More on Battleworld and Secret Wars

So, here we are again. Once more I'm here to talk to you about Marvel's upcoming Secret Wars and Battleworld.

Firstly, I'd like to thank for Marvel UK writer and editor John Freeman for cross-posting my original Secret Wars article over on Down the Tubes. I've fielded a few questions about this via the comments here and via email. It seems that more than a few of agree with a number of my comments - in particular on the pricing policies at Marvel over the past few years. I'm not going to cover that again (although is refreshing to see that I've not been alone on that one).

What I did want to explore however, is the recent additions to Marvel's interactive Battleworld map.

As I mentioned last time round when the Secret Wars event kicks off it appears that all of the multitude of alternate universes and timelines from the entirety of Marvel's history will be crunching together in one singular universe where elements of all of them will be forced to coexist at the same time. This 'Battleworld' does not have a lot in the way of actual continents. There's a territory around the North pole and an (as of yet) unexplained Wall separating the southern most region from one giant land mass, made up of dozens of different story-lines from the past, each standing as an independent country in its own right.

Marvel has been unveiling those Countries gradually. At my time of last posting the list was:

• Dystopia: Future Imperfect Hulk (The Maestro version of The Hulk)
• Domain of Apocalypse: The Age of Apocalypse (in which Charles Xavier's death in the past created a timeline where Apocalypse took over the entire of America and much of the World)
• Technopolis: Armor Wars Iron Man (in which other supervillains gained control of Iron Man's armour tech designs and used them against him)
• Iron Fist's K'un-Lun
• Higher Avalon which links to a profile of Captain Britain's history (and may plausibly what has become of Otherworld/Avalon with all the Universes smashing together).
• Spider-Island (in which the Jackal's scheme gave everybody in Manhattan spider-powers)
• The Monarchy of M: House of M (in which Mutants became the ruling class of the planet, with Magneto as their figurehead)
• Sentinel Territories: Days of Future Past (the future timeline in which the Sentinels all but eradicated all superhumans and placed humanity into concentration camps for what they believed to be its Own Good)

As of this past week Marvel have begun to reveal some more.

• Egyptia: Forever Yesterday (A timesliding story in which New Warriors villain The Sphinx created an alternate timeline where Ancient Egypt rule over the world right up to the 20th Century).
• The Regency: Which brandishes links to the now infamous One More Day storyline from Amazing Spider-man (in famous for removing/erasing the marriage of Peter Parker and Mary-Jane Watson).
• New Quack City: Which matches up with recently announced new series for Howard the Duck.
• 2099: Literally what it says on the tin. A whole Country for the 1990s Marvel 2099 imprint of comics.
• Hala Field: Which bears the following message "Hero! Pilot! Avenger! Captain Marvel, Earth's Mightiest Hero with death-defying powers and an attitude to match, is back and launching headfirst into a new role - Squadron leader of the interstellar defense team, the Carol Corp!" Intriguing.
• The Wastelands: Wolverine: Old Man Logan (Mark Millar's tale of an aged and long since retired Wolverine as a survivor in a post-apocalypse America)
• Perfection: Age of Ultron (In which a time travelling Wolverine and Sue Storm journeyed across time trying to stop Ultron from constantly taking over the world. A story which is very likely to be an important part of what caused the Marvel Multiverse to collapse in the first place...)
• New Xandar: The Infinity Gauntlet. (That what the blurb links to, anyway. Xandar was of course the homeworld of the Nova Corps up until its destruction during the Annihilation storyline).

Another point which is worthy of note is that there is an area still labelled up as "Marvel 616" on the Battleworld map.

 It resides in the territory simply labelled up as "Manhattan". 

That yellow land mass within it labelled up as "Attilan" (which is the name of the home City of The Inhumans) and to its north that brown-coloured mass is labelled as "Marvel 1610" (the universal serial number for Marvel's 'Ultimate Universe').

Oh, and can you see that there's a little alcove underneath, like some kind of hollowed out chamber?

That's been labelled up as "Monster Metropolis".

Make of that what you will... :)

Of course Marvel have stated that as a result of all this some book s will be ending, and others beginning.

I think it likely that books such as the shortly to be released Spider-Gwen (about the alternate universe spider-powered Gwen Stacy, from the recent Spider-verse storyline in Amazing Spider-man) are likely to survive the new status quo. Likewise the aforementioned new Howard the Duck series.

But as for other new titles, well Marvel have announced a few tying into this event. 

For example the Battleworld anthology series will be a chance for several writers to use this new mish-mash world of properties to play out battle between characters who you would never have dreamed of even getting the opportunity to encounter each other. 

Another anthology title, Secret Wars Journal, will showcase shorter stories featuring lesser seen characters, from Misty Knight and Paladin, to the Night Nurse... and apparently, even Millie the Model. 

No. 

Really. 

Peter David will be returning to the Universe which he helped sculpt in the 90s, in Secret Wars 2099.

Haden Blackman will be taking on writing Shang-chi in a new Master of Kung Fu.

