keepsmagnetoaway

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Secret Wars 8 (December 1984)

Jim Shooter/Michael Zeck & John Beatty

This - the most famous and impactful issue of Secret Wars - features fully three pages with any X-Men on them, most of which is Colossus preparing to cheat on Kitty. It hasn't happened yet, but it's coming.

Almost all of the issue, then, is just the Avengers fucking about, which culminates in the thing that makes this the famous issue.

Surely nothing bad will ever come of this!

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Secret Wars 7 (November 1984)

Jim Shooter/Michael Zeck & John Beatty

Weve made it past the halfway mark, so that's something. The cover of this issue teases "the X-Men's greatest battle", which turns out to be four pages of chaotically arranged tussling with the third-string villains.

You can tell when a battle isn't doing much for the narrative when the characters have to verbally recap exactly what it has supposedly done for the narrative right after it ends.

Just to check in on what's going on elsewhere in this issue, we get this remarkably sadistic beating of She-Hulk for no very good reason...

...and also Spider-Woman is here now? Not the regular Spider-Woman, a new Spider-Woman from a different universe.

This is the debut of Julia Carpenter, the second Spider-Woman (the character Sydney Sweeney plays in noted cinematic milestone Madame Web). Why does Jim Shooter keep adding characters to what appeared to be a closed, tightly constructed setting? I don't know, man.

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Secret Wars 6 (October 1984)

Jim Shooter/Mike Zeck & John Beatty

For a comic whose rationale is "everybody has a big fight, it's not complicated" there sure is a lot of sitting aroung talking and not very much fighting in these issues. Effectively one interesting thing happens in this issue and it is - of all things - a pay-off of the events of Dazzler 9.

Klaw - that guy Dazzler fucking murdered - is alive again, thanks to Dr Doom futzing arount with one of Galactus' machines. He's also completely deranged. I love Doom's worn-out expression at the realisation that they're talking about fucking Dazzler.

Yeah. Practically nothing else happens in this issue, especially with the X-Men: Xavier is reduced to spying on other events just to keep him relevant.

Still, if it turns out that the action of Secret Wars all hinges on Dazzler's past crimes, I will die laughing.

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Secret Wars 5 (September 1984)

JIm Shooter/Bob Layton & John Beatty

Oh boy, this sounds good!

This is a 24-page comic. The X-Men strike back on page 20. Most of the issue is just recaps with Johnny Storm and the hot telepathic alien healer, whose psychic powers include 'useful colour coding'.

Once they do - over all of two pages - Colossus is immediately injured and brought before the healing hottie.

Well this fucking sucks. There's a vague implication here that this is all part of her powers, but Colossus (who, incidentally, is drawn terribly, looking nothing like he usually does) immediately tossing aside Kitty kind of sucks. Maybe Magnetos analysis of the situation is right and he should have been allowed to die.

I mean, no, obviously, but it's very funny to see Magneto call Logan a cretin and then Xavier (who also looks nothing like Xavier) be like "you're BOTH cretins".

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Secret Wars 4 (August 1984)

Jim Shooter/Bob Layton & JIm Beatty

Is it a good sign if you switch artists three issues into your massive crossover series? This is just one of many beloved massive crossover series traditions that Secret Wars invented.

Most of this issue is taken up with an irrelevant and uninteresting fight between the main hero faction and the main villain faction, but there's a bit of X-content in the back half, when they finally link up with Magneto and he and Xavier do some of their usual Socratic "what even is a Hitler, anyway" stuff.

They actually outright invoke Hitler this time, too, in a completely infantile debate about "morality". This is all very dumb - although less dumb than the rest of the issue, which is about the Avengers trying to lift a mountain off themselves - but hey, the more Magneto the better, I guess.

Where is any of this going? It's issue 4 and the set-up still hasn't been properly explained or explored. The other good guys find some (local? native?) aliens at the end of this issue and they're mostly just interested in fucking them, which is about as close as we get to story development here.

It's a 12-issue series, Jim! Get a move on!

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Secret Wars 3 (July 1984)

Jim Shooter/Michael Zeck & John Beatty

The X-Men finally do something worthwhile this issue: they fucking leave.

And they mindwipe that dweeb Peter Parker while they're at it.

I guess you could say this is "counterproductive" or "obviously stupid" or "totally out of character" but honestly I don't care, because a) it's very funny and b) I get to enjoy the X-Men doing their own thing without having to think about Reed Richards. Displeased at the suspicion they have encountered from the Avengers so far, the X-Men simply hit the bricks in this issue to go and hang out with Magneto, and who can blame them? Magneto, unfortunately, is busy.

Awwwww yeah. That's Wasp - Janet van Dyne - and while she subsequently claims this was a ruse to find out what Magneto is up to, we all know that's not true.

