In all of the ways that DC and Marvel have competed over the years, pressing the reset button on the whole universe has been the one area where DC has been willing to go that Marvel wouldn’t follow, that is until now. Website Newsarama.com reports that at a recent “Secret Wars Kick-Off” live event held at Midtown Comics in Marvel’s hometown of New York , both Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso and Senior Vice President of Publishing and Executive Editor, Tom Brevoort have confirmed that events leading up to a new eight-issue limited series coming in May entitled Secret Wars will culminate with the end of both the mainstream 616 Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Marvel Universe. If the name Secret Wars sounds familiar, it should. As diehard Marvel Zombies already know, Secret Wars is the title of a 1984 twelve-issue mega crossover where all the heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe were plucked from their daily lives and transported to an alien planet called Battleworld . Upon reaching Battleworld the super powered beings were made to fight for the amusement of the Beyonder a cosmic entity with near limitless power who constructed Battleworld just for that purpose. In this new Secret Wars, Battleworld is now the result of what happens when all of Marvels realities “smash together” according to Alonso and Brevoort. The two went on to elaborate that by the time Secret Wars #1 is released all the worlds in Marvel’s multiverse will be annihilated, with the leftover scraps from each being sewn together to make Battleworld or as Brevoort put it “”Once we hit Secret Wars #1, there is no Marvel Universe, Ultimate Universe, or any other. It’s all Battleworld,” .
Essentially it looks as though Secret Wars will allow the Marvel creative team to start the Marvel Universe over but with the ability to pick and choose what bits of continuity they wish to keep (if any) thanks to Battleworld’s patchwork nature. This is very similar to DC’s Flashpoint crossover from 2011 that lead to it’s New 52 relaunch, a move that DC described at the time as a “soft reboot”. You may at this point be wondering “Why reboot Marvel or DC at all?”.
Believe it or not, change on this scale can be a good thing. The longer a universe continues with the same continuity the more it runs the risk of new stories contradicting old ones. Another problem is that no one wants to read about 60 year old Spider-man breaking his hip every time he fights the Rhino. This is why comic characters don’t age in realtime. It’s estimated that Peter Parker has aged about ten years since 1962 which seems fine until you think about how jarring it is that Peter Parker went from listening to 8-Tracks to MP3’s in less than a decade. DC used to get around this by saying that the goofy Superman of the ’50s with his super monkey,super dog, and super cat resided on a different Earth than the slightly more serious Superman of the ’70s. The obvious problem with this approach though is that if it’s hard to keep one continuity straight, it’s nigh impossible to do with multiple continuities. This is what lead to DC being the first comic book company to wipe their slate clean and just start over fresh with an all new continuity, which they accomplished through 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths. Crisis was used as a way to clean up fifty years of tangled continuity without relying on tedious retcons and an overabundance of alternate Earths. Despite any initial misgivings by the fans at the time, Crisis on Infinite Earths was a resolute success and not only gave new fans a new jumping on point, but redefined superheroes such as Batman and Superman into more modern (read less campy) interpretations that are still the basis of how most fans view said heroes even thirty years on.
Marvel on the other hand has had the same continuity since 1961 and has long been due for a makeover. With Marvel’s recent frustrations over having the film rights of many of their more popular properties belong to other companies this is really the perfect time for such a universal reboot. It’s rumored that last years Fantastic Four cancellation and death of Wolverine were the result of Disney not wanting to advertise for other studios, could this continuity cleansing be a subtle way for Marvel to make changes such as phasing the Fantastic Four out of their universe completely? Likewise much has also been said about the fact that Marvel’s Cinematic Universe can’t use the term “mutants” because 20th Century Fox owns the rights to the word. Could Marvel be using this opportunity to reintroduce the X-Men and any other characters formally known as “mutants”, under a different label (one possibility being suggested is “miracles” which it would take one to make that name stick) so that casual fans of the MCU will find the comics more accessible?
Whatever the motivation behind the decision, even if it’s just a desperate cash grab, this change will be good for Marvel. A fresh start will be the perfect way to get new readers to come in without alienating them with years of twisted history. It’s not even that big of a gamble because even if the fans revolt, Marvel can always have another cosmic event that puts everything back the way it was before. Hey, it worked for The Age Of Apocalypse.