But perhaps the most unexpected series unveiled so far is the new Avengers team to be written by G. Willow Wilson and Marguerite K. Bennett. Because once Secret Wars begins the Avengers are no more.

But there is... A-Force?

  

Yes. A-Force an entirely female superteam, bringing together 'Earth's Mightiest Heroines'. A lot of very recognisable faces on that cover. Medusa, Black Widow, Storm, Rogue, She-Hulk, Dazzler. Is that Captain Universe from Hickman's Avengers, above Nico Minoru from Runaways? A Phoenix costumed Jean Grey, too.

We know very little more than that cover, right now. 

Makes me wonder if this is what was intended by that "All-New All-Different Avengers" teaser a while back?

Who knows?

I'll be keeping an eye on this event, obviously hoping to find some kind of Marvel UK ties along the way. I'll be particularly interested to find out if "King James' England" is related to Neil Gaiman's 1602.

Next time we get another batch of reveals I'll post another update.

Until the next time...

Mark

Secret Wars, Battleworld and It Came From Darkmoor...

So this might surprise a few of you.

Me.

Back blogging again. 

While I've certainly still remained active on social media I fully hold my hands up to having let the lights at It Came From Darkmoor... dim out a little over the past year. It was never an intentional thing, but 2014 became a bit of an odd year for me. It was the first year since late 2011 that my health was good, that I was back to returning to my full duties at Work, and finally I got the chance to spend some actual time with friends and family doing the normal everyday things with them which chemotherapy patients don't get to do. So I made the absolute most of that. It was great.

As a result though I did start to fall behind with the general comings and goings of the Marvel universe. It's not that they didn't interest me. Far from it. But time and (for the first time) money started to create a heck of a backlog of reading material on my night stand. To the point that it now doesn't all fit on my nightstand. Or the table in the spare room. Or a few other places.

Mrs Sword is a very understanding woman.

Back in the early 2000s, when I first got back into reading comics, it was an easy time for completionists. At that lower price point it was perfectly possible to pick up a good cross-section of the Marvel Universe on a monthly basis without incurring too much debt or the wrath of a loved one. Monthly books were just that, and there hadn't been any full universe crossover event for a few years. Back then I was able to both purchase and spend considerable time scrambling through that cross-section of titles, searching and hoping for vague connections to the Marvel UK characters and concepts of my youth. And I found some. They became the roots of this blog.

In the past few years that has changed.

2014 was a watershed moment for me. It was the first year that I realised that with so many of Marvel's titles now priced up to $3.99, and with almost every major 'Monthly' title being published twice per month, there was just no way that I could carry on reading what I had been.

To put it another way, to read the equivalent of what I was in the early 2000s today, would now require a monthly stake of £120-140 a month. I love comics. But that's a point beyond what I'm willing to pay for comics.

So I have now quite judiciously cut back my monthly purchases to what is at this point a very small number of core titles. It was not an easy choice, but one I haven't really had much of a choice but to make. The downside of course is that when your buying less books, and you're already very behind on current events, running a blog which (at least in part) is designed to provide news on all things Marvel UK is a bit difficult.

I'm aware of things Marvel UK related going on, of course. I know that Captain Britain is an Avenger once more (and part of the universe's behind-the-scenes braintrust - The Illuminati - no less). I know that he appears to have lost an eye, and grown a beard, in the process. 

Oh, and the Captain Britain Corps are all dead. Again. 

The details of this, unfortunately, are lost on me until I read the issues. 

I know that The Black Knight is now part of some European Superteam initiative. That Spitfire and Union Jack are back on an Invaders title. That there's an alternate universe Spider-man out there who is actually a Braddock, and goes by the name of 'Spider-UK'.

But the combination of time and expense has thus far barred me from reading those appearances.

C'est la vie.

Anyway, at the start of this week I made a decision. I sat down and decided that it was about time that I began to play catch up. There was a lot of continuity for me to get through, a ridiculously high stack of issues which needed to be off my nightstand, and so I figured that there really was no time like the present to begin.

And then on Tuesday Marvel somewhat dropped a bombshell.

They went and announced the end of the Marvel Universe.

For real. No fakery involved. It's actually ending. 

And not just the Universe. Not just Marvel 616. The entire Marvel Mulitiverse is ending, with the advent of this summer's big Event 'Secret Wars'.

Now I'm a guy (not that I actually recall having made the conscious decision to) who has pretty much made it a crusade to remind people that Marvel UK existed and that its stories happened in continuity. So when the publisher confirms that they intend to end the Marvel Universe it's only natural for that information to concern me a little.

Because if the universe ends, so does its continuity.

And if the continuity ends then in whatever continuity replaces it things are going to change. While certain characters may still exist in whatever follows Secret Wars the history of this new universe could be very different. The stories, characters and former connections of Marvel UK to the greater whole may not even make it into this universe. A universe which Marvel are calling "All-New Marvel".

That's my concern.

