Avengers: Secret Wars [Marvel Premier Collection]

THE MARVEL UNIVERSE IS DESTROYED...BUT WHAT COMES NEXT?!

The end has arrived. The unstoppable wave of interdimensional Incursions has obliterated universe after universe until only two remained — the Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Universe. Their collision has left nothing but Battleworld: a vast, patchwork planet forged from the shattered remnants of countless realities.

On this broken stage, heroes and villains struggle to survive. Strange new domains rise. Familiar faces return in shocking new forms. And at the throne of creation itself sits Doom — absolute master of all.

VISIONARY. DEFINITIVE. UNMISSABLE.

From master storyteller Jonathan Hickman comes the definitive Marvel saga — the cataclysmic event where the Fantastic Four, Avengers, Spider-Man, the X-Men and more face their final battle as the entire Multiverse falls!

COLLECTING: Secret Wars (2015) #1-9, Free Comic Book Day 2015 (Secret Wars) #0 (A story)

Jonathan Hickman (born September 3, 1972, South Carolina) is an American comic book writer and artist. He is known for creating the Image Comics series The Nightly News, The Manhattan Projects and East of West, as well as working on Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four, FF and S.H.I.E.L.D. titles. In 2012, Hickman ended his run on the Fantastic Four titles to write Avengers and New Avengers, as part the "Marvel NOW!" relaunch. In 2013, Hickman wrote a six-part miniseries, Infinity, plus Avengers tie-ins for Marvel Comics. As of 2015, he is writing the crossover event Secret Wars.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Pat Loika [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.).

Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers: Secret Wars is not simply a superhero story about heroes fighting villains. It is a story about the end of existence itself, about what people do when there is no longer any hope of saving the world, and about the dangerous temptation to become a god when ordinary human choices seem incapable of preventing disaster. Illustrated with striking, almost monumental artwork by Esad Ribić, the collection brings together Secret Wars #0–9, including the Free Comic Book Day prologue.

The story is the culmination of Hickman’s long-running Avengers and New Avengers saga. For years, the Marvel Multiverse has been suffering from mysterious “Incursions,” moments when two separate universes occupy the same space and begin moving toward one another. If the collision is not stopped, both universes are destroyed. As universe after universe disappears, the heroes gradually discover that this is not a natural disaster. The Incursions are part of a much larger cosmic catastrophe involving the Beyonders, immensely powerful beings whose actions threaten the very structure of reality.

By the beginning of Secret Wars, almost everything has already been lost. The Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Universe are the last two realities standing. Their final collision cannot be prevented. The heroes have spent years searching for solutions, making compromises, betraying one another, and confronting impossible moral questions. But there is no clever escape this time. The end has arrived.

One of the most heartbreaking parts of the opening is the attempt by Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic, and his allies to survive the destruction using an interdimensional life raft. Reed has spent much of his life believing that intelligence, preparation, and scientific imagination can solve almost any problem. Here, however, even Reed cannot save everyone. The final destruction of the universes becomes a deeply personal tragedy, particularly because his family is separated from him during the catastrophe. Marvel describes the collision as the destruction of both the Marvel and Ultimate universes, leaving behind something entirely new: Battleworld.

Then comes the great surprise. The universe has not completely disappeared. Instead, fragments of countless destroyed realities have been assembled into one enormous patchwork planet called Battleworld. Each fragment has become a separate territory, populated by people and societies drawn from different versions of Marvel history. It is a strange combination of familiar and unfamiliar: recognizable characters live in radically altered circumstances, old enemies may become rulers or servants, and entire alternate histories have been transformed into pieces of a new world.

At the center of this impossible world stands Doctor Doom.

Doom has accomplished what almost everyone else failed to do: he has survived the destruction of the Multiverse and created something in its place. More importantly, he has become its absolute ruler. He is not merely the ruler of a country or planet. He is God Emperor Doom, the unquestioned master of Battleworld. The people of this new reality worship him, obey him, and accept his version of history because, from their perspective, he has given them existence when existence should have ended.

