It's not a reboot. Since Secret Wars began, certain usually-reliable outlets like io9 and The Hollywood Reporter have started using the key phrase "Marvel reboot." Such talk was premature, but it was at least understandable. The first issue of Secret Wars ended in a way very familiar to comics fans who've been around long enough to remember Crisis on Infinite Earths, or Zero Hour, or just last week's Convergence - the heroes of two universes did their best to carry on being heroes in the face of seemingly certain armageddon. But the seemingly certain became seemingly past tense, and everything, everything, everything, everything, everything in the world, everything in the solar system, everything in the universe was all whited out like so many typographical errors. When that happens at DC Comics, it usually means one thing: "We're gonna have a reboot." Time will reset. All existing stories (with a handful of exceptions, but more on that later) will be over by default. We will begin again, picking up our story as a lonely starship, our first contact with alien life, hurtles down into the golden cornfields of Kansas. But Marvel has generally handled its continuity differently. Its "main timeline" has remained basically the same-- allowing for retcons and small, focused alterations-- since the 1940s. It will continue to do so after Secret Wars, according to Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso, despite his talk of a "transformative event." "We are not erasing our history, or throwing away any old stories; we are building on our history" (note he didn't say "and will keep doing that, forever"). But there will be some big changes. Here's what we know about them now, a lot of which flies in the face of that early speculation.
T Campbell has written quite a few online comics series and selected work for Marvel, Archie and Tokyopop. His longest-running works are Fans, Penny and Aggie-- and his current project with co-writer Phil Kahn, Guilded Age.
