Headscratchers / Secret Wars (2015)

• Isn't the Earth-616 Lizard currently a good guy?^note Being Curt Connors' psyche in control of the Lizard's body What's he doing in a Bad Guy Bar with the likes of the Kingpin and Norman Osborn?
  • Curt Connors may be in control, but he's still wracked with guilt over eating his kid. Plus, it's the end of the world. Good guy, bad guy, they're all gonna die.
• Doesn't Punisher realize that by killing the villains at the bar he's giving them a mercy killing? He spares them from being burned alive during the world's destruction.
  • They were already celebrating the end of the world in their own terms. By killing them now he is basically taking that away from them. it's kind of petty when you think about it, but that's Frank for you. Also, it's kind of a rule that Frank kills villains with Plot Armor anytime the end of the world happens at this point.
  • The ones he can kill anyway.
  • Does it really matter? This troper doubt he can get pass Sandman and Bullseye
    • Maybe that's the point. Maybe Frank wants to go out in a Blaze Of Glory, rather than sit and wait for worlds to collide.
    • It's immensely satisfying to think just how brief and epic this fight would be. The Punisher versus the Kingpin, Norman Osborn, Bullseye, The Lizard, and (from the looks of it) the Scorpion—among others. Blaze of glory indeed.
    • Going by Last Days, Punisher slaughters them in enough time to still have a couple hours left before the incursion occurs. My question is... how, when half of them are immune to gunfire and have superhuman strength and reflexes?
    • Plottonium
    • A popular theory is that Punisher really was mortally wounded during the fight and Last Days is a hallucination. This would explain many inconsistencies in the plot.

• If I understand the rules correctly, the only way to save one Earth from an Incursion is to destroy the other. However, in all the battle and plotting, I didn't see one person actually trying to DESTROY an Earth. Did I misunderstand the rules or did no one even try?
  • The Beyonders were wrecking universes by this point all on their lonesome; if one Earth had destroyed the other, they'd have been more than capable of mopping up what was left. Mighty Avengers also showed Spectrum try and destroy the Ultimate Earth, but they realized they couldn't go through with it.

• Why would Doom Include the Marvel Zombies and the Ultron nation in the world he created?
  • Doom seems to have cobbled Battleworld together from the last few surviving worlds undergoing Incursions. It's possible that the various nations are literally ALL that was left at that point, and he wasn't able to pick and choose.
  • Kieron Gillen confirmed in an interview it exists mainly to act as punishment.

• How is the shield holding back anyone? Most of the robots and zombies could easily get over it.
  • The Shield is probably manned by a huge number of superhumans and normal soldiers, backed up by technological and magical fortifications.
  • If the wall falls, Doom just puts it back together again, as he's omnipotent.
  • The Siege series has confirmed that the Shield has been breached at least once before, when the Ultron collective, zombies, and Annihilation Wave broke through simultaneously and devastated vast swaths of Battleworld. Doom intentionally allowed them to run amok until they were near his capital, then instantly teleported the lot back behind the Shield and repaired the breaches.

• Why is there a wall separating the Deadlands, New Xandar and Perfection from the rest of Battleworld but not one for the Greenlands where the Hulks live? They can't all be heroic Hulks.
  • Most of the Hulks have no reason to encroach on other territories, especially with a huge expanse of ocean separating them. There probably aren't many Hulks intelligent, malevolent, and ambitious enough (e.g. the Maestro) to pose an immediate threat. In contrast, Ultron and the Zombies are like apocalyptic plagues; contagious, ravenous, incredibly powerful, and impossible to negotiate with.
  • In the Planet Hulk book it's shown that while the Hulks are territorial, they don't seem to want to leave. So they are only a threat if you enter their turf. The Red King seems to be the only one with any ambition of conquest.
  • Should also be of note that an ocean separates Greenland from the rest of the world.
  • What at least the Hulk usually wants is just to be left alone. You don't bother him, he doesn't bother you. Maybe that's the prevailing mindset with most Hulks.

