“Marvel had always crossed over their characters because it’s a shared universe, but Secret Wars was their biggest crossover, and Jim Shooter made big promises. The summer of Secret Wars was to comics like the summer of Jaws or Star Wars was to the movie business.”
Back in 1984, then Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter gathered the publisher’s top heroes and villains for an epic saga, Marvel’s Secret Wars. This storyline launched the concept of event comics and crossovers in modern comic storytelling that we see so often today. The saga also impacted Marvel’s storylines for decades and even reshaped the Spider-Man mythos, including the introduction of a major character.
“It was supposed to be a simple mini-series with a toy tie-in and it became so much more,” says writer Tom K. Mason. “Secret Wars created a brand identity for a specific type of series, it created a new successful character, Venom, out of a costume change that was supposed to be temporary, and it set the stage for all the blockbuster event comics that would follow its example.”
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Within the 12-part storyline, characters who had never met before would find themselves thrown together to achieve a common goal. They formed shaky alliances. There were tremendous power struggles. Teams within teams would form. Relationships would be tested, and both heroes and villains would never be the same. Neither would the Marvel Universe.
Illustrated with full-color art from the comics of the time, Tom Mason’s entry in the MARVEL AGE OF COMICS takes a deep dive into how Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars became the modern comics industry’s first true blockbuster.
Tom K. Mason is an Emmy-winning television writer with credits as writer, story editor, or head writer on more than 600 episodes of children’s entertainment. As a cofounder of Malibu Comics, he edited more than 1,000 comics and wrote close to 100 of them. He was a founding editor of Bravura, the comic book imprint created by Howard Chaykin, Walter Simonson, Jim Starlin, and others. He recently wrote a Lilo & Stitch graphic novel, and currently co-writes the Captain Awesome books under the name “Stan Kirby.”
Check out some images from Marvel Super Heroes: Secret Wars, available this week!
