Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #1

 

"The War Begins"

Published May 1984

Writer: Jim Shooter

Penciler: Mike Zeck

Inker: John Beatty

Cover Artists: Mike Zeck and John Beatty

What's Going On?
At the end of many Marvel comics in April 1984, the characters found themselves mysteriously drawn to an enormous mechanical construct in New York City's Central Park.  When the heroes approached the construct, they (and it) mysteriously disappeared.  In the comics dated May 1984, the heroes had all returned, some (like the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man) with significant changes.  So what happened in between issues?  Secret Wars.  So let's see what it's all about.

A collection of super heroes (Spider-Man; Hulk; Mr. Fantastic, the Human Torch and the Thing of the Fantastic Four; Wasp, She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye, and Iron Man of the Avengers; Professor Xavier, Storm, Nightcrawler, Rogue, Cyclops, Wolverine, Colossus and Lockheed of the X-Men) find that they have been teleported to an unknown place in deep space.
For reasons they don't understand, the villainous Magneto is included among their numbers.  Nearby, on a separate construct floating in space, a collection of super-villains (Enchantress; Ultron; the Absorbing Man; Wrecker, Thunderball, Piledriver and Bulldozer of the Wrecking Crew; Kang; Galactus; the Lizard; Molecule Man; Doctor Octopus; and Doctor Doom) has also been gathered.

As the various heroes and villains are adjusting to their situation, they witness the galaxy around them beign destroyed by a mysterious force.  Only one star remains, and the rubble from the universe is brought together to form a hodgepodge patchwork planet. 

Just after witnessing this, a disembodied voice instructs the heroes and villains: "Slay your enemies and all your desires shall be yours." 

Galactus, sensing that this creature from Beyond actually has the power to do anything, demands that it cure the endless hunger that drives Galactus to consume entire planets for food.  He is unwilling to engage in battles that the one from Beyond desires, and instead flies toward the light that represents the Beyonder.  The mighty Galactus (and Doctor Doom, who wanted a closer look at the Beyonder) is swatted away with no apparent effort from the Beyonder.

The heroes and villains (including Galactus and Doom) are then transported to the new planet's surface.  After deciding who would lead each side (Captain America for the heroes and...well, no one in particular for the villains), the heroes braced for the incoming assault from the villains.

Sub-Plots, oh the Sub-Plots:
- While most of the villains are buying into the idea of killing their way into the Beyonder's good graces, Doctor Doom is awed by the sheer scope of the Beyonder's power.  He wants to understand the power and dismisses the notion of competing for the chance of benefiting from it.

- For reasons unbeknownst to anyone except the Beyonder, Magneto is categorized as a "hero."  Most of the heroes accuse Magneto of being a villain, but the X-Men (specifically Xavier and Cyclops) make the unusual choice to defend him.

- Realizing that the other super-villains are too petty for his tastes, Doctor Doom tries to conference with his nemesis, Mr. Fantastic.  When he encounters the other super-heroes treating him like a common villain, Doom abandons his attempt to meet with Richards and goes his own way.


Writing!
I don't know if I've ever read anything else Jim Shooter has written, so this series will give me a non-Claremontian experience for a change.  How is the writing?  Well, there are a few bright moments.  I think Shooter does a decent (not great, but decent) job with Doctor Doom.  Most of the other characters are pretty two-dimensional, but Doom actually acts against expectations, which is great.

I also really liked the Galactus/Ultron interaction.  It did a good job setting up the Molecule Man for anyone unfamiliar with him, it made Doom look good, and it showed off how powerful Galactus is.  When Galactus was eventually defeated by the Beyonder, this made the Beyonder seem invincible.  That is how you build up a threat in a story.

As far as characterization goes, though, Shooter played everything super-simple and ignored a lot of established character developments (like Xavier being able to walk or Storm leading the X-Men).  I guess I'll have to wait and see if that becomes irritating or not.

I also liked the nod Shooter gives to Claremont's nascent Magneto redemption arc (remember, Magneto hadn't appeared in-continuity outside of a flashback since Uncanny X-Men #150) by having Magneto categorized as a hero.  Of course, Shooter goes out of his way to make Magneto sound like a jerk, but given the cringe-worthy dialogue he gives Wolverine, maybe that's just what he thinks "cool" sounds like.

Art!
Mike Zeck did some fantastic work in the 80s --- his cover art, in particular, is great --- and he was given a hefty task with this series.  There are a LOT of characters here and this is a twelve-issue series delivered monthly.  Not surprisingly, Zeck takes some shortcuts,  Take a look at the background in this introductory scene:

Don't get me wrong --- there are a lot of cool, poster-worthy scenes.  I think Zeck and John Beatty did a good job, given the time and space limitations (34 characters in one issue?!?).  I am curious if their work suffers as the series goes on, though.

