Jimmy Attempts To Read All Of Secret Wars 49 (It’s Finally Over Edition)

Well, the day is finally here.  The last issue of Secret Wars is finally in our grubby little hands or sitting digitally on our computers, tablets or other electronic devices.  It’s been a long time coming.  I’ll look at the finale in all its spoiler-y glory after the cut.

Unfortunately for me (and probably for you), this is not my last Secret Wars post.  I still have some odds and ends to finish up my walkthrough, namely twenty or so issues that I haven’t covered.  (Excluding the Toys R Us exclusive giveaway Armor Wars #0.5…which I couldn’t find a copy of first or last.)

Secret Wars #9

Picking up where things left off in issue #8, Doom confronts the Infinity Gauntlet wielding Black Panther.  As these two “Gods” square off, the rest of the ongoing battle for Battleworld becomes inconsequential and is subsequently ignored.  The Panther puts up a good fight, but we learn (if we didn’t know already) that the combined power of the Beyonders is greater than that of the Infinity Gauntlet.  Or at the very least, Doom has much more experience using his powers than Black Panther does his, which is understandable since he’s had them for like 5 minutes.

Panther is eventually defeated but literally has the last laugh anyway.  Doom is confused by this until he realizes that the entire battle was just a diversion.

While the Gods were at war, Reed Richards and The Maker (Ultimate Reed Richards) have a nice little chat with Reed’s brainwiped wife Sue Storm.  Reed tells her the truth of things, and while she is skeptical, their daughter Valeria has come to realize that everything Reed is saying is true and helps to convince her mother.

Reed² then proceed under Doom’s statue of the Molecule Man to find Owen Reese himself.  Reese asks if they have anything for him to eat, which they do not.  Reed understands why Reese is so hungry.  Much has been made about the fact that all these infinite alternate Molecule Men that Doom killed leading up to Secret Wars were actually all just the one Molecule Man.  And now those mouths were no longer being fed.  A nice touch by write Jonathon Hickman.

Not surprisingly, 616 Reed is then betrayed by The Maker.  Why do people continue to trust this jerk?  The Maker has assembled some kind of device that emits a temperal bubble around Reed and devolves him into an ape.  For reasons (because plot) the Molecule Man doesn’t take too kindly to this turn of events and saves Reed and kills that nasty Maker.  And that’s when Doom arrives.

Much of the rest of the Battleworld part of this issue is as you would expect things to end.  Reed vs Doom.  And while that gets all the hype, keep in mind that the most powerful being isn’t either of them.  It’s Reese.  When Doom arrives, Reese strips him of all his power and like the end of Matrix 3, all of this comes down to the two leads just punching each other in the face.

In true comic book fashion the pair also trade barbs the entire time until:

And then:  BA DA DOOOOOOOOOOM!  Yes, that is the sound effect employed when Battleworld goes bye-bye (as has been spoiled in numerous tie-ins).

And that’s it, the end of Secret Wars.  (Editor’s note: Uh, Jimmy, there’s more about the creation of the All-New, All Different Marvel Universe.)  Right, well, if we must…

So, remember back in Secret Wars #6 when Miles Morales gave Owen Reese that disgusting three week old hamburger that for some reason he’s had in the pocket of his Spider-Man suit?  Well, we get a flashback to that with the starving Owen saying thanks for the burger and that he owes Miles “one”.  But where are we flashing back from you ask?  Why only 8 months later on the Prime Earth in the new Marvel Universe where Miles Morales is now a regular and Peter Parker seems like his Big Brother.  That is if Big Brothers and Big Sisters let you thrown on spandex suits and then swing off skyscrapers to fight crime together.

So Miles is alive thanks to Owen Reese?  Did Reese owe Old Man Logan one too, as he is now a mainstay in the Marvel U.  As is The Maker.  Reese surely didn’t owe him one.  Anyway…

So here’s the new status quo.  Reed and Sue and their kids and the Foundation and Molecule Man are all now living…somewhere.  They seem to be just standing on a chunk of Battleworld(?) floating around the cosmos.  Reese still has unlimited power.  But that power has to be directed by someone: Reed.  And Franklin Richards is a dreamer, a universal shaper.  So Franklin spends his day writing issues of What If?  and dreaming up alternate realities which Reed than uses the power of Owen Reese to make real and send them off into the multiverse.  And with each of these new realities they send a slice of Molecule Man to act as an anchor but to also heal Molecule Man.  i.e. everything is pretty much put back the way it was before all this began.

You have to wonder though, why would Franklin dream up these realities that contain enormous threats like say Thanos or Galactus?  I suppose there is a whole yin and yang thing here.  The dark and light side of the Force, etc., So is it Franklin responsible for The Maker now being on Earth Prime?  (I haven’t read much All-New All-Different Marvel, so let me know if any of this has been answered.)

And if Franklin can create whole realities and put them back in place pretty much as they were before…why not just recreate the Ultimate Universe?  Or other universes that were destroyed in the incursions.  I’m pretty sure the universe Spider-UK hails from over in Web Warriors is still destroyed.  I know Tom, I know.  Try not to think about it.

The issue wraps up with one other little surprise that I will leave to you to discover on your own.

And that’s it, the end of Secret Wars?  (Editor’s note: Yes Jimmy, except for those articles you still have left to write.)  Yes, well, I’ll get right on that…