I know way more about comics from the 90s than I do about present day comics. I’ve got a Marvel Unlimited subscription and I’m still trying to catch up. Apparently I’m going to need to pick up the pace, though, because everything I know about the Marvel Universe is about to change.
Yesterday Marvel held a press conference detailing its upcoming crossover event: Secret Wars. This event isn’t merely a rehash of the 1980s Secret Wars. Marvel announced that this version would bring broth the Marvel 616 and Ultimate Universes to an end.
Apparently the Avengers have been attempting to keep parallel universes from crashing into each other for quite some time. Come May and the publication of Secret Wars #1, they will fail. 616 and the Ultimate Universe, which is 1610, will crash into each other and create the Battleworld.
The Battleworld will be the new setting for the ongoing Marvel Universe. Characters from both universes will now exist side-by-side in the Battleworld. At the press conference Marvel also said that this would be the perfect time to bring back characters that had died. Marvel made mention of Gwen Stacy, but I certainly hope Jean Grey makes an appearance. Unless she’s already alive again, in which case she’ll probably just get killed again.
Now if this doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, that’s OK; it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either.
It seems like Marvel is finally rebooting its entire universe, doing away with 54 years of publication history. I’m fine with Marvel rebooting its universe in an attempt to gain more readers who only know Marvel for its movies. I am concerned with the Battleworld, though, and what that means for Marvel.
One of the reasons I like Marvel more than DC is that the Marvel Universe took place in our universe. Spider-Man lived in New York City, not Metropolis. When the Avengers Initiative began, there were teams of Avengers in actual cities. I’m worried that the Marvel universe will lose its connection to the real world by now living in the Battleworld.
My concerns may be completely off base, though, since the Battleworld was just announced yesterday and it’s all still rather confusing.
Hopefully Secret Wars and the Battleworld will gain more clarity come May. And, by the time Secret War wraps in December, hopefully the new Marvel universe will be one we still care about.
What do you think of the new Marvel universe?
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