This has all been a long time coming though. Ever since the start of the Marvel NOW initiative we've had hints that this could be coming. 

In the pages of The Avengers we discovered that the super-powered individuals of the 1980s New Universe line at Marvel were (from a story point of view) also supposed to have been created in Marvel's 616 universe. That they are actually supposed to be some part of every universe's natural defense system. 

Only in the 616 universe that did not happen. 

Because the 616 universe was broken.

It seems that all those time travel misadventures, characters coming and going, staying and leaving has had an accumulative effect. Cable and Rachel Summers for example. Days of Future past or the Age of Apocalypse maybe. In  trying to avert the Age of Ultron, with those multiple changes made to the timeline. Remember how in All-new X-Men The Beast brought the original 5 X-Men to the present? Trying to teach Scott Summers a lesson, but only to find that he could not send them back? It's broken. The very fibres of the universe are coming apart.

In the pages of New Avengers Marvel's 'Illuminati' have been trying to prevent the 616 universe from being destroyed as other universes collide with it. They've managed so far, but it looks like that's not going to stop. Because as Tom Brevoort stated last week:

"Once we hit Secret Wars #1, there is no Marvel Universe, Ultimate Universe, or any other. It's all Battleworld,"

Every universe will be crashing together and amalgamating themselves into only one. And they're calling it 'Battleworld'.

If you go over to Marvel's own website you will now find an interactive Battleworld map (which disappointingly does not seem to work on iOS devices, but will work on windows PCs).

It's well worth a look at, actually.

Each territory on the map relates to a property or storyline from some part of Marvel's history. Kinda like Marvel's greatest hits, somehow existing in the same World, all at the same time.

A lot of them have yet to be revealed (they have date stamps on them of when they will) but the confirmed properties so far include:

• Future Imperfect Hulk (The Maestro version of The Hulk)
• The Age of Apocalypse (in which Charles Xavier's death in the past created a timeline where Apocalypse took over the entire of America and much of the World)
• Armor Wars Iron Man (in which other supervillains gained control of Iron Man's armour tech designs and used them against him)
• Iron Fist's K'un-Lun
• Spider-Island (in which the Jackal's scheme gave everybody in Manhattan spider-powers)
• House of M (in which Mutants became the ruling class of the planet, with Magneto as their figurehead)
• Days of Future Past (the future timeline in which the Sentinels all but eradicated all superhumans and placed humanity into concentration camps for what they believed to be its Own Good)

Oh, and one more:

Now, I have no idea what 'Higher Avalon' is intended to be. Possibly it's what has happened to Otherworld with all of the Universes colliding. That would be my best guess. Much like the Iron Fist entry on the map all this really does is direct the reader to a list of suggested past stories featuring the character, but it does (at least to my mind) highlight the intention that the character is going to be used in the course Secret Wars. And if they're going to fix this multiversal crush having the last surviving Captain Britain - a former Multiversal Guardian to boot - could come in rather handy.

As I say I have certain misgivings over 'All-New Marvel'. The ultimate goal here would be a consolidation of properties and publishing lines into a more coherent and easier to approach universe of comics characters. Something which would be less impenetrable to new readers, and perhaps easier to sell in other mediums.

And that is a noble goal. Genuinely.

However, they do need to be careful about how they actually do it.

Having read DC's universe reboot as the 'New 52' there are plenty lessons to be learnt. Parts of their new continuity really was a bit of a hot mess of contradictions and confusions. Some stories and creative runs of more recent times (mostly those crafted by Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison) very much still happened exactly as they'd been told. Other stories (even going years back) were dramatically altered or erased entirely. Which could have been fine, but not every writer seemed to have gotten the same memo. Contradictions naturally ensued.

As long as All-New Marvel is approached intelligently it could be great. And obviously I live in great hope that not too much of Marvel UK gets wiped away in the process.

Though I'm sure we could fudge Death's Head surviving if we needed to. Heck, the Transformers and Doctor Who universes aren't part of the Marvel multiverse. He survived visiting those. ;)

As far as It Came From Darkmoor is concerned? Consider this my return from exile. With one caveat.

In the past I posted updates on this site several times a week, as and when new stories broke, etc. I wouldn't be expecting that to be the case this year. If something HUGE turns up I'll try to cover it, but otherwise I'm aiming to have something new for you a couple of times a month. And hopefully something worthwhile.

Long term readers will remember my Marvel UK A to Z series, which began a few years back only to be derailed when I lost my planning notes in our house move. Those never showed up again, but I've had several people recently asking about that feature. I think it's the one feature from the past 5 years of this blog that people seem to ask me about the most, and so I have decided to republish and continue this feature in the coming months, until its completion. It's a great way to showcase some of the lesser known properties and characters of Marvel UK. Regardless of what the future holds.

As always you can keep up to date with my more regular prattlings and updates on Twitter and once a month you can cringe at the sound of my voice on the Comiconference section of the Weekly Geek Speak podcast.

Until the next time (and I promise not to take quite so long)

Mark 'The Sword' Roberts