This is where Hickman turns the traditional superhero conflict into something much more interesting. Doom is certainly a tyrant, but he is not presented as a simple villain. He genuinely believes that he saved creation. His answer to the destruction of reality is control. If freedom produces chaos and chaos produces annihilation, then perhaps absolute authority is justified. Battleworld therefore becomes an enormous philosophical experiment: Is a flawed, controlled world better than no world at all?

The arrival of survivors from the old Marvel Universe threatens that entire system. Reed Richards and other heroes represent an uncomfortable truth for Doom: his creation may not be the only possible future. The presence of people who remember the old universe creates the possibility that Doom’s perfect story can be challenged.

Among the most important figures is Doctor Strange. In Battleworld, Strange serves Doom, but his loyalty is more complicated than it first appears. He understands Doom better than most people do, including Doom’s immense pride and his desperate need to prove that he alone is capable of saving existence. Strange also recognizes that Doom’s greatest weakness is the belief that the universe must belong to him simply because he rescued it.

The story also brings Reed and Doom’s rivalry to its most personal level. Their conflict has always been about more than science or power. Reed represents collaboration, curiosity, and the willingness to admit that someone else may have a better answer. Doom represents pride, certainty, and the refusal to accept intellectual or emotional defeat. In Secret Wars, that rivalry becomes a battle over reality itself.

The emotional heart of the story, however, lies in the Richards family and in the idea of rebuilding. Valeria and Franklin are especially important because they connect the enormous cosmic conflict to something intimate and human. Hickman repeatedly reminds the reader that universes are ultimately made meaningful by relationships. A multiverse may contain infinite worlds, but saving reality means very little if there is no love, family, friendship, or memory within it.

The story gradually reveals that Doom’s power is not as secure as it seems. The appearance of resistance forces him to confront the possibility that his supposedly perfect creation is built on fear and manipulation. Battleworld may look stable, but beneath its surface are resentment, suppressed memories, old identities, and competing versions of truth. The many domains of Battleworld are therefore more than settings; they represent the fragments of a history that refuses to disappear completely.

One of Hickman’s greatest achievements is the way he uses the Marvel Universe’s enormous continuity without allowing the story to become merely nostalgic. Secret Wars celebrates Marvel history while simultaneously questioning the importance of continuity. Characters appear in forms that recall earlier stories, alternate realities, and forgotten possibilities. Yet the central question remains surprisingly simple: when everything has been destroyed, what parts of the past are worth carrying forward?

The final confrontation between Reed and Doom provides the emotional and philosophical payoff. Their struggle is not simply about who possesses greater power. It is about what kind of person should be trusted with creation. Doom believes that his ability to create makes him worthy of absolute authority. Reed ultimately demonstrates that creation is not about controlling everything. It requires accepting uncertainty, allowing others to participate, and recognizing that no individual should own the future.

The ending, appropriately titled “Genesis,” moves beyond destruction toward renewal. Marvel identifies the ninth issue as the concluding chapter, and the collected edition presents the story as the culmination of Hickman’s larger Avengers saga. The story does not treat the restoration of reality as a simple reset button. Instead, it presents reconstruction as an act of imagination. The future is not merely recovered; it is rebuilt.

That idea gives Avengers: Secret Wars its lasting emotional power. Beneath all the cosmic battles, gods, superheroes, alternate universes, and impossible science is a very human question: What do we do after everything we know has been taken away?

Hickman’s answer is ultimately hopeful. We remember what mattered, we accept that the old world cannot be perfectly restored, and we begin again. Doom tries to preserve existence by possessing it. Reed and the heroes ultimately move toward a different philosophy—one based on cooperation, love, curiosity, and the willingness to create something new.

Avengers: Secret Wars is therefore both an ending and a beginning. It brings Hickman’s enormous multiversal narrative to its climax while transforming the familiar Marvel Universe into a story about memory, identity, sacrifice, pride, forgiveness, and rebirth. It is grand in scale but surprisingly intimate at its core. The fate of infinite universes may provide the spectacle, but the story’s deepest concern is much smaller: whether human beings can learn to let go of what they cannot save and still find the courage to build something worth living in.