10 Reasons We Still Love Marvel's Secret Wars 30 Years Later
9. The Ambiguous Way It Cast The X-Men
At its core, Secret Wars is a comic series about good versus evil. And it draws those lines pretty clearly. Within the first few pages of Secret Wars #1, the creative team gives the reader two, double-spread splash pages; one depicting all of the good guys huddled together, and another with all of the villains. The mutant X-Men are originally grouped with the heroes, but in a unique twist, the teams arch nemesis Magneto is there alongside them. Magnetos presence causes immediate alarm among the good guys, and even the X-Men cant explain why the Beyonder made them a package deal. Regardless, all of the mutants on Battleworld are eventually sent away from the rest of the heroes, creating a third sub-group that mostly operates on the side of good, but also has its fair share of confrontations with the likes of Spider-Man and the Wasp. While X-Men fans were likely annoyed by the teams shoddy treatment, this subplot is actually a nice little nod to the groups origins. The uncanny X-Men were originally presented as benign force that was misunderstood and mistrusted by the general public for being different. Silver Age stories also depicted other Marvel heroes as being leery of the group. So while the Beyonders instincts were right in grouping the X-Men with the good guys, having the team cast as outsiders, even by Marvels most virtuous heroes, is historically accurate.
Mark is a professional writer living in Brooklyn and is the founder of the Chasing Amazing Blog, which documents his quest to collect every issue of Amazing Spider-Man, and the Superior Spider-Talk podcast. He also pens the "Gimmick or Good?" column at Comics Should Be Good blog.