Retrospectively Amusing:
- The devils in the details, part one: Cyclops and Rogue were not with the X-Men when they entered the Beyonder's mechanical construct in Central Park.  For that matter, I doubt Galactus or Ultron were in NYC that day, either.  So...if the Beyonder was just teleporting people away from whatever they were doing, why even bother with the Central Park device?

- The devil's in the deails, part two: While the X-Men are all shown changed from their street clothes into their hero threads, Xavier was given a suit, blanket, and put in a wheelchair.  Please note that Xavier had recently started walking again in the pages of Uncanny and New Mutants just prior to this series.  Congratulations on being selected for Secret Wars, Chuck!  Have a seat!

- How short would this battle royale have been if Galactus had not A) decided to not compete and B) destroyed Ultron?

- Wolverine is a huge jerk (1 of 4): Isn't it weird how awful the Avengers are to the X-Men in this issue?  It's not like Cyclops hasn't met them on several occasions by now.

- Wolverine is a huge jerk (2 of 4): I think all of Wolverine's lines in this issue have him waving his claws around.

- Wolverine is a huge jerk (3 of 4): By the way, has anyone noticed Wolverine's claws?

Wolverine is a huge jerk (4 of 4): I love the disrespect Wolverine is giving Captain America here.  I don't think I've ever seen him show anything more derisive than grudging respect in any other team-up.  P.S.: Wolverine has claws.

Worth Noting:
This is the first mention (although it doesn't take physical form) of the Beyonder.

A Look Back at X-Men and the Micronauts

Of all the completely nonsense crossovers X-characters have had over the years and there have been plenty), X-Men and the Micronauts excited me the least.  I can enjoy a dumb comic book story as much as the next person, but the facts of this series make it sound positively wretched.  The X-Men (Marvel's hottest property at the time) having a limited series crossover (so, maybe it could be an "event" or important to future stories?) with a licensed property (okay, so it's unlikely that anything important or "event"-ful would happen with characters that Marvel may lose the rights to) based on a toy line (ugh, but Innerspace Online is a great resource if you want to learn more about the toys) that had been discontinued a few years earlier?  That sounds positively wretched.  I can't be alone in that reaction, because I can find no proof that Marvel ever reprinted this story in any form.  I wasn't aware of the toys as a kid, so this doesn't even hold the promise of nostalgia for me.  What are the chances that this is enjoyable?

Marvel house ad, circa 1984

Slightly different pencil-and-ink version of the house ad

Well, let's look a the story first.  Charles Xavier's repressed "dark side" manifests itself as a destructive entity (fittingly called The Entity) that decides to massacre everything he finds in the Microverse, with the ultimate plan of taking over Xavier's body and the "real" world.  Why did The Entity show up in the Microverse?  How did it get a corporeal form?  Why did it have the ability to create massive destruction, when Xavier's ability is telepathy?  The bad news here is that none of these questions is answered in this series.  The good news is that nobody bring them up, so at least the only people that ask these frustrating questions are the ones who wasted their time to think about the miniseries in the first place; I'm imagining that number is pretty small.  Thanks to some plot contrivances (characters switching bodies, Kitty Pryde's powers acting in a way they have never worked before or since, mind control, etc.), we see the X-Men and Micronauts fight and later team up.  And hey, they win!  The only casualties are the unnumbered masses in the Microverse, the Micronaut Bioship (AKA Biotron), and the innocence of a few of Xavier's younger students (more on that later).

So...story-wise, it's not great.  Surprisingly, it's not truly bad, aside from having a ridiculous premise and enemy. I think the characters come off reasonably well-represented (thanks to the regular writers of each title, Chris Claremont and Bill Mantlo, participating), and there were some fun and clever moments.  I really liked how they pulled off having the small-scale Micronauts fight against the X-Men (and later, the New Mutants).

And in case you were wondering whether or not Wolverine's claws can cut the armor of Micronauts villain Baron Karza, you finally have an answer: yes.  Also, it is pretty funny to see Wolverine go full-out against a character that is maybe six inches tall.

I am not a huge Jackson "Butch" Guice fan, but it was kind of cool for the then-current artist on Micronauts to get a chance showing them off on a (presumably) larger stage.  At least readers that are unfamiliar with the Micronauts (like me) can be reasonably assured that the characters are being drawn on-model.  I found some interesting inked pages online that show off Guice's skills.  He wasn't doing a ton, detail-wise, but he can tell a story, at least.

How essential is X-Men and the Micronauts? I can't say definitely for Micronauts fans, but I'm gonig to go out on a limb and say "not at all."  A lot happened to the Microverse in this series --- a seemingly huge portion of the population was massacred --- and the balance of power between Karza and the Micronauts seemed to be heavily swayed toward the good guys.  Also, the Micronaut Bioship died!  However, if you search for "Bioship" online, hoping for a character biography or anything like that, you come up short.  For whatever reason, he was also known as Biotron, and if you look up info on him, this miniseries is not mentioned.  This may be because Micronauts only lasted two issues more after this miniseries ended, but it's still damned odd.  Why even bother to kill him off?