• So... let's talk about Inferno, and Colossus' incredibly stupid plan to rescue his sister. First of all, he makes his attempts on the same day every year, both letting the demons know exactly when he and his team are going to show up and giving them 365 days to prepare for him. Second, Nightcrawler is their only means in or out, but he quips about how fun it is to get to kill demons. Why the hell isn't protecting him their main priority?! Losing him not only means losing their only means of escape, but any hope of making future attempts. Third, Colossus admits to having absolutely no strategy before mounting his assault on Inferno, and his girlfriend Domino rightfully calls this out before ultimately dismissing it as if he forgot their anniversary or something. This lack of planning thus leads to virtually everyone on the team being captured or killed only minutes later. And fourth and finally, all of this is to rescue one person?! Look, I get that superheroes try to be loyal and valorous (and Colossus is insanely protective of his sister), but the way this assault gets worse every year means that more and more allies are lost each and every time they try.
  • That is the point though, Colossus having tunnel vision on saving his sister is the point. It's perfectly in character for him.

• Speaking of Inferno I am confused are the X-Men, Illyana, Madelyne, Alex and N'astirh the 616 versions or are they from a different universe?
  • Alternate Universe. It's a universe were the bad guys won in the Inferno storyline. So no, it's not the 616 universe. Most of the books do not have the 616 characters, except for Ultimate End and Secret Wars proper, so far anyway.
  • Note that Ultimate End does NOT feature characters from the Ultimate Universe, it is just a universe that happens to be similar to the Ultimate Universe colliding with a universe that happens to be similar to the 616 Universe. That is why dead characters, like Ultimate Punisher and Ultimate Wasp are still alive. The only true character from the Ultimate or 616 Universes is Miles Morales, who shows up at the end of Vol. 4.

• How are the civilians responding to all of this? When all of this is said and done and 616 regains what it called normal, will everyone remember what happened? Will the universal collision go down in the history books, or will those who survived just go on living their lives, unaware of how they were nearly wiped out, and with only the key players in Secret Wars remembering what happened?
  • Well, it is called Secret Wars...
  • They will probably blame the heroes for it. They kind of do that....a lot.
  • They could always go the Watchmen route and explain it as a mass hysteria induced by psychic alien attack. It's no weirder than anything else they've had to deal with. Heck, some people might even remember, subtly or directly, and that knowledge could spawn new heroes and villains down the road.
  • OK, so Ms. Marvel (2014) is giving us a good idea on what's going on: Apparently people in Manhattan can see the other Earth in the sky and the surrounding areas are falling into a panic as refugees rush to escape the city. While things are chaotic, society isn't exactly falling apart in its entirety, seeing as how earth-616 is supposed to be spared in the end.
  • It's explained in New Avengers. The Incursions happen in "Incurion Points" between the two universes. Everything on both earths outside those bubbles are unaware of the universal overlap.
    • Wait, so then... What was the point of all of that stuff involving getting on rafts and worlds being destroyed? Couldn't all of that been dealt with by evacuating everyone out of the Incurion Points?
    • Not the way you mean it. The Incursion Points are basically just the places where the Incursion can be seen. Everyone, even people outside of the zone, would still be destroyed during an Incursion, but they just wouldn't see it coming. In the Incursion Points, people can look up in the sky and see the other planet heading their way. However, you do have a point in that rafts might have been a viable option to save as many people as possible (instead of just the superhero elite) but the Illuminati kept this whole problem secret from all of humanity until it was far too late.

• So whats The One Of Above All (heavily implied to be God) doing since the Beyonders are destroying all of creation and destroyed the Living Tribunal? Safeguarding the Afterlife? A great off panel war with them?
  • The OAA couldn't be bothered to get off its ass or send the Living Tribunal to fix things 99.999% of the time. What makes THIS any different? Besides, He/She/They/It is basically shorthand for an Author Avatar, and since Marvel editorial sanctioned this event, that means the OAA is probably somewhere eating popcorn. (Okay, snark aside, I would like to see if he/she/it/them pops up.
  • Given what little we've seen with Him, The One Above All fits the deist idea of God-He started the ball rolling, but doesn't get involved. Not that He needs to, since being all-knowing knows it's going to sort itself out anyway.
  • Remember that He won't show up as a superhero and make an obvious divine intervention. He works In Mysterious Ways.

