Comments on: Why is it Secret WarS?

By: Rodney Favors

Rodney Favors — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:23:26 +0000

This is my favorite comic story ever. I remember getting it off the newstand when I was 13 and I couldn't wait until the next issue came out. It may not be full of astounding social commenatary or real world allegory but it was a great read. I still read them about every year or two and I love it as much now as I did then. Maybe very little of real significance happend but does it have too to be good? Come on, one of the cliffhangers was that Molocule Man dropped a mountain on the heroes. A mountain! How the hell do you deal with a mountain? We'll tell you.......... in a short 30 days. Do you know how long 30 days is to a 13 year old with no internet or Sattelite TV? Lets not forget that Amazing Spider-man 252 came out months before Secret Wars #8 and the only reference to the new black costume was the great asterick and box "See Secret Wars #8". It may not mean much in today's terms when your reading the TPB but back when it came out it was a 12 month "OH SH#T!" moment.

By: John Trumbull

John Trumbull — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 03:30:08 +0000

Because "Secret Wars" sounds better than "Secret Skirmishes".

By: Tom Daylight

Tom Daylight — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 00:08:04 +0000

Norrin, that's my exact problem with it - it was event for the sake of being an event. You say it "meant something" but in point of fact it was actually about absolutely nothing. A bunch of the heroes and villains are taken to an alien planet and forced to fight each other for twelve issues. Err... that's it. Despite the title, there wasn't even a war allegory. With the Marvel of today, you have Secret War (diplomacy vs espionage), Civil War (politics vs civil disobedience), Secret Invasion (the worst nightmares of the War on Terror). I won't deny they're far from perfect but they all make full use of the story to actually say something interesting about the human condition.

By: suedenim

suedenim — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:43:47 +0000

I remember Jim Shooter saying (in the Comic Book Urban Legends, I believe) that Mattel basically mandated the title, saying the combination of words focus-grouped well with boys. The plural is no doubt due to association with Star Wars (where, as it happens, the plural makes some sense, but "Clone Wars" really doesn't.) In any case, I think you have to look at Secret Wars with the eyes of a boy circa 1985. "Let's get all the top Marvel heroes and villains together and have them fight" may seem like a silly premise, but at the time it was something they hadn't really *done* before, and there's still a lot of fun in that premise even if you *have* seen it before. And even today, I can't think of many better "gateway" introductions to the Marvel Universe for a kid.

By: Norrin Radd

Norrin Radd — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:27:43 +0000

Ya know, say what you will about Secret Wars, but you've got to respect the fact that it's STILL talked about after ALL these years (almost 25 of them). It wasn't a work of art, but it was very influential. Personally, I think the good outweighs the bad, because, for all of its flaws, it was possibly one of the most EPIC undertakings Marvel had done up to that point. These comic book "events" are a dime a dozen today, but Secret Wars harkens back to a time when they MEANT SOMETHING. So, kudos to it for that.

By: Nitz the Bloody

Nitz the Bloody — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 05:42:55 +0000

Jesus, next people'll be asking why they don't just make 10 higher...

By: danjack

danjack — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 02:02:22 +0000

Because Doom commanded it!

By: Rene

Rene — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:57:42 +0000

"By the way, I read Secret Wars last summer and it’s universally awful. There is no craft, no direction, no point; no coherent story. It reads like it was commissioned exclusively to tick boxes. The modern event stories are so much better in every respect." Heh. I confess to a certain fondness for the series. It has its moments. But I generally agree. Both Jim Shooter and Mike Zeck are capable of much better. The series feels very rushed and shallow. At best, it's serviceable. I suppose many people like it now for nostalgia or because it has mindless "fun" and a general absence of heaping tragedy on beloved characters, that are in tune with today's generally conservative Internet fandom, though I can see how today's conservatives could even quibble with Colossus's affair with the alien healer while formerly committed to Kitty (but if it had happened today, Colossus wouldn't even have had a thing with teenage Kitty in first place).

By: Jack Norris

Jack Norris — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 23:12:02 +0000

Scavenger: "Given that it’s been in 2 cartoon series and a movie and a dumb revival story, Spider-Man’s black costume was a pretty big change, I think." I think he was referring to the series itself, and big deal or not I think he meant the number of changes didn't amount to what was hyped regardless of the significance of the very few that were made. I'd definitely say that as a comic series in and of itself, Secret Wars was ho-hum to put it extremely generously. Tom Daylight: "By the way, I read Secret Wars last summer and it’s universally awful. There is no craft, no direction, no point; no coherent story." Completely and totally agree in every way. There was nothing good about it. I don't know if I'd necessarily jump from that to praising modern events though, at least as long as Marvel keeps on being so excessively relentless in pumping out Bendis-spawned events that follow IMMEDIATELY upon one another's heels with scarcely a breath in between; that's my single biggest problem with Marvel's recent event-comics strategy, regardless of how I might feel about the ideas behind the stories themselves.

By: Tom Daylight

Tom Daylight — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:11:31 +0000

By the way, I read Secret Wars last summer and it's universally awful. There is no craft, no direction, no point; no coherent story. It reads like it was commissioned exclusively to tick boxes. The modern event stories are so much better in every respect.

By: Tom Daylight

Tom Daylight — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:06:49 +0000

And yet "Secret War" is actually two wars.

By: jayde

jayde — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:49:46 +0000

Y'know, even tho I listed the obvious 'multiple' wars in the Secret Wars, I'd wager that it was the whole Star Wars type naming scheme that drove it, not any deep plot references.

By: Jeff R

Jeff R — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:19:37 +0000

Curious Cat is probably talking to his Union Rep right now...

By: Craig

Craig — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:57:10 +0000

I'm rather disappointed that all the silly answers I thought of (which could've been arranged into some sort of Top 5 list, had I worked at it) were all covered in the preceding comments.

By: SanctumSanctorumComix

SanctumSanctorumComix — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:13:29 +0000

I forget WHERE I read it, but Shooter basically stated that the marketing guys found that KIDS really gravitated towards the words:

"SECRET"
and
"WARS"

A few other titles had been floated around but the marketing guys pulled those two words together because of the demographic.

~P~

By: Scavenger

Scavenger — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:32:15 +0000

David B: beginnings of Magnetoâ€™s Face turnâ€¦

That really started in X-Men 150, and most strongly in God Loves Man Kills.

Michael R: Was there fallout? Spider-Manâ€™s costume changed and She-Hulk joined the Fantastic Four. My recollection was that all this was mostly treated as a big ho-hum by the fans

Given that it's been in 2 cartoon series and a movie and a dumb revival story, Spider-Man's black costume was a pretty big change, I think.

Likewise, Thing leaving the FF was a big deal at the time.

And Magneto got a Wasp shape notch on his bedpost!

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:20:19 +0000

shooter was anticipating â€™secret warâ€™ by bendis and didnt want to get them confused, bendis had been planning all of it since FF#2
--------

lmao...

By: DanLarkin

DanLarkin — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:41:48 +0000

You only thought there was just one war. The rest are secret.

By: David B

David B — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:31:01 +0000

Rene: whoops! yeah, that's what I meant.

By: Graeme Burk

Graeme Burk — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:27:00 +0000

Didnâ€™t Mattel or whoever did the toy line come up with the title?

That was my thought too. Or at the very least, the toyline influenced it, since with the toy you'd have battles over and over again, thus Secret Wars (plus Star Wars probably played a part)