Written by Jim Shooter; Illustrated by Mike Zeck, Bob Layton
I'm not even going to list the characters because there are way too many.
Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, commonly known simply as Secret
Wars, is a twelve-issue American comic book crossover limited series
published from May 1984 to April 1985 by Marvel Comics.
That I lifted directly from Wikipedia.
That I lifted directly from Wikipedia.
Secret Wars is one of the very first massive-scale crossovers that Marvel had done, and it worked very well. The story follows the mysterious Beyonder's plan to transport superheroes and supervillains to a planet known as Battle World, where they are told to destroy each other to gain great reward.
The concept seems odd, but everything pieces together in a fluid and smart way. For twelve issues, it's actually very deep and has produced some of the most iconic things in comic book lore, including the meteoric rise of Doctor Doom and Spider-Man symbiotic suit.
What is now considered a classic has been made into a graphic novel now, and reading it all at a big stretch initially got tiring for me. The story got much better as it progressed, but the start was a little slow. So slow, in fact, that I took a break of a couple months, then resumed reading it at issue #5. Really though, it's at midway that things really pick up, and huge things happen. From there to the end, I didn't want to put the book down.
I'm not going to touch on the story any more because so many important things happen that they'd all be spoilers. But I will say that it went in directions that I never expected, and surprised me right until the end.
There are loads and loads of characters in this story, and it's so balanced for each of them. Sure, a select few are more important than others, but every character (almost) has their own little story or desire that is played on through all twelve comics, and they merge together or make characters much more appealing, and Shooter deserves credit for that. Colossus has his heart torn, Spider-Man is discovering new things, Mr Fantastic is worried about Sue Storm and his unborn child back home, Storm isn't very friendly towards Professor X because she feels like she needs control over the X-Men, The Lizard feels very hostile in this new environment, and many, many more. That is smart writing.
So, because of the slow start but strong improvement, into a revolutionary story with compelling and deep characters...
On a scale where M is the lowest and R is the highest possible rating, with the highlighted letter being the rating:
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