Secret Wars II Essential Reading

This is an odd thought so many years later, but I'm re-reading Claremont's X-Men and New Mutants, which intersects with Jim Shooter's Secret Wars II. Because of that, I was considering re-reading that story. But it's obviously such a large and cumbersome event where the Beyonder more or less shows up and creates havoc in other books. Some of these events "matter" and others do not.

Here's my sort of thoughts on criteria:

[LIST]
Any story that directly impacts the continuity of the main event. For example, the Beyonder gets the body he uses for the series during Captain America. That would more or less make the story essential. I think there's some stuff with the X-Men and New Mutants that fall into this category as well.[/list]
[list]Any story that is directly referenced as continuing from or during the main Secret Wars II event. For example, at the end of one issue, the Beyonder says he's going to seek out a lawyer, which references that Daredevil is next on the list. Also, during the same issue, he pops off to go visit the Avengers.[/list]
[list]Any story that's just a really good story. I would put the Daredevil story in this list if it wasn't already there.[/LIST]

Any thoughts on what stories you'd put in?

The New Mutants tie ins for sure. He literally kills the entire team. He then resurrects the whole team in Secret Wars II's final issue to use as his pawns. When he brought them all back they all kept the memories of their deaths too.

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I don't know.... I wasn't into comics that much at that time but I got the impression that very little of Secret Wars II is essential reading ;-) I've read the Fantastic Four stuff eventually when I was picking up back issues. I guess in some way that Byrne story in FF #288 would be essential because you see how Doom gets his body back that was destroyed in FF #260. Strictly speaking, he was in another person's body when Secret Wars got underway so the Beyonder grabbed a Doom from the past.


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Doom had to swap bodies with a bystander to the 3 way battle going on with Terrax, the Silver Surfer and Doom since Doom's armor became fused in a blast from Terrax, who had been given a portion of the Power Cosmic.

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