Secret Wars (1984)
I decided that it would be interesting to read Secret Wars in the lead up to the movie next year. Turns out there are two of them and I read the older, likely less relevant one.
The 1984 event was one of the first major crossover events that Marvel ever did and it was in connection with a Mattel toy line. This really does show as the whole event is just an opportunity to smash all of Marvels biggest toys together. It's flimsy but there is some enjoyment to be had from the silliness of the whole thing. I love Dooms caricature villain persona, and I think the make-up of the teams is really interesting for a story from the 80s.
This is also the first appearance of black suit Spider-man. The cover of that issue is iconic, but the actual issue doesn't really do much with the change at all. I think I enjoyed it knowing how iconic the suit becomes, and it looks very cool on the page, but I really wish that there was more development with it.
There is some problematic dialogue, and I felt the female characters in particular suffered from stereotyping. The majority of them are sidelined and I was laughing at the absurdity of Wasp lamenting that she didn't have time to powder her face while in Battleworld...fighting to the death.
I generally felt that the story ran out of steam very quickly and a lot more could have been done here. When I found out that Mattel helped steer this via committee. They made sure it fit in well with focus groups and toy sale metric. Explosions, well-known characters and costume changes play a huge role.
I've a much longer journey ahead of me to fully appreciate the more recent Secret Wars event so it'll be a good while before I discuss that, but I'll get there. For now, I wouldn't particularly recommend this one - maybe if you happen to find an old trade of it in a charity shop.
