it is in fact what they have) fighting each other. You have all the big name characters, but each one of them is a version from a different reality. If we look at the cover of “Crisis on Infinite Earths” #1, we see a similar tactic, although the heroes here as just in distress instead of fighting each other. That cover has Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Lex Luthor, Batman, etc.; but it’s the Earth-2 Superman, it’s John Stewart instead of Hal Jordan, it’s Ultrawoman instead of Wonder Woman, it’s Earth-3 Lex Luthor.
For the 2015 “Secret Wars”, we’re seeing (among many and in no particular order):
- Falc-Cap & Thor (Earth 616)
- “Original” Cap & Thor (Earth ?)
- Miles Morales Spider-Man (Earth-1610)
- Two different Hyperions (Earths 616 & 1610)
- Ghost Rider 2099 (Earth-928)
- American Dream (Earth-982)
- Earth X Iron Avengers (Earth-9997)
- New Universe Nightmask & Starbrand (Earth-148611)
- Shadowline’s St. George & Doctor Zero (Earth-88194)
Those last two jumped out at me as particularly out-of-left-field, as they were from The Shadowline Saga, a short-lived line of superhero books from Archie Goodwin and Marvel’s Epic imprint circa 1989. And since most of the Epic line was at least partially creator-owned, I thought those characters were off-limits. But it turns out they are owned by Epic Comics, which means they are owned by Marvel Comics, and therefore fair game.
As to who the rest might be and how we happen to arrive at this hush-hush conflict, we have now been officially notified that we have seven months to figure that out. Get reading, Internet!
