Incursions, Illuminati, and Secret Wars
Making sense of the comic origins for the latest MCU buzzwords
If you’ve spent any amount of time on Twitter in the past week, then you’ve probably noticed that “Secret Wars” has been trending on a daily basis. The reason being that the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) fan base is convinced that this popular comic book story is what will be adapted as the next big event movie for the franchise. There have been mutterings ever since Avengers: Endgame was released that the franchise has felt a bit directionless ever since the “Infinity Stones” saga concluded, so I can’t fault fans for latching onto this. But what exactly is Secret Wars, and why is it generating so much excitement?
To understand what it is, we also need to understand what it isn’t. There are three Marvel series with very similar titles that can easily cause confusion. There are Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars (1984) by Jim Shooter and Mike Zeck, Secret War (2004) by Brian Michael Bendis and Gabriele Dell'Otto, and Secret Wars (2015) by Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic. While I suppose there are fans out there thinking it’ll be one of the first two, the overwhelming online consensus is that the 2015 event comic from Hickman and Ribic is the one destined to be adapted. It does share some connective tissue with the 1984 series (which was published explicitly to market a new line of toys), but it is a far more popular and critically well-received series. It is also intrinsically tied to the multiverse which is the topic du jour in the MCU.
So what is it about? If you were to click on that trending topic on Twitter you would be led to believe that it is just a battle royale where every universe in the multiverse goes to war with one another. In MCU speak, this would mean cameos from every superhero to ever appear on the big screen as they all fight either each other or some huge common foe (Kang the Conqueror being the name most frequently tossed out). That’s an extremely surface level understanding of Secret Wars. Secret Wars is better understood as the culmination of stories told by Jonathan Hickman over the course of almost a decade as he tried to pinpoint the soul of the Marvel Universe. To get a full appreciation of it would require reading that nearly decade long run of comics including Secret Warriors, S.H.I.E.L.D., Fantastic Four, FF, Ultimate Comics: Ultimates, Avengers, New Avengers, Infinity, and then finally Secret Wars. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say no one reading this wants to read over 200 comic books in preparation for a movie that may or may not ever get made. Instead I’ll touch on some key themes and concepts from Fantastic Four and New Avengers that should hopefully make Secret Wars a little easier to understand and appreciate.
The thesis for Jonathan Hickman’s Fantastic Four can be summed up in two words: solve everything. This is the goal of Reed Richards (also known as Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four). He is arguably the smartest man in the Marvel Universe, and he is obsessed with fixing every problem facing the world because he genuinely believes he has the intellect and willpower to do so. This drive frequently causes familial conflict as he is often too preoccupied with this goal to be the husband and father he should be. You could say he feels burdened with glorious purpose. Very early in the run, Reed finds out there is an organization humorously referred to as the Council of Reeds that is made up of Reeds from every universe in the multiverse. They gather at a point that exists outside of the multiverse where they brainstorm ways to solve every problem. It seems like a perfect fit for our Reed, but there’s a catch: every Reed on the Council had to leave their family in order to devote the proper time to solve everything. Our Reed refuses to do so, and that’s what sets him apart from every other Reed in the multiverse.
The other bit of character development from that run in the lead up to Secret Wars goes to Reed’s ultimate nemesis: Victor Von Doom (but you should only address him as Doctor Doom if you value your life). A few things are highlighted about Doom in this run that will pay off down the line. The most important of these is that Doom fancies himself a god who is unafraid to stand against actual gods. At one point he is the only person standing between a trio nigh omnipotent Mad Celestials (cosmic gods responsible for the evolution of the human race) and a gateway to our universe. Doom succeeds in slowing them down just long enough to allow some cosmic reinforcements to arrive. While it may seem as though Doom was making the sacrifice play for the greater good, we soon learn that he had some ulterior motives as well. After his short confrontation with the Mad Celestials he jumped to a universe with an unguarded Infinity Gauntlet, allowing him to become the god of that universe. Unfortunately, his own ego and insecurities lead his own creations to turn on him, and he has to give up his godhood and flee back into our universe. Whoopsie.