Dr Doom, meanwhile, who has no babes of his own like Magneto, is forced to manufacture some.

These are Titania and Volcana, aka Mary MacPherran and Marsha Rosenberg. Now, I know, I know that I said I was just going to talk about the X-Men bits, but we need to talk about these girls. I am obsessed.

Just so we're clear - that panel above with them in the weird science chambers is their first appearance. Not their first appearance in Secret Wars - their first appearance ever. Who are they? Why are there two women here? Why have they been brought to Battleworld along with Earth's major heroes and villains (and the Wreckinn Crew?) How does Doctor Doom know how to turn them into supervillains? Why is any of this happening?

Literally none of these questions are answered in this issue. Some of them were, I believe, answered in a 2005 issue of She-Hulk instead, which is a hell of a cliffhanger.

It's pretty clear that the real reason they're here is they either made Jim Shooter horny, he figured he could sell action figures of them, or both. And really, who can blame him for that?

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Secret Wars 2 (June 1984)

Jim Shooter/Michael Zeck & John Beatty

Pop quiz: who are all the villains on the left-hand side of this image?

You can also check back to the last image of the previous post to see them all a bit closer up. You've got Dr Octopus and the Lizard, sure. You might recognise Enchantress. Possibly you know that the guy leading the charge is Kang. But are you aware of - and can you outline the differences between - Absorbing Man and Molecule Man? Do you know the names and personalities of the four - four! - members of the Wrecking Crew?

Of course, there are some decent and interesting villains in this book. As you can see from what Kang is saying there, they've just all immediately been separated from the main group. Galactus is here! Ultron is here! (Galactus straight-up killed him last issue, but he's here, technically.) Doctor Doom is here! Magneto is here! Galactus is so powerful he doesn't even have to bend his knees! Doctor Doom approves!

This issue is oddly neglectful of its heroes - including the X-Men, and I know I said these posts were going to focus on their role in Secret Wars, but in this issue they simply barely have one. Instead it tries to makes its villains interesting and sets up their various agendas - after a certain amount of back-and-forth most of them end up back under Doom's command - as they should be, since Doom rocks - while Galactus just ignores everything (extremely valid).

Magneto, meanwhile, is off doing hot girl shit alone.

This is also an extremely valid response to this whole hot mess, and we salute you, Magneto.

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Secret Wars 1 (May 1984)

Jim Shooter/Michael Zeck & John Beatty

And so, at last, it is time to talk about Secret Wars.

Oh, excuse me-- Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars TM. My mistake.

Alright. So. Throughout 1984 (this first issue is dated May, but it was on sale in January) Marvel ran a mega-crossover series called Secret Wars, in which all its major heroes and a number of villains (some major, some...not) were spirited away to an alien planet called Battleworld by an entity called the Beyonder and made to fight there. (Sidenote, but Nightcrawler there is saying "ach nein zein" which... is not German. "Zein" is not a German word).

Secret Wars is...divisive, shall we say? And I'm pretty firmly on the "this shit. is so ass." side of the divide. For my sanity and yours I intend to mostly focus on the X-Men aspects of it while we read it (it is, in particular, a major waystation in the ongoing Magneto redemption arc), but for this first issue I guess I'd better talk about it in general.

Secret Wars is often seen as fatally compromised by sheer commercial cynicism, right from the get-go. Jim Shooter, Marvel Editor-in-Chief, wanted a big series that would appeal to kids and sell toys, and decided he ought to write it himself. Market research told him that "secret" and "wars" were the title words that kids most liked, so he called it... Secret Wars. Its plot is totally barebones, a manifest excuse to smash everyone together for a big fight.

The thing is, this didn't have to be bad. It could have been cynical but ultimately a good time. And there absolutely are some fun moments, like this nice little sequence.

What's funnier and I think less discussed about Secret Wars - which is widely but wrongly referred to as Marvel's first big crossover event - is how much of a retread it was of Marvel's actual first big crossover event, the shockingly bad Contest of Champions (right down to them both actually having Marvel Super Heroes as a prefix to their titles, just so nobody could miss the point).

In Contest of Champions, a diverse array of Marvel characters is whisked away by a powerful cosmic entity to a strange space station, where they must compete for unclear but immense stakes, all of it a thinly veiled excuse for some crossover fun. In Secret Wars, a diverse array of Marvel characters is whisked away by a powerful cosmic entity to a strange space station, where they must compete for unclear but immense stakes, all of it a thinly veiled excuse for some crossover fun.

Contest of Champions, as we saw at the time, was actually meant to be an Olympics tie-in comic that was severed from its origins. The whole thign was somewhat botched, but Marvel evidently thought they had something going, and essentially redid it at four times the length two years later, creating Secret Wars. The big difference, really, was bringing the villains along and letting them have some fun too.

