Secret Wars II SERIES BREAKDOWN

[@addicted2baseballrgd21]

Secret Wars was probably one of the best series I've ever read as a kid. When Secret Wars 2 came out, it was, what turned me off to comics. Not only did you have to read the series, you had to read three other comics and then go back to the next issue of Secret Wars. It was such a marketing scam and as a kid I didn't have that much money. It just blew my comic book budget out, and I just said screw it and I stopped reading.

[@CaptainAway]

It's especially frustrating since those other titles often did very little with the tie-in. Sometimes the tie-in was just the Beyonder showing up for a couple panels and then moving on. Thankfully, you can mostly just read the main story and not worry about the others, but Marvel certainly wasn't going to tell people that in advance!

[@Insane-Howl-Cowl]

This is one of those series that makes me go "wait... but ... why?"

[@CaptainAway]

That does seem like the appropriate response to this series

[@ToneTitan]

Comic should’ve been called “Beyonder’s No Good Very Bad Day”

[@CaptainAway]

100%

[@arctrooper999]

That panel with Time Bomb's father smacking her in a red colored room is like Natural Born Killers before the movie was made. Also it would have been funnier if that Reporter Dave was Dollar Bill from the Defenders.

[@CaptainAway]

That panel of Time Bomb is probably the best use of art in the whole series. I'm guessing for Dave that Shooter didn't want to use an existing character since supposedly part of his reasoning for being the one to write Secret Wars was to keep from ruffling feathers of his other creative teams too much.

[@jasoncaldwell5627]

Secret Wars 2 was sorely lacking the great art of Mike Zeck and John Beatty. No idea why they weren't the artists for SW2 except deadline crunch. Al Milgrom was the go to guy for beating the "deadline doom" and he was often called on to provide layouts for slower artists to "finish". No amount of better art was going to save this story though. It sacrificed the best premises of the original Secret Wars- isolated heroes and villains put into a desperate situation and pushed into violence for the entertainment of a godlike being. Anyway, besides the premise, script, paving, message and art, it's a great series! (They also spoiled the reveal of the Silver Centurion Iron Man armor on the cover to issue two).

[@manulaverdiere]

Wow! WTF indeed!!!! Thank you! I was getting to this part in Uncanny X-Men and I didn't wanna read it.

[@CaptainAway]

Yeah, I can't blame anyone for not wanting to read this mess

[@JoeJoe-lq6bd]

I'm pretty sure that the universe created was not supposed to be the Marvel Universe (616) but rather, the New Universe.

[@CaptainAway]

I meant literally our universe, as separate from the Marvel Universe. Part of the idea of the New Universe was that the Marvel Universe had become clearly not our universe by this point and they wanted a Universe more reflecting our own. I'll talk about this more in the next video.

[@dublinbrummie]

I gave on this as a kid of 11 years of age. Got about half way in and was like I'm not liking this

[@CaptainAway]

Understandable. It is kind of hard to read.

[@TevyaSmolka]

Yeah secret wars 2 wasn’t good and really trainwreck of a sequel in my opinion

[@adrianrocha6844]

I think this series should have been called who is the beyonder since this series is about him then the bad shit in it wouldn’t have been so bad and then do a proper sequel

[@TevyaSmolka]

@@adrianrocha6844 lol actually that's not a bad idea i would've been all for that.

[@adrianrocha6844]

Yeah because it’s actually fascinating story as an omnipotent being wanting to understand human beings and human life will say though I do like Molecule Man and Volcana as a couple

[@TevyaSmolka]

@@adrianrocha6844 indeed same here as well ;)

[@adrianrocha6844]

@@TevyaSmolka you like Molecule Man and Volcana as a couple as well nice wish they were still a thing

[@markmcgee2417]

I was thinking there was a Secret Wars 3 but maybe it was a fever dream.

[@CaptainAway]

There... sort of was in the pages of Fantastic Four. I'll be covering that next!

[@JosephRockford]

@@CaptainAwayplus the Hickman version

[@ManchesterBlack863]

Confusing Wars -2

[@jonadams5277]

My, but aren't you a trendy provocateur for interpreting transgender issues in this work. No, the Beyonder doesn't "choose" to represent as male. He chooses to represent in a body based on Capt. America. Other than getting Michael Jackson's hair (which, I recall, was in effort to not be an exact Cap duplicate), he also kept the "factory settings" of Caucasian, his hight, and weight as well as gender. There was no evidence that gender was relevant to him (nor race, etc). The was no soul searching or examination of his/potentially her authentic self. The Beyonder is meant to be looking at things superficially as a complete outsider. Sensitive modern issues like gender identity weren't on his (nor writer Jim Shooter's) radar, especially not in the 1980s. And in the Marvel universe Death is an abstract concept that manifests as what western society would traditionally identify as a woman. It is beyond gender as well; it is the viewer who chooses to project a gender upon it. Just because the death of a man revived death doesn't make him the new Death; he was just a catalyst. Death went on to be just death, with no identity because the concept of death is beyond such classification. (Unless speaking metaphorically, which I assume is the case for Thanos's "love" of Death.) If you want to examine trans issues in comics, look at actual transexual characters, like Kip/Ozma from Marvel and DC's first collaboration, the Treasury Edition "Return to Oz.". Or Cloud from the New Defenders. Those are fascinating looks at characters (and by extension, writers of the time) intentionally handling gender identity issues before it became political and controversial.

