It's not just that Secret Wars is an amazing stand-alone summer event that revisits Marvel's first Great Event, says writer Jonathan Hickman. It's also a story that's grown organically from the ones I've been telling in Avengers over the past couple of years. No kidding - from the looks of it, Hickman's been building up to this for a while. Most of the time, Marvel's big summer events will have a little bit of lead-in time, but Secret Wars might be the only one that's been several years in the making (and ties into past events like Infinity). Hickman's Avengers and New Avengers have been providing a slow introduction to this event for two years. It's in those books that a group of superheroes (Mr Fantastic, Black Panther etc) discovered that the world was under threat, as alternate Earths began crashing into our own. The only way to save us? Destroying those planets. It resulted in a lot of uhming and ahing, severed allegiances, tested morals, that sort of thing. Doesn't look like they could've stopped it anyway. Woops.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
