Secret Wars II #3

Secret Wars II #3 (1985)
by Jim Shooter & Al Milgrom 

I begrudgingly admit this is a rather good cover, possibly the best of the miniseries.
The rest of the story, though?

This is the last issue where the Beyonder has his blond and child-minded form that I like, so savor it while it lasts.

The Beyonder comes across a random prostitute, who believe it or not plays a VERY important part in this story.

“Toots”… yes that’s the only name we get for her… suggests renting a hotel, so the Beyonder demonstrates he HAS learned something from the previous issue.

Not only Toots has one of the most realistic reactions to the Beyonder we’ll ever see, but this is one of my favorite jokes of the series. Jim Shooter is typically TERRIBLE at comedy, but this was funny to me.

This is the 80s, so we are 100% committed to the idea that it’s Hell on Earth: when the Beyonder goes to rent a room, of course he’s going to be robbed and beaten up.
(also: WTF is up with this dude’s sideburns!?)

I am going to miss those captions that gives us a glimpse into the Beyonder’s alien thinking SO much once he becomes an idiot.

Now we meet the man who is arguably the most important supporting character in the Beyonder’s life: the minor gang leader Vinnie.
Shooter introduces a lot of characters from his gang… from the giant enforcer confusingly nicknamed Smurfette (WTF!?) to the book-keeper The Purse (who never does anything throughout the rest of the story) and even Toots’ pimp Chulo.

 What is up with Shooter using extremely literal Spanish names for his characters!? I could excuse calling a character with an exploding hand Mano (Spanish for “hand”) when he was 13, but… Shooter was 34 years old when he wrote this, and the pimp is called Chulo which is Spanish for… pimp. You really spent a lot of time thinking about those names, Shooter.

 The Beyonder narrates his origin to Vinnie, and it’s technically speaking the first time we learn the details of this. So naturally it’s in ISSUE THREE instead of the first one.
Get used to seeing that representation of how the Beyonder noticed Earth’s universe, you will see it A LOT in the rest of the miniseries.

 

Mostly it’s information we knew already, but there’s one tiny detail that is easy to miss but that is very interesting to me.
When the Beyonder recounts the events of the original Secret Wars, he explains that he didn’t personally choose the heroes and villains to bring to Battleworld.
The Beyonder only chose Galactus! Not only it was GALACTUS to choose which ones would go to Battleworld, but he ALSO is the one who built the gigantic gate in Central Park that attracted the heroes!!!

This makes sense. The Beyonder picking individual beings feels a little too much for his first interaction with non-omnipotent beings, considering he didn’t even know how pooping works according to last issue. But choosing Galactus, a being considerably closer to the Beyonder than any of the other Secret Wars character, is a bit more believable.
Not to mention the gate did look a bit like your typical Galactus technology.

All of this makes SO much sense, in fact, that it’s not exactly airtight in ALL of the Beyonder’s appearances. For example in one of the tie-ins, Fantastic Four v1 #288, the Beyonder mentions how he PERSONALLY picked Doctor Doom for the timestream.
It could still work… Galactus let the others to Battleworld, the Beyonder sensed that he really should have Doom and brought him there… but it makes things a bit clunky.

This recap also fixes a potential inconsistency between Secret Wars II and the original. The Beyonder in this series is an utter moron, but when he possessed Klaw he was able to trick Doctor Doom into defeating himself.
The solution? The Beyonder was only influencing Klaw, who did everything else on his own.
Klaw should probably consider himself lucky that Doom never found out.

 

Back to the story, Vinnie is surprisingly okay with learning all of this and gives the Beyonder a human name. I would’ve gone with calling him Bob.

If this was any other character, or even if this was from one of the later issues, I would make a joke about the Beyonder doing more than sleeping here, but… yeah he probably did just sleep.

Scratch that: the Beyonder from THE FOLLOWING PAGE does more than sleeping.

Aww, I can’t stay mad at you, Blond Beyonder.

Vinnie is great, but don’t forget he’s still a mob boss. He uses the Beyonder to beat up the competition, clean his prostitutes from potential STDs (!!!!)…

…cure his son from dyslexia and make his wife hot again.

Vinnie might easily be the smartest character in this miniseries. Not that there’s much competition, but still.

The Beyonder even acquires one of his minor character traits: his absolute love for any kind of gadget and mechanical device.

But we have reached the point when the Beyonder gets his classic look. Which, I remind you, is CANONICALLY just Captain America’s body with Michael Jackson’s hair.

If this was still Blond Beyonder, I would probably have found the fact that he’s just playing with toys to be charming.
But sadly we are firmly in Dumb Beyonder territory now.

He’s still helping Vinnie with his criminal empire, by the way.

The story hasn’t forgotten Toots like it did with the previous issue’s homeless woman.

This is when Vinnie basically leaves the Beyonder’s orbit. I really wonder what happened to him AFTER Secret Wars II… is he still around with his new fortune? 

So the Beyonder is free to do his own thing at this point. Which is apparently just eating and challenging the Comics Code.

Since all the Beyonder knows at this point is being a crime boss and expanding his territory, he ends up taking over Kingpin’s empire.