[@joeshmoe6798]

Yeah I agree. This guy is trying to say that the Beyonder is ahead of his time, but really the character is obviously mentally unstable. Ignoring clear mental illness is why society is crumbling, but we can just re-label reality to fit our new insane version of how we view the world.

[@smashstuff86]

The art and the tie-ins are what I hated about this series.

[@CaptainAway]

There wasn't much I liked about this series, but the art and tie-ins certainly weren't doing it any favors

[@richardrobbins387]

Conceptually, this series started out promising and sorta spiraled into crap. I don't remember any of the storyline after the Dazzler incident. But the Daredevil and The Thing single comics were decent enough.

[@robertdelisi9473]

"Unhoused"? Come on man, really? I can't listen to this.

[@lrod2004]

Secret Wars II got me out of comics. Felt it was a ridiculous story and a bit of a money grab to have to buy comics that connected to this story, when you may not actually follow those comics. Truly a sequel disappointment.

[@adrianrocha6844]

Yeah this series was a mess I hope you do a video of Secret Wars 2015 that one is really good

[@CaptainAway]

I am trying to get through all of the big Marvel event stories, roughly chronologically, so hopefully I'll be able to get to that one relatively soon!

[@adrianrocha6844]

@@CaptainAway that sounds good and really interesting this will help expand my Marvel knowledge also did you like Secret Wars 2015?

[@CaptainAway]

Yes, it was excellent!

[@adrianrocha6844]

@@CaptainAway it was so good I heard so many good things about it but I had to read all the stuff that came before so I started reading all of Hickman’s stuff from his early Marvel days then Secret warriors, F4, Future Foundation, Avengers, New Avengers, infinity and all of that led to Secret Wars and it was the culmination of all his work and he didn’t disappoint Hickman is one of the few great writers at Marvel Comics today

[@JosephRockford]

it’s a strange story

[@pathevermore3683]

13:25 lets not forget jim shooter didnt want thae gays in his comics so it would be decades before Destiny and Mystique would be portrayed as intended.

[@CaptainAway]

I was unaware it was specifically Shooter that had that problem. It's silly, since Destiny and Mystique are so clearly a couple.

[@jonadams5277]

Jim Shooter wrote a story in Hulk Magazine #23 (cover date October 1980) where Bruce Banner is approached by a male rapist in the shower of a YMCA. Bruce is so petrified over the threat, he could not become the Hulk. He had to talk his way out of it and run away. Once he was outside and calmed down, he because angry enough to Hulk out. (Comically shouting "Hulk hates men's junk!". In context, the "junk" referred to a car that was in his path. But about 20 years after this was published, "junk" became slang for a man's private parts, making the dialogue a double entendre.) So, no, Shooter wasn't encouraging of homosexuality in comics.

[@MythwrightWorkshop]

Secret Wars II had an amazingly fertile premise, but wasn't thoughout well enough to work all the shitout. It was a complete shitshow and dumpster fire.

[@wesjones565]

The first secret wars was good not great. The second one sucked big time! I bought the first two issues and barely read the whole story.

[@fatcat8033]

This was a very boring read .

[@michaelkantner6420]

This sequel was a total pile of shit. I hated the artwork, and the story sucked.

[@Vintage-Bob]

Secret Wars II took the idiocy and infantile story of Secret Wars I to a whole new level of bad!

[@adrianrocha6844]

Secret Wars 1 wasn’t idiotic

[@Vintage-Bob]

@@adrianrocha6844 Yes, it was. Very much so. And infantile writing.

[@adrianrocha6844]

@@Vintage-Bob no it wasn’t Secret Wars 1 holds up really well today it’s really good and if you’re referring to the fact that each line of dialogue has an exclamation mark it was a product of the time but again not enough to make the writing idiotic

[@Vintage-Bob]

@@adrianrocha6844 Secret Wars was garbage. The idea was ridiculous and it was written merely to sell a toy line. The writing was horrendous with characters being written completely out of character, silly dialogue, ridiculous interactions that were out of character, and was overall illogical. Originally, the Beyonder was the manifestation of an entire universe (until they retconned that as they always do when they want to mess things up), which means he is essentially the Eternity of another universe. And yet they escalated the power level of the Beyonder beyond that of Eternity or the Living Tribunal. It was stupid. I was lucky - I grew up on the classics in the 60's and 70's when the writing and art were done by masters. Secret Wars reads like it was written for and by 3rd graders. It's toilet paper, at best.

[@adrianrocha6844]

@@Vintage-Bob yeah you clearly skewed through it and didn’t watch Captain Aways video on the first one and while yes it was meant to sell toys for anyone who doesn’t know that and read this story and then finds that out later it wouldn’t ruin the story because the story has been iconic and more known than its toy line and in universe it’s actually very interesting and it left an impact on the Marvel Universe unlike a lot of events these days that don’t leave an impact at all and the character interactions are fine in all honesty and let’s be real this is the first crossover to throw all these characters together and the interactions were actually in character like the X-Men being a sub group actually makes sense because they mainly did things on their own or worked with other heroes who weren’t the A-listers you reasons aren’t valid to say this is bad at all