• Speaking of the Beyonders, there's destroying all reality to see what happens. So where are they supposed to live with everything destroyed?
  • They live outside reality as anyone knows it. Mighty Avengers implied in the last arc before Secret Wars that the heads of the Beyond Corporation are similar types of beings, existing in some realm beyond the Marvel Multiverse, and possibly even the larger Omniverse.

• How are different time periods like 1602 and 2099 parts of Battleworld? I do not remember ever seeing a story where time passes differently in different parallel realities. Neither does there appear to be any kind of time distortion effect happening due to realities colliding in the lead-up. It is stated that the regions of Battleworld are the Incursion points of their native Earths. So did Incursions start happening over four hundred years ago and somehow escape everyone's notice or what? And how did the 2099, Future Imperfect, etc. universes face an Incursion earlier than the 616 and Ultimate universes?
  • Simply put, the Marvel Multiverse subscribes to the "Many Worlds" theory, meaning what you're referring to as different time periods are separate universes in their own right. Some are offshoots of Earth-616, like 2099 and Days of Future Past, while others are completely different, like the Ultimate Universe and 1602.
    • I understand this, but what I am wondering is why and how this is happening in those universes in those time periods, and not circa year 2015 in their respective pasts and futures.
  • Marvel's Multiverse runs on the "whatever we see is NOW" principle. For example, when the Exiles traveled across dimensions, some of the ones they ended up in where in alternate futures (such as 2099). Marvel's (and DC's) logic (even if there's nothing official that states it) is that any point that we read a comic is "Now". So if we're reading a story set in 3000 BC, that is "now" within the context of the story. If we read one set in 3000 AD, that is "now" also. So when Battleworld was destroyed, Doom simply merged all these various "nows" together. I mean, technically speaking, if the multiverse and all time is destroyed, then technically it's not 2015 anywhere.
  • Who says that all alternatenate universes have their respective time periods in perfect synchrony? Perhaps the marvel and the Ultimate Marvel universes have synchony in that they were both in the 2015 year, but 1602 and 2099 do not.