And then America.

And then the world.

And for once I don’t mean the people, I mean the planet. As in: THE ROCKS PHYSICALLY BOW DOWN TO HIM.

Even INDIVIDUAL MOLECULES AND ATOMS.

And speaking of molecules: Molecule Man is not just the only person to notice the Beyonder has taken over, he’s also the only one who is NOT affected.

I love how casual Molecule Man is with his powers in this period.

But man are his scenes with Volcana hard to stomach!!! Remember they were a sweet couple in Secret Wars, but they’re just insufferable in this series whenever they’re together.

So the Beyonder has taken over the entire Earth. Since apparently Molecule Man doesn’t give a crap, which character of the Marvel Universe do you think gets a spotlight?

Spider-Man or Mister Fantastic, since they’ve already met the Beyonder in this series? Perhaps Professor X, who has history with the Beyonder and whose telepathy could help?

Nope! It’s CIRCUIT BREAKER, of all freaking characters!!!

Yeah, uhm… don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of her, because Circuit Breaker is from the Transformers series!!!

---

 A bit of a tangent here. The 1984 Transformers series published by Marvel is EXTREMELY influential to the franchise; in fact, Marvel was the one to come up with the backstory, the cartoons simply adapted it.

Nowadays it’s considered 100% out of continuity with the rest of the Marvel Universe, and the series itself mostly did the same.
There are only TWO exceptions: one is this issue of Secret Wars II, and the other was the only issue where Spider-Man showed out to interact with the Transformers.
(incidentally, that issue was drawn by Frank Springer, who we’ve seen a lot on this site as Dazzler’s long-running penciler)

Yeah Marvel’s Transformers series was WEIRD.

If you read the series it’s VERY clear it’s not set in the Marvel Universe, and Shooter typically kept an eye on stuff like this. So what’s up with the awkward crossovers?

Luckily I found an answer, from an interview taken by Transformers site BWT to series writer Bob Budiansky.

 BWT: Since you mentioned Spider-Man, was that part of the reason there were some cross overs with the Marvel “Universe”? Dazzler was mentioned in one issue, Circuit Breaker appeared in the Secret Wars etc. That I know (smiles). I’ll give you the Spider-Man story first.

Budiansky: Jim Salicrup has wanted to feature Spider-Man. Initially Hasbro rejected the idea. You’d think they would love the idea of featuring Marvel’s main, primary, most recognizable character. The reason they rejected the idea was that at the time, it was either Mattel or Kenner, had the toy action figure license. They looked at it as promoting their competitor’s toyline. We looked at it as “We’re doing you a great favor of putting Spider-Man in this book for a bunch of toys.” So we compromised. The license was only for the red and blue costume, so we featured Spider-Man in the black and white costume. So Hasbro was okay with that.

More importantly for this review:

As far as Circuit Breaker appearing in “Secret Wars”, one of the indicias of the Transformers book was that everything was copyright of Hasbro. And I felt like Circuit Breaker had enough potential that maybe she could be spun off into something one day and I didn’t want Hasbro to own her. She had nothing to do with the toys, she was a human character and so I spoke to Jim Shooter about it and he agreed to feature her briefly in “Secret Wars” before she was printed in Transformers. So that was to keep the copyright under Marvel, not Hasbro.

And that concludes the tangent.

---

Circuit Breaker’s words make the Beyonder doubt if he’s done the right thing, so he decides to ask Vinnie to help. Too bad he’s too mind controlled.

Turns out the Beyonder did ONE thing right: once he frees Toots from his mind control, he learns that apparently he inspired her to stop being a hooker and find a job as a waitress.

Toots drops from the series, and I’m happy for her because this way she gets to avoid the worst parts of it.

So, uhm, yeah. The world was saved by Circuit Breaker and a former prostitute.

So now that the Beyonder has learned he doesn’t really want to take over the world… what’s the next thing to do? JOIN THE FREAKING AVENGERS.

Even though they’re busy with a space plot right now, the Beyonder shows up in their title to interrupt.

We’ll talk briefly about his interaction with the Avengers once I’m done with the main series; all we see is the Beyonder getting back to Earth.
I think I know what single panel I will eventually use to sum up the entirety of Secret Wars II.

 

---

 Historical significance: 8/10
The introduction of the Beyonder’s classic look, of his native dimension, and to a lesser extent to his love of any gadget.

Silver Age-ness: 10/10
Oh boy. Things are definitely more grounded than in the previous issue, but that’s not saying much.

Does it stand the test of time? 6/10
This barely works, and it’s mostly thanks to the last embers of Blond Beyonder. He still has a bit of his childish innocence that lets him get away with stuff, but it’s getting diminishing returns.
At least Vinnie and Toots get the job done in terms of being supporting characters. Although unlike Toots, Vinnie doesn’t get any real character growth or personal journey.
What brings down the whole thing is mostly the fact that nothing really seems to matter. The Beyonder can take over the world in a second and nobody is even able to notice (except Molecule Man who doesn’t do anything anyway). Considering he also cancels any possible consequence to his actions, I can’t help but feel left with the question… WTF was the point of anything!?