The Second of all the Secret Wars

The first Secret Wars was an epic battle of super villains versus super heroes versus a strange presence from Beyond. It was a fun book, and lead to the Spiderman/Venom creation.

Just last night I finished reading Secret Wars II. In it, the One from Beyond... called the Beyonder, came to Earth and the big event for Marvel was that he crossed over into all on-going comics at the time.

Of course the volume I read was just the main SWII story line, so I have no idea what happened in the other comics. That is one thing that annoys me about big cross over events like that. Why can't the comic volumes be released in reading order with all affected comics? Yes, okay, it will probably sell far less well, and be confusing to the general public, but what the hell? I'm not going to track down every issue, so will never read them any other way. (I tried to do that with Millennium, and am missing two comics (I think) and the New Guardians series... and have since given up.)

Anyway, the story line... isn't that good. The Beyonder comes to Earth and tries to find out what it means to... basically... be human. And doesn't get it. And does lots of strange things... and what there isn't is lots of interesting super hero on super villain action. There are a lot of heroes and villains, but most of them are just in it for a page or two, and that's it. Some of them only get name checked! What's the point of that? And the story of the Beyonder is just flat and boring. The Beyonder is omnipotent so there is no threat to him, and he'll never get what it means to be human so there's no chance of a proper arc to his character growth (such as it is). And the ending is just a cheat.

You might have heard there is a sequel to the great big battle... but feel free to not bother reading it.

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