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Care to Discuss Marvel’s Big “Secret Wars” Announcement?

Oof, that was a big one.

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Marvel announced their new Secret Wars storyline back in October, but in a livestream yesterday they announced a bunch of new details about the event, which will take place this May.

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Admittedly, I – a hard-core Marvel comics fan – found the press conference to be a little convoluted at best and, at worst, the epitome of what makes people laugh at comic book nerds in the first place. The basic gist of the presentation was this: the main Marvel universe (Earth-616) and the Ultimate universe (Earth-1610), and all other universes, I guess, are going to be smashing together into one single universe, forming a “melting world” called Battleworld. From the ashes of Battleworld the new Marvel Universe will be formed – and that will be the canon Marvel Universe from here on out.

Secret Wars #1 will cover the collision of the universes and establish Battleworld, which will involve lots of characters fighting and setting up what will be the beginning of the new Marvel Universe. You can see an interactive map of Battleworld here, with a lot of wacky territories representing different comics, universes, and characters, like “Domain of Apocalypse” (stay away from there), KillVille (also there), and 2099.

In addition to the eight-issue Secret Wars series (the second issue of which heavily involves the new Thor), many individual comics will also get their own Secret Wars issues – like this awesome tease for The Amazing Spider-Man issue, which could involve the return of Spider-Girl, Mayday.

If you want to see the livestream in all its nerd glory, you can check it out here:

And if you’re new to comics, never experienced a cross-over event, or are just generally confused by all of this: 1) I totally don’t blame you, and 2) check out our Comics 201 post on How to Read a Crossover Event.

The great thing about this universe collision is it gives Marvel the chance to make some of their alternate universe characters canon without having to do a full DC Comics New 52-style reboot. This way, Spider-Gwen gets to exit her weird What If? universe and come to be a part of the main Marvel Universe (meaning we could see her interacting with other canon characters! Hooray!) Of course, the downside of not doing a full New 52-style reboot is that it has to come couched in a very complicated- and intimidating-sounding crossover event which might alienate current and new readers alike. But the resulting new main universe will then be far less complicated as a result.

Interestingly, Axel Alonso, Marvel’s Editor in Chief, said that Secret Wars will affect “all the divisions of Marvel,” including all of their “shared universe,” which I can only assume means their comics and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Right now, the films Marvel Entertainment is producing (Thor, Captain America, etc.) pull a lot from the Ultimate universe of the comics.  So this could potentially mean something very interesting for the film world as well.

So now that I’ve explained this to the best of my abilities, what do you think of Secret Wars? Are you excited to see Captain Marvel team up with the Marvel Zombies? Do you think think means we might get a Spider-Gwen movie? Comment away!

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Author
Sam Maggs
Sam Maggs is a writer and televisioner, currently hailing from the Kingdom of the North (Toronto). Her first book, THE FANGIRL'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY will be out soon from Quirk Books. Sam’s parents saw Star Wars: A New Hope 24 times when it first came out, so none of this is really her fault.

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