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Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars was a 12-issue series from 1984-85 that gathered up most of the heavy hitters from the Marvel Universe (heroes and villains) to do battle on a cobbled-together planet in the far reaches of space at the behest of - who, exactly? About the only words uttered by it were the ones that kicked off this column and no great conclusions were ever reached in its pages. Archvillain Dr. Doom briefly usurped power from “The Beyonder” only to see his psyche crumble in the process, allowing the godlike figure to reclaim powers from Doom and banish him elsewhere. Spider-Man got his black suit for the first time, the X-Men and Magneto made uneasy allies (which made them both very, very uneasy allies with the rest of the heroes), Hulk was angry a lot (especially after having an entire mountainside dropped on him), Owen Reece (aka Molecule Man) received consciousness raising and the dissolution of mental stumbling blocks courtesy of the godlike Dr. Doom, and Captain America and Reed Richards spent most of their time keeping morale as high as possible.

Mere months after that series ended, Secret Wars II picked up the only way it could, the only way a true ‘80s sequel to a “fish out of water” tale should, with the Beyonder assuming a physical form and following the superheroes to Earth in an attempt to understand desire, mortality, loss, love, and other “base” human emotions/states of being. The tales that followed spilled over into nearly all the corners of the Marvel superhero/mutant world, and by extension, nearly all of their titles; even a minor character from the then-new Transformers series made a cameo. Excepting limited-issue series and reprints, the only ones that didn’t take part (by my admittedly brief perusal) were Conan the Barbarian, Conan the King, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and Dr. Who.

The Catch-22 at the heart of the series and the myriad tie-ins, and one reason why it feels like it is spinning its wheels at least a good 50% of the time, is that there is a certain lack of emotional cachet involved when the protagonist of your series is capable of controlling not simply the feelings and emotions of everyone in the world, but of completely altering the physical and structural elements of our universe on a macro and micro level. Which The Beyonder does. Repeatedly. Sometimes this is good for laughs (his earliest incarnation in physical form is an amusing amalgam of traits of many of the characters he observed in Secret Wars) and sometimes it makes for shocking and senseless tragedy (in one of his many tirades, he wipes out nearly all of The New Mutants, and erases their mental footprints entirely from the consciousness of their family and friends.)

It is also fair to say that a lot of the tie-ins feel forced, many simply riffing off the “what if you encountered a being who could make anything happen” plotline in order to make something happen that otherwise wouldn’t be possible without major retcon and/or much expanded effort on the imagination of the writers. The Alpha Flight, ROM, Daredevil, and Cloak and Dagger crossovers all offer variations on this, with only the latter two making much of an emotional impact. The former does so via The Beyonder granting the blind protagonist the ability to briefly see for the first time in his adult life (a “gift” Daredevil gives back for compellingly moral reasons) and the latter through offering some pointed commentary on the vigilante exploits of the titular heroes who seek to wipe out drug pushers.

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