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THE BEYONDER and THE SECRET WARS

post #1 of 46
3/12/09 at 5:59pm
Thread Starter 


He's a God. He's an infant cosmic intelligence. He's a Cosmic Cube. He's a mad Inhuman.

Which is it, Marvel?

I've been on a Secret Wars II kick recently, so I've been trying to bring the tales of the Beyonder to the masses. So far, I've failed miserably.

Does anyone here have fond memories of the jheri-curled God above?
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post #2 of 46
3/12/09 at 6:02pm
wow, 80s flashback. I remember Spiderman helping him to take a shit.
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post #3 of 46
3/12/09 at 6:06pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Judas Booth View Post
wow, 80s flashback. I remember Spiderman helping him to take a shit.
That was a Brand New Day, indeed.


Seriously, I've been digging through these back issues and I'm just floored that this shit sold. I remember loving the John Byrne F4 issue where the kid set himself on fire to emulate the Human Torch. But, now it just comes across as so fucking melodramatic...even for comics.
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post #4 of 46
3/12/09 at 6:10pm
The first Secret Wars was even worse in the melodrama department. Do we REALLY need to see the Human Torch and Colossus involved in a love triangle over an alien chick? Do we need to see the Torch sing Culture Club?
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post #5 of 46
3/12/09 at 6:11pm
Thread Starter 
Jim Shooter seemed to think so.

Plus, has there ever been such an art drop as Mike Zeck to Al Milgrom?
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post #6 of 46
3/12/09 at 6:13pm
I hated the first Secret Wars so much I never bothered with the second one.
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post #7 of 46
3/12/09 at 6:15pm
Thread Starter 
But, the second one is such an epic case of shit sequel.

It's an experience.
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post #8 of 46
3/12/09 at 6:27pm
Didn't he come back as a chick? I liked the first SW because I was like 9 and loved seeing all the heroes and villians fighting royal rumble style. But SWII was an abomination.
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post #9 of 46
3/12/09 at 6:31pm
If you're a Wolverine fan, avoid Secret Wars I. The characterization is totally wrong in every possible way. He's an undisciplined punk in his 'fight' against Spiderman, for instance.
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post #10 of 46
3/12/09 at 7:09pm
The Beyonder made a comeback in "The Illuminati" mini. A whole issue was devoted to him. Not bad for a bloke with a perm.

I read Secret Wars last year and can't remember anything, I just persevered through it with no joy. There's quite a lot of old Marvel stuff that's such a hardship to read nowadays, i even struggle with the Kirby/Lee stuff.
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post #11 of 46
3/12/09 at 9:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Judas Booth View Post
If you're a Wolverine fan, avoid Secret Wars I. The characterization is totally wrong in every possible way. He's an undisciplined punk in his 'fight' against Spiderman, for instance.
That whole fight is absolutely ridiculous. The entire X-Men team -- the classic Cyclops/Wolverine/Nightcrawler/Colossus/Rogue/Storm lineup -- gets their asses handed to them by Spider-Man? Riiiiiight.
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post #12 of 46
3/12/09 at 10:08pm
The Secret Wars is one of my favorite team ups...as there are so many Superheroes and Villains fighting each other, infighting between teammates, it just is an excellent read. I never finished reading Secret Wars II though...as it was a poor sequel.
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post #13 of 46
3/13/09 at 3:09am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dickson View Post
That whole fight is absolutely ridiculous. The entire X-Men team -- the classic Cyclops/Wolverine/Nightcrawler/Colossus/Rogue/Storm lineup -- gets their asses handed to them by Spider-Man? Riiiiiight.
He beat up Firelord! Of course he can take the Byrne/Claremont X-Men!
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post #14 of 46
3/13/09 at 10:05am
Secret Wars 2 was such an abomination I had to get every issue.
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post #15 of 46
3/13/09 at 10:22am
Quote:
Originally Posted by BobClark View Post
Secret Wars 2 was such an abomination I had to get every issue.
This. Also, I was a kid who didnt know any better with no friends who also collected comics to warn me off.

It's probably no coincidence that the release of Secret Wars II roughly lines up with when I stopped reading comics altogether. I know it was within a couple of months anyway.
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post #16 of 46
3/13/09 at 10:33am
Quote:
Originally Posted by PMR View Post
He beat up Firelord! Of course he can take the Byrne/Claremont X-Men!
That was even more ridiculous!
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post #17 of 46
3/13/09 at 10:50am
SW deserves to die solely for introducing the "black costume" for Spider-Man, which became Venom.
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post #18 of 46
3/13/09 at 10:55am
The image of Mephisto vomiting maggots onto the powerless Beyonder bothered me for years afterward. It's bothering me a little right now.

