Secret Wars
January 2, 2006 | 8 Comments
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…
Tags: beyonder, colossus, comic, comics, crossover, doom, eddie brock, fantastic four, gallactus, he-man, heroes, human torch, kitty pride, marvel, mattel, secret wars, shadowcat, she-hulk, spider-man, spider-woman, spiderman, super-heroes, super-villians, symbiote, thing, venom