Secret Wars 9 *Spoilers*

[DrTraveler]

So Secret Wars 9 is officially out. Spoilers and thoughts ahead:

spoilers:

Seriously, Spoilers. I warned you. The book basically breaks into three pieces. There's the Doom/T'Challa battle that serves as the finale of Battleworld. Doom wins but realizes that this was all a distraction and leaves without killing T'Challa. He wisely flees to find Owen where he's confronted (verbally) by Susan, who has learned he killed Strange. Doom finds that even though he wants to stay and fix this, he has to move on towards Owen and regretfully leaves Susan and Val. In the Molecule-cave(tm) The Maker has predictably turned on Reed but managed to forget about Molecule Man in his arrogance. Molecule Man saves Reed and does away with The Maker. Doom arrives to confront Reed but finds that Owen has reduced them to the same powerlevel. Owen wants to hear Reed's side too. There's fistcuffs galore as Reed and Doom work through years of mutual history culminating in Doom admitting that Reed would have done a better job of it. Owen agrees, Battleworld appears to end (more on that later) and T'Challa uses the Time Gem to save his life. We move to Act III Here we find that T'Challa has time travelled back to the events of New Avengers Vol 2 Issue 1. Things play out right up to the point where the incursion is discovered only this time there is no incursion, just the birth of the Wakandan space program. Continuity fixed! (More later). We find Reed rebuilding the multiverse with Owen and Franklin's help. Sue, Reed, and the Future Foundation are planning to go on the greatest adventure of all and we learn that Reed is the one to fix Doom's face. It's a silent scene at the end with Doom, but immensely powerful as we see Doom ultimately learned a powerful lesson (think the quiet epilogue to Infinity Gauntlet with Thanos and Warlock). The END!

end of spoilers

[KOSLOX]

So Secret Wars 9 is officially out. Spoilers and thoughts ahead:

spoilers:

Seriously, Spoilers. I warned you. The book basically breaks into three pieces. There's the Doom/T'Challa battle that serves as the finale of Battleworld. Doom wins but realizes that this was all a distraction before killing T'Challa. He wisely flees to find Owen where he's confronted (verbally) by Susan, who has learned he killed Strange. Doom finds that even though he wants to stay and fix this, he has to move on towards Owen and regretfully leaves Susan and Val. In the Molecule-cave(tm) The Maker has predictably turned on Reed but managed to forget about Molecule Man in his arrogance. Molecule Man saves Reed and does away with The Maker. Doom arrives to confront Reed but finds that Owen has reduced them to the same powerlevel. Owen wants to hear Reed's side too. There's fistcuffs galore as Reed and Doom work through years of mutual history culminating in Doom admitting that Reed would have done a better job of it. Owen agrees, Battleworld appears to end (more on that later) and T'Challa uses the Time Gem to save his life. We move to Act III Here we find that T'Challa has time travelled back to the events of New Avengers Vol 2 Issue 1. Things play out right up to the point where the incursion is discovered only this time there is no incursion, just the birth of the Wakandan space program. Continuity fixed! (More later). We find Reed rebuilding the multiverse with Owen and Franklin's help. Sue, Reed, and the Future Foundation are planning to go on the greatest adventure of all and we learn that Reed is the one to fix Doom's face. It's a silent scene at the end with Doom, but immensely powerful as we see Doom ultimately learned a powerful lesson (think the quiet epilogue to Infinity Gauntlet with Thanos and Warlock). The END!

end of spoilers

Doom didn't spoilers:

kill T'challa. T'challa used the time gem and went back to the beginning of an altered NA #1

end of spoilers

Maybe I'm misreading your post but the way it's written suggests that.

[DrTraveler]

So on to some points, non spoilery:

Battleworld: As we know, Battleworld exists in the ANAD Marvel and we see how important it is. Battleworld serves as the initial seed and starting point of everything. This isn't a huge surprise as the nature of Battleworld clearly implied this fate.

Continuity Snarl: A lot has been made of how the Time Runs Out arc that follows the Infinite Avengers and Great Society arc caused a lot of continuity snarl with other things going on. Secret Wars resolves this in the predictable "Infinity Gauntlet" way. I'm guessing if someone gets to sit down with Hickman and Tom B. the explanation is that the main Avengers run happens as printed right up to Infinity. About Infinity things get tougher. I'd imagine that story still happens with some minor modifications. After that Avengers World happens more or less as printed through the first 14 issues while the rest of the Avengers title likely does not. New Avengers simply doesn't happen at all. No spoiler tags here as this is pretty much how the books have to happen for Axis and a lot of the current run to make any sense.

Secret Wars and Avengers: Hickman's Avengers run is clearly the prequel to Secret Wars, but Secret Wars is clearly NOT the ending for the Avengers run. I kept hoping that there'd be an epilogue for his Avengers run but that didn't happen. The finale of Avengers is clearly meant to be their failure and Tony and Steve fighting it out as the world ends. Again, this isn't a spoiler as if the Avengers were going to be a big part of Secret Wars it would have happened by now. It still makes that run annoying. No grand victory for the Avengers. Just failure.

All in all I'm happy with Secret Wars itself, it just further pushes down his Avengers run in my view.

[MindofShadow]

Before killing T'challa?


wut?? How did you misread it that bad?

[DrTraveler]

Doom didn't spoilers:

kill T'challa. T'challa used the time gem and went back to the beginning of an altered NA #1

end of spoilers

Maybe I'm misreading you're post but the way it's written suggests that.

