Secret Wars

The next storyline that has been setup and confirmed in the MCU is Secret Wars. This storyline comes to the big screen from a 1980s comic book run and it is no wonder that this will be the final event of Phase 5 because in the comics it is a massive cosmic event with an astounding amount of crossover titles. With 32 issues worth of crossover across 10 different titles Secret Wars is one of the biggest Marvel comic book events to date as well as one of the most impactful. None of the major crossovers we have had since would have really happened without Secret Wars and it all came to pass because Mattel needed a massive event in order to justify the production of super-hero toys. The name Secret Wars was chosen because both wars tested positive in focus groups, after a few other things were decided based off of child responses the writers of Marvel then had to create a story around a toy line.

My skepticism for the execution of this storyline springs from 2 things; it includes the Beyonder and it includes so so so many heroes and villains that simply don’t exist in the MCU as of yet, and still have no hint of being introduced. The very essence of this storyline is that the Beyonder transports a ton of heroes and villains to Battleworld to fight against each other. This is interesting for several reasons because a lot happened in a short period of time, the heroes separated themselves into sub-groups to fight against the villains. The X-Men being the most prominent team it will be hard to think of what or who replaces them when we see this in the MCU. There are also many major, cosmic villains that will disrupt the current MCU timeline, that or they will Ultron level waste cosmic heroes that could be used for a long period of time. For example we know we are going to get repeat appearances of Kang the Conqueror, but what about Galactus? Who plays an obscenely large role in the Secret Wars storyline, as does Doctor Doom who would be really weird to introduce without the existence of the Fantastic Four (who were also largely relevant, at least the male members were…we can discuss the unnecessary sexism of that later).

Its release in 1984 sold more than any other Marvel comic in 25 years, when the sequel was proposed however Marvel’s sales manager denounced the title claiming that the original title didn’t even sell, a statement that was categorically untrue. Marvel knew that it was one of their best selling events and that's why they did in fact publish a sequel, and a third story in a fantastic four run as well as having several tie-in titles. For the most entertaining recap and reimagining of the series I recommend Deadpool’s Secret Secret Wars, it places him in the story that he didn’t originally exist in as well as fixing some inconsistencies in the original release and it's subsequent sequels. Some of the biggest and most relevant aftermaths from the Secret Wars are; She-Hulk taking the Things spot in the Fantastic Four so that Ben could explore the universe as human for a while, the introduction of Spider-Man’s black costume otherwise known as a symbiote, Hulk suffering from a leg injury and the savage side of him re-emerging. All of which have lasting effects on the comic book universe therefore making the Secret Wars one of the most impactful comic book events.

This is one set up that is rather ambitious, and though I am skeptical Marvel has yet to disappoint us on such a major scale. However it is going to take an incredible amount of setup and forethought in order to pull this off.