But Secret Wars made years of "Bed, Bath and Beyonder" jokes possible, so it's cool.
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post #19 of 46
3/13/09 at 11:04am
Oh, and apparently the Hulk is strong enough to hold up an entire mountain (roughly the size of K2) after it gets dropped on the entire team.

A mountain.
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post #20 of 46
3/13/09 at 11:40am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Judas Booth View Post
Oh, and apparently the Hulk is strong enough to hold up an entire mountain (roughly the size of K2) after it gets dropped on the entire team.

A mountain.
Wasn't there some bullshit about the Beyonder giving everyone a temporary power boost? This thread is going to make me go drag my longboxes out of the closet, isn't it?
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post #21 of 46
3/13/09 at 11:45am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eyeball Kid View Post
Wasn't there some bullshit about the Beyonder giving everyone a temporary power boost? This thread is going to make me go drag my longboxes out of the closet, isn't it?
Not that I recall. I do remember that Dr. Doom spent most of the comic trying to steal the Beyonder's power (and ultimately succeeding), but that's it.
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post #22 of 46
3/13/09 at 11:50am
Thread Starter 
Out of Character moments


Klaw becomes a helpless servant to Doom.

Molecule Man becomes a directionless chubby chaser throughout both I and II.

Dazzler doesn't want to spend her days giving a cosmic God a boner.

Rachel Summers gets a touch of omnipotent power and becomes interesting for the first time in a long time.

The Celestials decided to smack the shit out of Beyonder.
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post #23 of 46
3/13/09 at 11:59am
Beyonder Knowles would make a great (terrible) name for a new MC.
He could tour with DOOM (he just dropped the 'MF' recently).
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post #24 of 46
3/13/09 at 12:05pm
You're going to make me dig these things out again, aren't you? Good GOD, it sounds even worse than I remember.
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post #25 of 46
3/13/09 at 12:11pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Judas Booth View Post
wow, 80s flashback. I remember Spiderman helping him to take a shit.
I think Molecule Man dump-trained The Beyonder. Whether I'm remembering that right or not, the fact I tried to correct it is embarrassing enough.
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post #26 of 46
3/13/09 at 12:14pm
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post #27 of 46
3/13/09 at 5:12pm
Legends is starting to look halfway decent in retrospect.

It's a good reminder though that comics themselves haven't necessarily gotten worse. We've gotten older and jaded.
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post #28 of 46
3/13/09 at 5:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilTwin View Post
It's a good reminder though that comics themselves haven't necessarily gotten worse. We've gotten older and jaded.
I remember Marvel's Contest of Champions screwing up by saying one side won the game 4-2 when, if you went by the visuals and who was on which team, it was actually tied 3-3.

What was really sad at the time was the perception that DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths was just a pale imitation of Secret Wars, since it came out afterwards. Looking back, it's almost like Marvel got wind of Crisis and rushed their mega-crossover out first.
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post #29 of 46
3/13/09 at 5:26pm
Don't forget the terrible Marvel Universe/DC Universe crossovers. There was a particularly bad one featuring the X-Men teaming up with the Teen Titans.
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post #30 of 46
3/13/09 at 5:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Judas Booth View Post
Don't forget the terrible Marvel Universe/DC Universe crossovers. There was a particularly bad one featuring the X-Men teaming up with the Teen Titans.
Goddammit, I bought that one too. I was such an easy mark.
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post #31 of 46
3/13/09 at 5:30pm
From what I recall, that one was ok due to Deathstroke totally kicking the X-men's collective butts. He dispatched Wolverine fairly quickly too, didn't he?
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post #32 of 46
3/13/09 at 5:32pm
I don't remember. I bought it, read it once, and quickly bagged and filed it.
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post #33 of 46
3/13/09 at 5:55pm
I remember at one point Wolverine gets the drop on Deathstroke and he's pretty impressed, then beats the crap out of him.
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post #34 of 46
3/13/09 at 6:24pm
Anyone else remember that the "new universe" was spawned out of the Beyonder's 'death'?

in SW2 (i think) the beyonder was romantically linked with:

Dazzler
Boom Boom
Rachel Summers.
Possibly someone else.

Half the time was blonde in a catsuit and the rest was jheri-curled in a captain EO outfit.

He turned a skyscraper into gold to solve the world's financial problems the skyscraper than melted under it's own weight. In central park. Then Luke Cage explained how the gold standard had not been in use for a number of years. Priceless.

Didn't quasar once go to another dimension filled with beyonders? (I'm sure someone did).

I always thought that the beyonder needed a piss, not a shit. Perhaps a thread devoted entirely to this would be apt.