• How is Nathan Summers alive? I though that Madelyne intend to sacrifice him to make Inferno permanent and Inferno seems to be permanently there.
  • Illyana completely switched over to the "dark side", making the sacrifice idea totally moot. And now that Madelyne has all of Illyana's "dark goodies", it's still moot.
• How can Peter Quill be in Manhattan with pompadour!Drax in Star-Lord and Kitty Pryde, and on Knowhere at the end of Guardians of Knowhere? If his appearance in GoK takes place after SLaKP... what happened to pompadour!Drax?
  • The most likely answer is that the two stories feature different incarnations of Peter Quill.
    • Unlikely, seeing as the one from Star-Lord and Kitty Pryde is explicitly stated to be 616 Quill who was on the Life Raft, and the one from Guardians of Knowhere is strongly implied to be the same one. Most likely, he somehow ended up on Knowhere after the events of Star-Lord and Kitty Pryde, hopefully they'll explain how at some point.
• In Spider-Verse, Gwen mentions Spider-Ham reminds her of an imaginary friend she had when she "was a girl". Does this mean that Gwen is now 8 years older than she was in Spider-Gwen?
  • No because post-Spider-Verse her and the rest of the various Spider-Men ended up right in the middle of Battleworld 8 years after it was formed due to alternate-universal travel (much like Nomad in Hail Hydra).
• Why is the Marvel Universe's founding date given as 1961 and not 1939?
  • The first Fantastic Four was published in 1961, which was also the year the company acquired the name "Marvel Comics". Prior to that it was Atlas Comics and Timely Comics.
    • Yeah, but Namor and the original Human Torch come from 1939 or '40, and Marvel was also the name of their very first comic.
  • The "official" position seems to be that the actual 'Marvel universe' started in 1961 with the publication of Fantastic Four #1 (when they first published a superhero book as Marvel Comics). Both Namor and Captain America (and other Golden Age characters like Millie the Model) weren't added until a few years later, basically making it more of a case of Canon Welding. Essentially the Golden Age Timely/Atlas Comics Universe was its own universe until they made it canon to the Silver Age Marvel Universe.
• Prior the arrival of 616-Reed and The maker, Battleworld is said to have no Reed Richards. Then why does the Fantastic Thors that show up in Siege have a Reed Richards Thor?
• Doesn't making it so the Incursions never happened as implied with the Black Panther scene in #9 basically mess up gigantic chunks of ANAD? There's plenty of characters currently active in ANAD who only have their powers because the Incursions happened, and even a few characters that only exist at all because the Incursions happened. It pretty much is already Canon Discontinuity.
  • My understanding is that T'Challa did not reverse the entire 616 universe to its pre-incursion state, he merely used the Reality Gem to recreate Wakanda as it was before the incursions began. In New Avengers it was established that that Infinity Gems only work in their native universe. And according to Dr. Strange, Doomstadt was the only piece left of the universe where these particular Gems came from. So the Infinity Gauntlet only had power over Doomstadt, not the entire planet nor the universe. So what T'Challa seems to have done was to make Doomstadt into Wakanda as it was in the first issue of New Avengers, before the first incursion.
• The behaviour of Thanos in this story and in Infinity makes little sense given his previous character development. The whole point of the conclusion to The Infinity Gauntlet was that Thanos had subconsciously realized he wasn't fit to be god, so he himself handed the heroes the keys to defeating him. After that realization Thanos stops craving for power and mostly acts as a neutral force, sometimes even helping the heroes in the fight against other would-be conquerors, such as Magus, Annihilus, his own clones, or the Cancerverse invaders. But now he's back to leading a bunch of interstellar pirates and murderers, casually fighting the heroes and making A God Am I boasts, even at the face of Dr. Doom, which obviously leads into Doom killing him... Even though the Thanos established before Jonathan Hickman's run would never have made a pointless sacrifice like that just because of his ego. It's as if Hickman hasn't read any Thanos stories published after The Infinity Gauntlet, or even the final issue of that series.
  • Any author of Thanos except for Jim Starlin (or perhaps Ron Marz or Dan Abnett) is guilty of giving Thanos Villain Decay. Thanos Rising is largely responsible for the Flanderization of Thanos' character is recent years.

• In the first issue of Old Man Logan, Logan refers to Thors and other concepts that seem to imply that he is aware of how Battleworld works. He then spends the rest of the series constantly being freaked out by it, as if he has no knowledge of it whatsoever. What the crap?
  • It's one thing to have a vague knowledge of a concept or institution that exists out there somewhere, and that you never gave a second thought about because it is meaningless for your day-to-day existence, and another to be actually involved in it. It's one thing to know that the CIA exists, and another to have CIA agents taking down your door to detain you. Also, a logical consequence of the strict imposibility of traveling from one domain to another is that the regular folks would have a strong provincialism. Logan may know, in the conceptual level, that there are other domains, but not what can he actually find in them.

• What is the differences between a Warzones or a Battleworld titles?
  • The idea was that Warzones titles stay at one place as much as possible (A-Force — Arcadia; 1602 - Witch Hunter Angela — King James' England and so forth), while Battleworld ones take place in more domains (so anthology books (like Secret Wars Journal), books that feature a multi domain cast (see Siege) or have people travelling between domains (for example Runaways)). In practice the line was muddier. Like 'Why is Old Man Logan Warzones not Battleworld despite the cross barony travelling?', we don't know (if I'd to guess: At the planing stages when they decided under which umbrella to place it it had less border crossing).

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