Secret Wars

[Scott]

I have very good memories of this from my comic book reading days. The ending was kind of wonky, but overall I thought it was a great mini series. I just started the ebook version. The 'frames' feature makes reading it much better than just a page scan. The first issue was as good as I remembered. Doom is at his Doomy best, and I always loved the way Galactus sucked the energy out of Ultron ('more energy than an H bomb') like he was doing a shot.

[GRWelsh]

That series came out after I quit reading comics. My primary period of reading comics was from about 1975 to 1980, and then I just sort of stopped buying them. So I pretty much missed the 1980's comics decade except for getting updates from Eric at the time. It wasn't until THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and WATCHMEN that I got back into comics, and I've been an occasional reader ever since. So, I only heard about SECRET WARS after the fact. What I liked was how Jim Shooter made certain characters iconic and gave them their due, like Doom and Cap, or Galactus, like you said, or Spider-Man, who fought the entire X-Men team and made them look stupid. I love that. In some ways SECRET WARS seems like an event that exists to showcase how awesome Doom is. And I think that's great.

Doom. He's stolen the power of the Beyonder. And he's been defeated off panel by Squirrel Girl. What a range.

[Scott]

Yeah, Doom is great in the series. Spider-Man, Magneto, and Ultron also stand out. Ultron is really bad ass in the series. He's taken out twice, but it takes Galactus and the Human Torch with a full blown super nova to do it.

[geneweigel]

I was into it. I still have a flag of the cover from issue #1. I had a t-shirt. I still have all the action figures (shieldless and worn out from getting jostled around in boxes) except Hobgoblin and three foreign releases (Iceman, Electro and Constrictor). Its weird because some of those figures didn't even appear in the series. The only accesory that I had was the TOWER OF DOOM (again not appearing in the series in that form anyway!).

I might still have the actual comics but I loathe going through the stacks as its distracting. I waste days at a time going through them.

The thing about SW is I always think 1982's CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS mini-series had a much better potential line up of teams and solo heroes but executed horribly with the introduction of international heroes that we never heard of and everyone was included in the hero versus hero battles. That killed any notion of the hopes of the first few pages. Which leads me to believe that is what prompted SECRET WARS as a reaction to the hole left by CONTEST.

CONTEST had:

Avengers (Beast, Vision, Wonder Man, Iron Man (Stark), Scarlet Witch, and Captain America)
X men (Colossus, Nightcrawler, Storm (with hair), Wolverine and Cyclops)
Fantastic Four (Thing, Torch, Reed, and Sue)
Alpha Flight (Northstar, Aurora, Snowbird, Shaman, Sasquatch and Vindicator)
Soviet Super Soldiers (Darkstar, Vanguard, Crimson Dynamo and Ursa Major)
Inhumans (Blackbolt, Medusa, Karnak, Lockjaw, Gorgon, Triton, Quicksilver and Crystal)
Defenders (Dr Strange & Devil Slayer/Valkyrie & Hellcat/and unseen Nighthawk and Gargoyle, )
Eternals (Ikaris, Sersi, Ajak & a newly introduced black female Eternal "Titanis"who in MARVEL UNIVERSE #4 is noted as first appearing in ETERNALS #1 but its a big fuck up which MARVEL exacerbated by totally removing her from MU Deluxe #4. Oops!)
Spiderman
Spiderwoman
Moon Knight & Daredevil
Jack of Hearts & Quasar
Kazar the Savage & Shanna the She-Devil
Black Knight & Captain Britain
Powerman & Iron Fist
Dazzler
Red Wolf
Werewolf by Night
Sunfire
Son of Satan
Machine Man
Hulk & Doc Samson
Thor
Arabian Knight - Arab character recently from Hulk comic
Sabra - Jewish character recently from Hulk comic


The international new ones were:
Australia -Talisman
Argentina - Defensor
France - Peregrine
Germany - Blitzkrieg
Ireland - Shamrock
China - the Collective Man.

The teams were Grandmaster vs Unknown:

Winner Grandmaster - Darkstar, Talisman and Daredevil
VS
Loser Unknown - Iron Fist, Sunfire and Invisible Woman

Loser Grandmaster - Defensor, Captain Britain and She Hulk
VS
Winner Unknown - Iron Man, Arabian Knight and Sabra

Winner Grandmaster - Wolverine, Thing and Le Peregrine
VS
Loser Unknown - Vanguard, Angel and Black Panther

Winner Grandmaster - Sasquatch, Captain America and Blitzkreig
VS
Loser Unknown - Storm, Shamrock and Collective Man

Later "unknown" turns out to be Death and its a bet for the life of Grandmaster's brother the Collector and Death cheats the Grandmaster and trades a life for a life; etc.

But it seemed that the core was more inclusive with all the heroes that you already knew but the international thing just crushed it.