As you can see from some of these panels, they brought a decent art team - Michael Zeck had mostly been drawing Captain America up to now, and he has a clear, powerful style, although I don't love his faces. The whole thing was ultimately eventually very influential (and a few big things happen in it that impact the Marvel world for decades - most notably, Spider-Man picks up the Venom symbiote here, though none of that actually played out for several more years), but that's not necessarily because it was anything good or new - it just sort of had to be influential because it got pushed so hard, creating the template for mega-crossovers that still bedevil us to this day.

So, yeah, this thing ran a full twelve issues, becomings more cynical and less compelling as it went, and from here on we'll mostly just focus on the X-Men side of things, but that's the context. Sorry, the Marvel Super Heroes Context TM.

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New Mutants 17 (July 1984)

Chris Claremont/Sal Buscema, Tom Mandrake & Kim DeMulder

There they all are!

The Hellions fight each other a bunch, which, I guess we're meant to be "hmm, see, they can't stick together, that's their undoing" but then again the X-Men do this all the time too, so, yeah. Also, it's hot.

Honestly the sexual tension at the Massachusetts Academy is simply off the charts at all times.

This is a totally chaotic, totally horny issue that is a nightmare to recap but a blast to read.

It's a shame when it all comes to an end, really, but the teaser for next issue sets up the fact that New Mutants has plenty more fun to come - Bill Sienkiewicz is finally coming on board to draw it, for one thing.

We, however, are going to have to wait a bit for all that, as we now pivot to reading Secret Wars, Marvel's first real mega-crossover and one with a... shall we say "mixed" reputation and legacy? Hmm.

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New Mutants 16 (June 1984)

Chris Claremont/Sal Buscema, Tom Mandrake & Kim DeMulder

We've been waiting on the arrival of the Hellions for some time, on this blog - really, since they were forecast in this terrible Emma Frost orign story (no, the other terrible Emma Frost origin story). But this is their first actual appearance, and it's a really fun one, because villain counterpart teams are simply automatically fun: almost as fun as Emma Frost being cunty with a brandy glass the size of her head.

Corporate needs you to find the differences etc.

Where was I? Right, yeah, this is a fun issue, full also of good effects with light and dark, almost like a theme or something.

Could these be...dark, twisted reflections of the New Mutants themselves??!?

We actually don't get a look at a full line-up for the Hellions this time arond, but they all pop individually with a suite of absolutely bonkers powers, and personalities to match. Comfortably the weirdest of them is Marie-Ange Colbert, who can bring tarot cards to life.

Storywise the most significant of them, though, is Thunderbird (as he's known in this issue): we don't learn it yet, but this is the embittered younger brother of John Proudstar, with Claremont reaching back nearly a decade to his refounding of the X-Men and pulling out a story thread that had long lain untouched. Great stuff.

I love a team, I love baddies, I love suites of weird powers: I love this issue.

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New Mutants 15 (May 1984)

Chris Claremont/Sal Buscema & Tom Mandrake

Totally insane opening panel. No notes.

At the end of the last Uncanny issue, Kitty was kidnapped by Emma Frost while the main X-Men where whisked away to crossover-land for Secret Wars, which neatly leaves the interns as the only ones available to rescue her, which is what the next few issues recount.

It's nice to have Emma Frost back, serving full cigarette-holder cunt. Her appearances aren't always high-quality but there really is no-one like her, and in these issues we get the ful reveal of her rival school set-up, the Massachusetts Academy, which we glimpsed in Uncanny when Kitty seemed briefly set to move there. Now she's back, without a choice.

This is obviously a great idea, and a great plotline: much like the Morlocks are an obviously good idea for an underground counterpart to the X-Men, so the idea of an evil academy to reflect the good one is also just an absolute gimme of a plotline, and it's amazing it took the writers so long to get to it.

I'm getting a little ahead of myself, mind you - this issue actually loses momentum halfway through with a slightly pointless bit of the main team running around the Mansion and then the New York bus terminal. I was amused and baffled by this YEARG thing, which is conceptually a nice bit of panel design but actually takes ages for the reader to make sense of, because, uh, YEARG isn't a word.

But, yeah, this is some promising stuff! Next issue: the Hellions!

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Uncanny X-Men 180 (April 1984)

Chris Claremont/John Romita Jr, Dan Green & Bob Wiacek

We're briefly back to the mainline series to set up the next big thing (more on that at the end of this post) and at this point I'm ready to call it: the art in this book is simply bad now.

What is the spatial relationship of these two characters? What are there facial expressions? And how do human arms work? Will we ever know the answers to these mysteries?

In places - as with these panels, and as we saw in the recent Kitty-and-the-Morlocks issue - there's a scratchy energy to some of the art that works well, but as soon as it slows down and becomes detailed it also becomes terribly flat and stiff.