As for X-Men fans, X-Men and the Micronauts holds an interesting place in history.  It is similarly unessential reading for X-fans, but it is one of the earlier instances of a writer highlighting Xavier's dark side.  It wasn't the first time --- Uncanny X-Men #106 is the most obvious precursor --- but it may have helped plant the seeds that eventually resulted in the infamous Onslaught storyline in the 1990s.  More interesting to me, though, are the implications that come from the fact that this series is never mentioned by anyone, ever, in any other X-Men comics.  Think about all the potentially disturbing things that happen in this series: body swapping for the teenage Kitty, the X-Men killed a bunch of people, and Xavier was revealed to be a sexual predator with a taste for underage girls.  Let's take another look at those gross sexual scenes with Xavier:

"Other aspects of your...personality --- intrigue me."  Okay, maybe that's more innuendo than anything else, but Karza/Kitty spells out that this is a lusty villain, so it's not like the grossness is taken out of context.  The scene with Psyche was far, far worse, though.

 

At least The Entity got distracted before going too far with Kitty.  Here, Dani basically has her mind raped.  There isn't much grey area here, either; the only real argument you can make would be the degree of how much Dani was violated.  Since Chris Claremont co-wrote this series while writing both Uncanny and New Mutants, I guess we're left to assume that Xavier basically mind-wiped this entire experience from the minds of his students, and that's why they never seemed traumatized by it?  I guess the other explanation would be that this is entirely out of continuity, but that's a less interesting reading.

What's the bottom line?  Well, X-Men and the Micronauts is a completely unnecessary miniseries that never needed to happen.  I'm assuming that Claremont and Mantlo wanted to work together, and had hoped this would improve the sales of Micronauts.  It didn't, and it looks like the only people who ever thought about this series after 1984 are retro reviewers on the interwebs.  If it wasn't for the truly awful decision to make Xavier's dark side into statutory rape (and I'm being generous with that description), this would be an inoffensive series that ends with the X-Men shrugging off all the death that they caused.  But that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.  I guess.

Mighty World of Marvel (Vol. 2) #12

"Endgame"
Published May 1984
Writer: Alan Moore
Penciler: Alan Davis
Inker: Alan Davis

What's Going On?
The battle between The Fury and Mad Jim Jaspers continues, and they seem evenly matched.  Finally, The Fury realizes that Jaspers warps reality around him; if he is in a void, like what was left of The Fury's original dimension, there would be nothing to warp.  The Fury transports them both there and executes Jim Jaspers with extreme prejudice. 

Seeing that The Fury has been weakened, Captain Britain attacks, but either The Fury is too strong still, or CapBrit is too weak from the Jaspers-and-Fury beating he recently took.  Watching Cap falling to The Fury triggers some repressed rage in Captain UK, who takes up the battle and beats The Fury into a purple puddle.  The Fury is finally dead.

Sub-Plots, oh the Sub-Plots!
- The Crazy Gang, created by Jaspers last issue, escapes to parts unknown after the Jaspers/Fury battle ends.

- Saturnyne takes a blood sample of the dead Jim Jaspers for unstated, but probably not altruistic, reasons.

- After The Fury is defeated, Captain Britain, Captain UK and Saturnyne find themselves teleported to Otherworld for Merlin's funeral.

Writing!
It's another issue mainly devoted to fight scenes, but I have to admit it's well done.  Moore has been building up to this battle for so long that it is cathartic to see the finale of the Jaspers/Fury fight AND the Captain Britain/UK fight vs. The Fury.  I had wondered after previous issues how CapBrit could stand up to either Jaspers or The Fury, given their power, but Moore did a fantastic job making the final conflict plausible; the ending was not obvious (to me, anyway), but still felt true to the known limits of these characters.  One of my favorite bits was how we followed The Fury's logic during the battle with Jaspers, as it prepared for the coup de grace. 

Art!
More great work from the "other" Alan on this title.  While there could be some improvement in the coloring department (a common complaint for this era), Davis' action scenes are consistently great.  Even the challenging design of Captain Britain's torn mask/flowing hair combo looked good here, to say nothing of the very cool Jaspers/Fury fight and the dismembering of The Fury. 

I've been a fan of Davis' graceful action scenes for many years, but this is a great example of how well he can do "savage."

Retrospectively Amusing:
- The scene that triggers Captain UK into action is a panel similar to --- but not an exact copy of --- the scene back in Daredevils #7 where Captain UK's lover is murdered by the Fury.  It's interesting that Alan Davis chose not to just photocopy the old art for this scene.  Maybe that wasn't a thing back in '84?

Here's the original scene, from Daredevils #7.  They are certainly similar, but definitely different.

Worth Noting:
- The Fury and Jim Jaspers both die in this issue.