SECRET WARS #9

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AlexEvangeli
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Re: SECRET WARS #9

Post by AlexEvangeli »

Jason Doty wrote:Fury wrote
No.

Reality-616 has been destroyed and recreated before in at least two different Doctor Strange stories that I can think of, and I'm sure it's happened a bunch of times before. This is no different.
From Newsarama

Brevoort also expounded on the fate of Marvel's multiverse, which the Richardses were left to rebuild in Secret Wars #9, particularly mentioning that the issue signaled the end of the term "616" to refer to the mainstream Marvel Universe, in favor of the term "Prime Earth."

“It's effectively a new multiverse. The biggest and most important thing here that nobody in the world will like, and that I'm the only one that keeps poking at, is the fact that the Marvel Universe is no longer the 616. I don't know if by the end of Secret Wars #9 there are 616 universes yet. There will be an infinite number of them. Realities that we've known and new ones that we've never visited before are being constantly created, and then mapped and explored by Reed and his family.”

“They started by restoring the Marvel Universe. So really, it's now the Prime Universe.”
I think recreating the multiverse is a scale above, and while what was the 616 was restored to be the new "Prime," It has been restored with changes which should be addressed and on a level higher, and is a company wide change.
Spider-Gwen volume 2 #4 (a.k.a. Radioactive Spider-Gwen #4) specifically referred to the Prime MU as Earth 616 so I don't think Brevoort is to be taken completely at face value. We also have the fact that a series dealing with multiple Earths, Web Warriors, is set on Earth 0001 (or some number like that) so the designation of Prime Earth is iffy.

At best it's just a different name to refer to the same thing. E.g. the epic space opera film that came out in 1977 can be simply called 'Star Wars', 'Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope' or 'A New Hope' or 'Episode IV'.

At the same time in regards to changes made I have something to be said about that.

If I may. I don’t think this is a cosmic reset nor should be regarded as one. At least not based upon the evidence we have right now.

I think this is akin to a mixture between Age of Apocalypse House of M and if you’d like One Year Later by DC.

Ostensibly everything did happen but the universe was reconstructed and picked up where it left off. However certain memories were fuzzy and certain people were unaware of how certain changes occurred. Other alterations in the status quo however can be explained via the very large time skip and have been hinted at being that way, e.g. Daredevil’s identity is secret again but we’ve been hinted at that that was due to him actively doing something to make people forget.

We’re still waiting on hearing about the Wakanda and Miles Morales situation though so we’ll see.

But thus far it’s very much a case that Doctor Doom’s face has been fixed and he doesn’t know why.

The reason I bring up the analogies to those three other stories is because:

• Like House of M and Age of Apocalypse the Marvel Universe ceased to exist, being replaced by something else. And like those stories it was restored at the end.
• Like House of M everyone sort of just woke up back home and carried on.
• As was the case with Age of Apocalypse and for many characters in House of M, they were either unaware of what happened or else couldn’t quite remember what happened. Bishop in AoA is perhaps the most apt example.
• Whilst DC did reboot some continuity after Infinite Crisis in 2006 (forgive me if I’m getting names and dates wrong), a lot of continuity was not only retained but continued forward via a time skip. For instance Catwoman was a mother but it wasn’t like she’d always been one. Her history was the same and during the time skip things had occurred that were different. On an unrelated side note, one might make comparisons between her and Jessica Drew in current continuity as she is pregnant.

Since AoA and House of M were not treated as outright continuity reboots or resets and characters were regarded as being ‘the same version’ (not a pre-Crisis/Post-Crisis Superman or Pre-OMD/Post-OMD Spider-Man sort of deal) I think for the time being that is how we should treat things. It’s like in many time travel stories in the MU wherein the events altered are the events established in the story which is actually altering them if you see what I mean.

That is to say Doctor Doom lived through the incursions and then he was recreated at the end of Secret Wars on Earth 616 (or whatever they are calling it now, Spider-Gwen referred to it as 616) but he kind of doesn’t remember it.

Which adds up with the power the Beyonder and his kind have displayed in the past and what Doom himself did. Doom altered the memories of the people on Battleworld to make them think that it’d existed always and forever, not just 8 years or so. It wasn’t as if for instance the Spider-Gwen featured in Spider-Verse the Secret Wars tie-in was someone different from the Spider-Gwen who appeared in Edge of Spider-Verse #2. She was the same person. She died in the incursions, got resurrected by Doom et al on Battleworld and got her memories messed with. Which is sort of how Doom in Secret Wars 1984 reconstituted Kang after vaporizing him. And how the Beyonder in Secret Wars II killed and then resurrected the New Mutants as his loyal henchmen for a time.

The ‘molecules’ of everyone still existed and just got put back together again basically.

At the same time, because it's rather big and damaging (and lazy on the part of storytellers) to simply chalk all changes or inconsistencies up to Secret Wars, we shouldn't presume that without hard proof, like how we haven't No. Prized every solitary continuity error down to various forms of time travel or reality warping over the years creating temporal ripples...although that would explain Iron Man being out of character after House of M now I think about it...
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