Fixed. I did not mean to imply that but you're right, it does read that way.

[DrTraveler]

Before killing T'challa?


wut?? How did you misread it that bad?

Mistype on my part. I meant to say before he was going to kill T'Challa he realized it was a distraction and left. Fixed up above.

[Anubhavkumarc]

So, events of Time Runs Out never happened in this version of 616?

[InformationGeek]

As an ending for his Fantastic Four work, I'm sure it was fine (though Ben and Johnny got the shaft at the end). As an ending for his Avengers run, it was a letdown, but yet fairly accurate representation of it. Lots of buildup, men making hard decisions, and big threats... but ended in a fairly anti-climactic way. Flip the reset switch, erase pretty much his entire Avengers run from existence (thanks for three years of nothingness I suppose), and it's all good. MAKES IT EASY!!

Also, thank you Ribic for detailing Valeria's butt in the final pages. That was soooooooo needed. *Gag noise*

[marcbret1987]

spoilers:

To be honest, I am bit unclear as to what T'Challa did in the end. The power was transferred to Reed and then Battleworld ended. I guess at this point Reed reconstructs the universe and starts building up a new Multiverse once again, so not really sure how T'Challa going to the past really helps. So, trying to summarize the whole of Hickvengers we would have something like: 1. The Beyonders, this ultrapowerful race we know next to nothing about, create the Molecule Man with the intention of him blowing up and taking the whole of the multiverse with him 2. Doom discovers that plan and together with 616 Owen Reece he starts killing Molecule Men all over the multiverse, eventually causing the incursions to start. Supposedly, the incursions will disrupt the Beyonders' plan of blowing everything simultaneously. 3. The incursions reach 616, at which point Reed and his group of Iluminnati/New Avengers try to do something about it without success. 4. The Beyonders destroy all the entities including the Living Tribunal and Eternity 5. Eventually Doom prepares a weapon merging the bodies of the Molecule Men he has killed and his time machine and kills all of them, which also has the side effect of reducing the number of universes to a mere 22 6. The 616 and 1610 Earths destroy each other 7. Doom takes the power of the Beyonders for himself and constructs Battleworld using the remnants of the Multiverse he has collected. 8. Secret Wars and all that 9. Reed takes Doom's powers and reconstructs the universe as it was before with some changes to allow Marvel to make more money and solve continuity issues. 10. Reed, Sue, Franklin, Owen and the rest of Future Foundation are the architects of this new multiverse My main doubts here would be why does Doom not act immediately after getting the power of the Beyonders. I mean, there are 22 universes after that, couldn't he save them all? It would have also been nice to know more about the Beyonders, Black Swans, Builders and so on. And again, not sure how the time gem comes into play.

end of spoilers

[DrTraveler]

So, events of Time Runs Out never happened in this version of 616?

That's certainly my read of it. I can see Infinity happening as the Builders realize that instead of Incursions you have Earth as the center of multiversal expansion and get pissed about it. But yeah, I think everything post Infinity in Hickman's run is up for grabs. I think Avengers World 1-14 still works but the rest is pretty clearly retconned out.

[Ravin' Ray]

I don't know if you can still call it "616", but at any rate, yeah, T'Challa's returned to an incursion-free Wakanda.

As for the Fantastic Four/Future Foundation… hope springs eternal for their return. In due time.

[DrTraveler]

I don't know if you can still call it "616", but at any rate, yeah, T'Challa's returned to an incursion-free Wakanda.

As for the Fantastic Four/Future Foundation… hope springs eternal for their return. In due time.

Tom B. has said there were no ANAD titles whose announcements were held back because of Secret Wars, but honestly I don't believe him. I think we'll see a new F4/FF book announced soon. Secret Wars leaves you with such a great hook for that book.

[DeathFalcon182]

I re read it, got clarity on lot of things and I like it mote now that I know what I'm talking about for the most part. 1 bit I didn't like was the huge info dump at the end of the series. When fans draw comparisons between Hickman and Morrison for their high concept storytelling, I see their point. I think where Morrison prevails is his dialogues tend to be less exposition heavy than Hickman's. Also he pretty much establishes all the concepts before hand so that his final act of the sory or epilogue is genuine character moments instead of exposition dump. I wish Hickman could've achieved that, it would've made the finale a solid 9/10. Regardless this was a fun ride through and through. I'm looking forward to Hickman's next Superhero project even more.

[DrTraveler]

As an ending for his Fantastic Four work, I'm sure it was fine (though Ben and Johnny got the shaft at the end). As an ending for his Avengers run, it was a letdown, but yet fairly accurate representation of it. Lots of buildup, men making hard decisions, and big threats... but ended in a fairly anti-climactic way. Flip the reset switch, erase pretty much his entire Avengers run from existence (thanks for three years of nothingness I suppose), and it's all good. MAKES IT EASY!!

As I said above, while Avengers is clearly the lead in to Secret Wars, Secret Wars is also NOT the end of his Avengers. That book ends the way it ends: Cap and Tony trying to kill each other as the last incursion happens. It's a real downer ending. The greatest superhero team of all not just fails, but completely implodes at the end. It's going to take a long while to digest that ending.

[hobo]

Yes, seems to be the case, they might delete it again... Though now the book should be on sale already.

Pretty sad and wrong if intentional. I think many (most?) of the comments in that thread were actually posted after the book was available on comixology.