Secret Wars
// January 2nd, 2006 // My Stuff
After reading and feeling somewhat letdown by House of M, I felt I needed to go back and read the granddaddy of all major company wide super hero crossovers, Secret Wars.
Secret Wars was a fairly revolutionary 12-issue series released in 1984 that existed as a limited series containing many of the most popular super heroes and super villains from the Marvel universe. This series at its conclusion has lasting impacts on the whole of the Marvel Universe. A new Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter) is introduced, Colossus has an affair and breaks up with Shadowcat (Kitty Pride), She-Hulk takes Thing’s place on the Fantastic Four, a couple new villains are introduced, and most significant, Spider-Man gets the black suit.
The black suit is an alien symbiote which he brings back from Secret Wars after his original costume is destroyed in a battle. This suit eventually turns against him and bonds with Eddie Brock becoming Venom. One of the coolest and most popular of all Spider-Man villains. This has lasting impact in story lines even today as both Venom and various spawn/offspring pop-up in issues.
The story line is somewhat simple, not a lot of sub plot. However, I greatly respect the influence this 20+ year old series continues to have on modern Marvel comics.
A depressing thing I learned recently is that this series was created strictly to launch a super hero toy line for Mattel in case the He-Man toys suddenly tanked…
2012 
I do hope that everyone knew that his alien symbiotic suit would turn against him. Hello, its called regular clothes, not ones that can think and BOND with you.
geez, what is up with pete these days!
These days? That was 1985… In fact, when he first gets the costume he thinks it is just cool new alien technology. It’s only later that he learns it is a symbiote and it turns on him.
Another important point is that Spider-Man is blessed with a “spider sense” that allows him to sense danger. For some reason, the symbiote does not set off his spider sense. I’m sure he assumed if it was dangerous he’d know…
I highly recommend checking out the Wikipedia article on Venom.
All great points, but that does not address the existence of Brian Bendis. This guy breathes life into old characters like no one I’ve ever read. I’ve repeatedly spoken about him on here.
In fact, I wouldn’t even be reading comics today if not for him. His Ultimate Spider-Man series is unmatched in the Marvel Universe. Now he’s taken stabs at Ultimate Fantastic Four, Ultimate X-Men, The Avengers, and so many more. Suddenly I’m following heroes that I never had the slightest interest in.
[...] For those who are not familiar, Spider-Man switched to the black suit in the standard continuity after Secret Wars. This was short lived, leading to one of the most successful Marvel villains of all time, Venom. I assume this introduction of the black suit sets up Spider-Man 4 to be centered around Venom as the primary villain. [...]
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