Secret Wars Video (Crisis Cameo)

[Super Monkey]

The one bright spot to CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS is that an even better story was able to be told using elements from it by Steve Englehart, in his AVENGERS WEST COAST run, where Steve played off the events of CONTEST to use the Grandmaster and the Collector, in order to tell a story that had the West Coast Avengers battle the East Coast Avengers

I have those annnuals, that was hot stuff back then, super compress story telling, All star cast of artists, it would never fly these days.

I always saw Marvel comics as extended fight scenes with a little soap opera thrown in to stitch them all together.

Or in the case of the hulk, no soap opera. You would think that at least the fights would be creative but they just stood around and punch each other like boxers. There was a handful of good marvel writers, but most were just doing it the marvel way, I guess little kids just wanted to see fights and didn't care about characters or plots. They did care about how could beat up who. So therefore, you can see how Secret Wars was a hit. Also explains how most anime shows on TV are hits with kids today as well.

Anyway, if we're going to compare mini-series, I think the closest counterpart to "Secret Wars" was DC's "Super-Powers" miniseries. Both were ultimately of little import to history and both felt like advertisements for a toy line.

Both lines were pretty great! Nowadays, poor kids have to spent $20 a pop for something nearly as cool, while I was snatching up Secret Wars figures at local stores for about $1 each as a kid.

[Sword of Superman]

For me Secret Wars was a Marvel attemp to steal attention from the main event that was coming from the DC,even if at that time they don't need it,because their sales were much much better confronted to the sales of the competition.
It's a simpler story,everyone versus everyone else,that's all. The only real change in their universe was the introduction of Spiderman's black costume,who later became Venom and make it in the '90 the adventure of the wallcrawler almost impossible to read.
And i don't want to say anything about that awful sequel... :gah:

     

[Superman of America]

Mr. Fantastic pointing out to a chubby Spidey who Doc Ock is, parents dissing Thor's costume, and that Crisis cameo was hilarious!

[JulianPerez]

On the other hand, there was at least the germ of a good idea there. If I recall, every hero and villain was snatched off the Earth and plopped down on this planet to fight each other. Whether they stayed there for the run of the series or popped back and forth to Earth at the Beyonder's whim I don't remember, but I think the idea of a Marvel Earth with no super-powered beings is fascinating. Consider: there's almost never any natural disasters on Marvel Earth and after the 60s or so not many many memorable crimes committed by rank-and-file crooks. All of Marvel Earth's troubles are caused by superheroes fighting supervillains, superheroes fighting superheroes and supervillains fighting supervillains. If suddenly they were all to disappear -- all of them -- I think the people of Marvel Earth would be delighted and relieved. It would have been interesting if at the end of Secret Wars they all came back and the people of the Earth let out a collective "Noooooooooooo!"

Considering the nuanced relationship between Marvel heroes and public opinion, this is not an unlikely possibility. Remember, this is a world where there are protestors outside of Avengers Mansion because they have no black members and let mutants on the team!

Even guys like Thor and Captain America aren't exactly universally beloved - when Hercules defeated Thor, for instance, when Seidring the Merciless stole Thor's powers, the press was the first to start the laugh parade at poor Thor's expense. Overall, being a hero is much harder in the Marvel Universe.

Something very much like what you describe did in fact happen in the Marvel Universe during Kurt Busiek's run on AVENGERS: when the Avengers returned, they were interpreted as being fakes and viewed with titanic suspicion.

DC fans, on the other hand, viewed "Secret Wars" as Marvel's hastily slapped-together effort to steal DC's thunder with a "major event" of their own, only with a then relatively unknown artist (compared to superstar Perez) and with nowhere near the promise of sweeping change and cosmic import that "Crisis" had.

I wouldn't say that's an entirely fair assessment.

For one thing, SECRET WARS did introduce several very interesting concepts to the Marvel universe:

The second Spider-Woman, who had a great costume and fantastic powers: Psi-Webs, no less!

The introduction of great old bruiser Titania, who has recently been used to extraordinary effect by Dan Slott in his recent SHE-HULK series (which is absolutely worth picking up), where she was made misanthropic, thwarted, frustrated and all around interesting to read about; the story where she obtained the Infinity Gem of Power from the Champion was the extraordinary climax to the series.