From there we can jump ahead to New Avengers where two words that have recently entered the MCU lexicon play a huge role in the story: incursions and Illuminati. Let’s start with the Illuminati. Despite the title of the series, New Avengers isn’t about the Avengers. It’s a book about the Illuminati. To put it succinctly, the Illuminati are a group of the smartest and most influential men in the Marvel Universe. I put some emphasis on “men” here because they definitely would have benefited from having some more diverse voices in the room. Anyway, the Illuminati were initially created by Brian Michael Bendis and Steve McNiven back in 2005. They operated in secrecy behind the scenes to deal with threats they deemed too consequential to be left up to the rest of the world to solve. The initial group included Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Charles Xavier, Black Bolt, Doctor Strange, and Namor the Sub-Mariner. When Hickman began writing them in New Avengers, the lineup had changed to Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Black Bolt, Doctor Strange, Namor, Black Panther, Steve Rogers, and Hank McCoy (Beast). Bruce Banner would also join much further down the line. The reason for the group reforming was because of the multiversal threat of incursions discovered by Black Panther. An incursion is when two different universes somehow collide with one another and obliterate each other at the point of overlap. That point in every incursion is planet Earth. The only way to prevent an incursion from annihilating both universes is to destroy one of the Earths before they overlap. You can see how this might be a problem. When confronted with the possibility that the Illuminati might need to wipe out billions of lives by destroying another universe’s Earth to save our own, Steve Rogers refuses to play along and is determined to find a better way. The Illuminati respond by having Doctor Strange mind wipe him so that he has no memory of the Illuminati or incursions.
We now have a base understanding of what incursions are and how the Illuminati are involved with trying to prevent them. Who are the other players involved in this “Game of Worlds” as it is sometimes referred? Despite the Illuminati’s best efforts at keeping incursions a secret from the rest of the world, Doctor Doom figures out what is going on. Aggravated that the Illuminati didn’t try to bring him in to help, he goes about his own way to try and solve the problem. This leads him into an alliance with Molecule Man whom he suspects has a role in things (he’s right, but it takes a while to find out what role that is). Another group that is aware of the incursions is known as the Black Swans. They are a group of powerful albino women who serve at behest of their god, Rabum Alal. They are made up of Swans that exist throughout the multiverse and operate out of a stronghold that exists outside of the known multiverse. Their goal is to preserve the multiverse, but it isn’t clear exactly how they do so until much later in the story.
The next group are the Mapmakers. They are beings of artificial intelligence that serve their gods, the Ivory Kings. The Mapmakers were created by the Ivory Kings to figure out what the Black Swans and Rabum Alal are up to and stop them. Another group that is involved in this multiversal arms race are the Black Priests. They are a powerful group of multiversal sorcerers who travel from Earth to Earth with the intent to destroy them to prevent any future incursions. This brings them into conflict with both the Black Swans and Mapmakers (as well as the Illuminati).
The final group involved is the Cabal. They also wish to stave off incursions by destroying any Earth that might prove a threat to our Earth. They are made up of Thanos, Terrax the Tamer (former herald of Galactus), Maximus the Mad (Black Bolt’s brother), a Black Swan that had been captured by the Illuminati, and Thanos’ Black Order. They are assembled by none other than Namor when he becomes disillusioned with the Illuminati and their unwillingness to do whatever it takes to stave off incursions.
