Godawful Marvel Comics mini-series in the mid-1980s, written by Jim Shooter with art by Mike Zeck and Bob Layton.

Here's the deal: this godlike being called the Beyonder whisks Marvel's biggest-name superheroes and supervillains, as well as some people we've never heard of before, off to a distant planet imaginatively called Battleworld. Everyone fights, and some stuff happens: Spiderman gets a black costume that's actually an alien symbiote. Colossus breaks up with Kitty Pryde. Hulk breaks his leg. The Thing turns back into Ben Grimm. Doctor Doom briefly gets godlike powers himself (again), and is taken down (again). Iron Man gets some new armor. All of this could conceivably have been interesting, but it wasn't.

One major problem was the Secret Wars series lasted a year. During this time, you of course couldn't have all those heroes missing from their own titles, so in the issues following Secret Wars #1, all those people friggin' came BACK. We KNEW, months in advance, that all of the above events were going to take place because the heroes has already returned safe and sound with their broken legs and new costumes and stupid stories about Battleworld.

Astonishingly, there was a sequel (Secret Wars II) in which the Beyonder, now incarnated as a groovy swinger in a white leisure suit, comes to Earth. Yay.

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