Jim Shooter, capable of so much good, yet writer of so much excrement.
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post #35 of 46
3/13/09 at 7:41pm
Thread Starter 
The first follow-up to SW 2 was in Englehart's run on Fantastic Four.

He started the whole bit about the Beyonder being a Cosmic Cube without a shell.

Mark Gruenwald wanted a chance to take a shit on Shooter's work, so he had Quasar visit a dimension full of Beyonder. No one can really remember how that ended, since only ten people ever read Quasar.


Then, Bendis came in and said that the Beyonder was a mutant Inhuman that managed to challenge the Celestials and become a God. Well, he didn't really explain the last part. He just copied dialogue out of his book of hack Mamet rips and went for the best.

That brings us up to the present.
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post #36 of 46
3/13/09 at 8:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anderson View Post
No one can really remember how that ended, since only ten people ever read Quasar.
And God help me, I was one of them. in fact, it was on my must-buy list back in the late '80s or early '90s.


If that doesn't completely invalidate my opinion, in defense of the X-men/Titans crossover, let me say that the art by Simonson in that book was pretty awesome. But then, Cyborg actually thinking "I wonder how come the Titans have never tangled with 'em," meaning the Titans, ostensibly in the same universe, struck me as kind of lame even back then, and I was never a continuity nerd.
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post #37 of 46
3/13/09 at 9:15pm
the infinity gauntlet series was better
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post #38 of 46
3/14/09 at 12:29am
Speaking of company crossovers, my first comic was the Superman/Spider-Man treasury-sized special where Dr Doom and the Parasite team-up, guest-starring Hulk and Wonder Woman.

Fun comic. Spider-Man makes a comment about Doom's secret base looking like a set from "Star Wars II".

Oh, and Secret Wars is ass. Even though I got a freakin' Kang the Conqueror toy out of it.
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post #39 of 46
3/17/09 at 12:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Judas Booth View Post
Not that I recall. I do remember that Dr. Doom spent most of the comic trying to steal the Beyonder's power (and ultimately succeeding), but that's it.
Only he didn't did he? I thought I remembered that the Beyonder had just let him think he'd taken his power to see what he'd do with it. Maybe I'm remembering wrong. I remember very specifically being angry that Dr. Doom. somehow snuck up on the Beyonder and his plan to steal his power (based on absolutely no facts at all) had somehow worked.

I did like Doom destroying all the heroes with a thought with a nice panel of their flesh being removed from their bodies (I specifically remember Wolverine's skeleton with the claws extended), and then being unable to control his thoughts enough to keep himself from resurrecting them over and over.
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post #40 of 46
3/20/09 at 4:56pm
My favorite scene from SW2 was the Cloak and Dagger crossover where the Beyonder tries heroin. That made the whole story worthwhile to me.
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post #41 of 46
3/20/09 at 5:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Freeze View Post
From what I recall, that one was ok due to Deathstroke totally kicking the X-men's collective butts. He dispatched Wolverine fairly quickly too, didn't he?
That one was o.k. because Walt Simonson was doing the art. And he drew a very impressive Darkseid.
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post #42 of 46
3/20/09 at 6:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dickson View Post
I remember Marvel's Contest of Champions screwing up by saying one side won the game 4-2 when, if you went by the visuals and who was on which team, it was actually tied 3-3.
This has bothered me since about 1984, when I first read this series as a 10 year old. I mean, that was such a glaring mistake, one I noticed immediately, and it completely threw me off of the whole series.

How in the hell did Marvel miss that???
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post #43 of 46
3/20/09 at 6:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Freeze View Post
From what I recall, that one was ok due to Deathstroke totally kicking the X-men's collective butts. He dispatched Wolverine fairly quickly too, didn't he?
They had 2 rounds. In the first, Wolverine sneaks up behind Deathstroke, holds a cigar up to his face and says "Got a light?" and Deathstroke is all "Sure" and then Deathstroke is all "Hey wait a minute!" and then they fight and Wolverine backhands him him once and that's it.

In round 2 Wolverine distracts Deathstroke while Cyclops shoots him.

The comic is excellent actually. I think it's supposed to be regarded as the best Marvel/DC crossover of them all. It's from that golden period where everything Claremont did was good.
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post #44 of 46
3/20/09 at 6:31pm
I loved the Lobo vs Wolverine contest, even though there's no fucking way that Wolverine should have won.
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post #45 of 46
3/20/09 at 7:19pm
Judas Booth, When did...Sherrif Lobo fight...Wolverine?
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post #46 of 46
3/20/09 at 7:23pm
I am so glad I was a DC kid.
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