All of these groups continually come in conflict with one another as well dealing with infighting among themselves. It turns out being at war with the threat of the annihilation of all of reality at stake can be somewhat stressful. Ultimately the Illuminati with all of their influence and power are helpless to stop the incursions. They can only delay the inevitable. This is what leads Namor to leave the group and form the Cabal. It also leads Doctor Strange to leave the group and take over as leader of the Black Priests, and he takes it upon himself to find Rabum Alal and take him and his Black Swans off the board. More on that later. The Illuminati also end up learning who the Ivory Kings are and what they want. The answer is horrifying. They are the Beyonders, a group of gods who exist outside the multiverse with seemingly limitless power. Oh a complete whim out of boredom, they have decided to set things in motion that will lead to the obliteration of every universe in existence. This omniversal genocide is just a game to them. What the Illuminati did not know that Rabum Alal and his Black Swans had discovered was the means which the Beyonders planned to execute this plan. That is discovered when Strange and his Black Priests launch an attack on Rabum Alal’s fortress. The Black Swans were prepared for such an attack and quickly kill the Black Priests while taking Strange prisoner to take before Rabum Alal himself. In one of my favorite reveals in comic book history, we find out that Rabum Alal is none other than Doctor Doom. It turns out that he had discovered the Beyonders’ plan before anyone else, and that plan was to turn every Molecule Man on every Earth in every universe into a bomb that when triggered would destroy every universe in the multiverse at a molecular level. Doom then concocted a plan to kill every Molecule Man on every Earth to prevent this from happening. He found Black Swans in as many universes as possible at a young age to raise them in a belief that he was a god, and then once they reached adulthood they would serve as his army of religious zealots that he could send throughout the multiverse to find and kill as many Molecule Men as possible. Once the Beyonders figured this out, they created the Mapmakers to catalogue Earths where a Molecule Man had already been killed to try to narrow down where Doom was and prevent him from ruining his plans. What a twist! Ultimately Doom realized he would never be able to kill enough Molecule Men fast enough before the Beyonders caught up to him, so he came up with a new plan. Instead of killing them, Doom captured as many Molecule Men as possible and fashioned them into a bomb of his own. Once the Beyonders located him at his fortress outside of reality, he relied on their arrogance to get his bomb close enough to them to detonate and exterminate them all. With their godlike powers now flowing freely in the seams between realities, Doom takes their powers into himself and becomes God Doom. With his newfound power, Doom gathers all of the fragments of every remaining universe in existence before they can die and crams them into a single world he calls Battleworld. And that is when Secret Wars begins.
I know. That was a lot just to get us to Secret Wars, but trust me when I say I cut out A LOT of stuff. That was as high level as I could go to get us to this point. I didn’t even cover Thor and Hyperion striking up a bromance and raising a bunch of cute kids! Anyway, when Secret Wars begins we’re seeing one final incursion happen as the Ultimate Universe (Earth-1610) and the main Marvel Universe (Earth-616) are getting ready to collide. We’re treated to an epic battle drawn by Esad Ribic before a white event happens and all of existence is blinked out (or so everyone thinks). We know this is actually God Doom creating Battleworld, but our characters don’t realize this. The Reed Richards from our universe (616) and the Reed Richards from the Ultimate Universe (1610) had each created what are essentially life rafts that allow their occupants to survive outside of reality. Our Reed’s life raft has Reed, Sue (who falls out of the raft and seemingly dies), Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Star-Lord, Cyclops, Spider-Man (Peter Parker), and Thor (Jane Foster). The other life raft has The Maker (Reed-1610), Thanos, Black Swan, Terrax, Maximus, Proxima Midnight, Corvus Glaive, Namor, and Spider-Man (Miles Morales). These two groups emerge on Battleworld as the only inhabitants who remember the multiverse as it existed before God Doom had created Battleworld. Actually, that isn’t true. God Doom remembers as does his sheriff, Doctor Strange. What we quickly learn is that God Doom had saved existence by cramming pieces of the multiverse into one world composed of fiefdoms ruled over by different warlords who were powerful in their respective universes before Battleworld’s creation. Apocalypse rules over one, Maestro rules over another, Mr. Sinister rules over another, and so on. All of these warlords, however, bend the knee to God Doom. God Doom rules over Battleworld with his family at his side: Sue Storm, Franklin Richards, and Valeria Richards. That has to be the pettiest move of all. Doom doesn’t just save reality, but he makes sure no Reeds from the multiverse exist in his world, and he has stolen Reed’s family as his own. Not cool, God Doom. That being said, the stakes have now been set. Reed must somehow unseat God Doom, return existence to its proper state, and get his family back. When I say a lot of MCU fans are missing the true point of Secret Wars, this is what I mean. Is it a cool concept with loads of characters and unimaginably epic stakes? Certainly. But the main story is about two brilliant and arrogant men who hold contrasting worldviews that have shaped the Marvel Universe as we know it today. I don’t want to spoil all of the great moments in this story because I genuinely think it is a masterpiece that everyone should read. Hopefully my long winded explainer of the events leading up to Secret Wars was enough that you feel comfortable reading it without missing any key insights. But even more than that, I hope Kevin Feige and the brain trust behind the MCU understand what should really be adapted if they want to make a Secret Wars movie.
Job well done!