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“Ever since I began here at Marvel, I’ve been getting suggestions—hundreds and hundreds in the mail, from readers—that a lot of our major characters, or all of our major characters, should be together in one story,” Jim Shooter (then-editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics) told Jim Salicrup in Comics Interview #14 (Aug. 1984). “We have another series in the works that’s related. I guess you could call it a ‘sequel.’ For the moment we’re calling it Secret Wars II, but that’s more of a joke than anything else, because I swore I’d never do anything like this again.”
THE WAR CONTINUES Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #1 (May 1984) ushered in the “Event Age.” The Beyonder, a mysterious entity from another universe—where he was that entire universe— became aware of us when an unknown event opened a pinhole from our universe into his. Intrigued, he set Marvel’s premier characters upon a patchwork planet, “Battleworld,” and urged them to fight. Enjoyable as it was seeing the Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Spidey, and the Hulk team up against some of Marvel’s biggest villains, and watching Dr. Doom—as usual—play outside the box and turn the tables on everyone, many questions were left unanswered. Who is the Beyonder? What event gave him access to our universe? To where did he (and Dr. Doom) disappear at the end of the 12-issue maxiseries? “From the very beginning I planned a sequel,” Shooter explained in Marvel Age #27 (June 1985). “In the presentation I gave two-and-a-half years ago, the last paragraph described the ideas I had for a sequel. Naturally, if Secret Wars had been a disaster, we probably would have forgotten about ever doing Secret Wars II. But the twelve-issue series was one of the best-selling comics in several decades. So naturally we are going to go on and do SWII.” Once again, Jim Shooter was the writer and Sal Buscema was scheduled for art duties. Secret Wars II #1 (July 1985) was published three months after the conclusion of the first series but, on his blog, Shooter emphatically denied that the sequel was rushed: “We knew from direct sales orders more than a month before #1 of the first SW series that the numbers were huge. Therefore, we planned a sequel immediately, more than a year before SWII #1. We were absolutely not ‘rushing out a sequel.’ Rushing had nothing to do with the quality of my work. Yes, I had plenty to do as EIC and writing SWII tested my limits of endurance, but I guarantee you, it was the best I can do. If I’d had more time I would have slept more, but I doubt that the writing would have been better. The artists, Al Milgrom and Steve Leialoha, probably wished they had more time, but artists always do. The main problem there was that Sal Buscema lost us a month.” In the Marvel Age interview, Shooter stated, “Sal Buscema was originally slated to draw it, but the only trouble with Sal is that he’s in Virginia. And this book requires such tight continuity that it is difficult to work with someone so far from New York City. So there was nothing wrong with Sal, only where he was living.”
The Beyonder’s Back Mutants and Avengers gather on the John Byrne/ Terry Austin cover to Secret Wars II #1 (July 1985). TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.
38 • BACK ISSUE • Bronze Age Events Issue
by
Jarrod Buttery