Anyway, aside from all that, this is purely a set-up issue, with two different set-ups: Kitty, as you can see in that horrible last panel, gets nabbed by Emma Frost - a story continued imminently in New Mutants - while the rest of the team get zapped into some other reality for Secret Wars, the long-awaited (and by me long-dreaded) mega-crossover. We're going to read the former and then the latter.

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New Defenders 131 (May 1984)

JM DeMatteis & Peter B Gillis/Alan Kupperburg

I'm as surprised as you are about this, but this is one of the single best issues I've ever read for this project.

With this issue, Peter B Gillis takes over as the writer for this series, and if it's all as good as this issue then I am psyched. This is basically a comedy issue in which a mad scientist creates an incompetent super-villain, who is then foiled by an equally incompetent super-hero while the New Defenders look on.

All of this could easily have been a huge, silly swing-and-a-miss, but instead - with the old EC horror-style art and the extremely snappy writing - it's a triumph. There's so much good stuff here. Hank goes to give a talk about being a superhero and Bobby introduces himself as his boyfriend to ward off some groupies! The fans need to know about this!

Hank then kills it on stage. Remember how he used to be the funny, quippy one! He is again - but, in line with the self-doubt we've seen him show in Defenders, he does all this while also acknowledging to his pals his deep stage fright.

Then they're interrupted by a total idiot who is the son of a canonical, D-list 60s Spider-Man villain: he's borrowed his dad's old suit without permission in an attempt to become a hero.

And then ends up foiling the villain who we saw created at the beginning, who is - naturally - an obsessive Beatles fan on a rampage.

This stuff is just totally delirious. I adore it.

On paper (so to speak), this sounds like it might be kind of terrible, like I say, but this is just such a non-stop issue that it carries you right with it. After the overly plotty mess of the last few, this has made me insanely excited for the change of writers.

Can Gillis be this good all the time? I guess I doubt it, but unfortunately we won't find out for a while, as we're now off to read some other stuff. Onward!

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New Defenders 130 (April 1984)

JM DeMatteis/Mike Zeck & Kim DeMulder

Another remarkably good cover here, from Frank Cirocca this time.

As for the insides...total chaos. Quite fun, but essentially impossible to follow.

Still, all this chaos ends this issue, and slightly more normal service is promised in a coda that assigns the gang an exciting new headquarters, designed by...Candy Southern!

She's an architect! He's an asshole!

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New Defenders 129 (March 1984)

JM DeMatteis/Don Perlin & Kim DeMulder

This is a very X-Men issue, in that it begins with the New Defenders fighting the New Mutants.

Unfortunately, this is all a tease, as the New Mutants turn out to be an illusion after like three pages. The plot here has become massively, unsustainably complex. There's a rather brilliant recap page attempting to sort it all out, taking advantage of the fact that the team have become trapped in weird power cubes...

...to try and actually make this make sense, but although the layout is wonderfully clever it obviously still can't handle all this complexity, as the comically complex footnotes concede.

There's actually a lot of brilliantly complex montage here by Don Perlin: but, again, it's all in pursuit of a berserkly complex plot driven by a series of fourth-rate villains.

This extends to a great use of an ominous countdown in the last few pages.

Don Perlin, you may recall, was the artist on the old Defenders, and his return here is, I think, a one-off, but it's impressive as hell. Shame that the story has so entirely crowded out the characters; this issue promises that this storyline ends next time, so maybe things will pick up.

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New Defenders 128 (February 1984)

JM DeMatteis/Alan Kupeprberg & Mike Mignola

Hell of a cover on this issue, by Carl Potts & Kevin Nowlan.

That's sort of the best bit, though. Oddly enough, the incredibly atmospheric shading on that cover isn't the work of Mike Mignola, who did ink the interior of this issue: but the interior is dull as hell. Go figure.

This issue, the metastatizingly complex plot overtakes and stifles the quite enjoyable team-dynamics stuff, leaving baffling pages full of Secret Empire callbacks, Roman soldiers and god knows what else. I just don't think a panel like this is ever going to be a good sign about where a comic is headed.

Also, there's no Candy Southern!

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New Defenders 127 (January 1984)

JM DeMatteis/Sal Buscema & Alan Kupperberg

Candy Southern update: she's in this one!

She joins the boys for a meeting with Bobby's parents which, as with so much Bobby stuff, is impossible now not to read about him being in the closet (it's ostensibly about him going back to hero-ing, of course).

KRA-KKK is the sound of the closet shattering. Anyway, this issue is a little split between this kind of fun stuff with the X-boys, which I really love - it reminds me of good times reading the very earliest 60s issues - and unbelievably overcomplex plot stuff like this.

This is all rather... a lot, and recapping it would drive me simply insane, so I won't. I leave you instead with poor old Candy getting left behind by the boys, again.

Poor Candy!