That said, it’s probably safe to assume Avengers: Secret Wars is drawing more from the 2015 comic than the original 1984 series. If the history of the MCU has taught us anything, it’s that Avengers: Secret Wars will borrow elements from many different comics without serving as an adaptation of any one, single story. Marvel may have told us the name of the next two Avengers movies, but we don’t know for sure which Secret Wars is being adapted in Phase 6. All that remains is Battleworld, which in this story is a hodgepodge world built from broken fragments of dozens of different alternate realities. The series opens with the complete collapse of the Marvel multiverse, as a series of Incursions have wiped out every universe. This Secret Wars serves as the climax of writer Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers saga. The two books aren’t directly connected, but the newer Secret Wars does feature some of the same characters and concepts.

While Marvel revisited the events of Secret Wars several times through limited series like Spider-Man and the Secret Wars and various What If…? comics, that crossover didn’t get a true follow-up until 2015’s Secret Wars. Jonathan Hickman’s Reimagined Secret Wars even if it did give us The Beyonder’s incredibly ‘80s makeover. Marvel also published a sequel in 1985, but Secret Wars II is widely regarded as one of the worst Marvel crossovers ever published…

Secret Wars proved to be one of Marvel’s best-selling superhero comics in decades, even if the reviews didn’t quite live up to those sales numbers. For example, Secret Wars is where Spider-Man first donned his black costume, not realizing at the time that it was actually an alien symbiote. Ultimately, these characters are returned to Earth, but not without some lasting repercussions.

Secret wars jonathan hickman