Secret Wars II #6 (1985)
by Jim Shooter & Al Milgrom
This is the only issue past the Blond Beyonder era that has some parts worth defending.
It’s also the most difficult to put into continuity, because it’s hard to believe there is no mention in ANY other book of the Beyonder building his gigantic headquarters.
It’s also one of the few issues with a supporting character worth the ink: this is Dave, a journalist who seems to be the only person excited to see the sudden appearance of the Beyonder’s headquarters.
The Beyonder has decided to become a “champion of life” (more on that soon), and he decides to start his hero career by helping child superhero team Power Pack.
The Power Pack series was fantastic (for the most part). If you only know them from their cameo on Secret Wars II, however, you’d think they just suck.
Because of course what this series really needed was a reminder of how awesome the Beyonder is.
Back to Dave, he’s surprisingly excited to see the Beyonder flying. He’s not from New York, granted… the Beyonder built his headquarters in Sparta, Illinois… but still, at this point should it REALLY be an exciting sight for a Marvel Universe citizen?
The Beyonder agrees to meeting Dave, who understandably has A LOT of questions.
Oh come on, that is CLEARLY the Thought Projector Helmet™ from Fantastic Four #27!
Yeah remember that time when Reed Richards made a device to look at his hot fiancée and tried to make the others believe it was to “fight crime”? Ah, good times.
But back to the story: this is following a tie-in on Doctor Strange, where the Sorcerer Supreme suggested to a depressed Beyonder that maybe he could try to DO SOMETHING with his powers instead of wasting everyone’s time.
For huge fans of the cosmic side of Marvel like myself, this issue is important for being one of the first attempts to create a hierarchy among the various cosmic beings.
Among these Mephisto is easily the most well-known, originating from the Silver Surfer series but rapidly expanding his reach to pretty much the entirety of Marvel.
Chaos, Order, the In-Betweener and Eon all come from Jim Starlin’s work on Captain Marvel and Warlock, as does of course Death.
Eternity and the Living Tribunal originate from classic Doctor Strange runs.
I absolutely adore Marvel’s abstract entities. Considering they originated from different series and were definitely not thought to work off each other, I’ve always loved the fact that the were slowly integrated with each other and put in a hierarchy.
I said this issue is difficult to put into continuity because it’s hard to swallow the fact NOBODY ever references the various actions of the Beyonder, which are VERY public.
We’re way past the point when the Beyonder’s alien way of thinking was a thing, but I think for once Shooter does a decent job at giving a motivation for why he acts this way.
We haven’t seen Molecule Man for a while. This is when he re-enters the miniseries.
This issue also has one of my favorite Molecule Man scenes. The one when he forces the Watcher to make himself visible.
The Watched proceeds to narrate the origin story of Molecule Man, including a VERY rare mention of his pre-incident days.
The Watcher is here because he wants Molecule Man to stop the Beyonder from what he’s doing. And FOR ONCE he even asked for permission!!!
And the Molecule Man’s reaction is “why should I care?”, sending the Watcher away.
With the Beyonder doing so much good in the world, you would expect superheroes to have a better opinion of him right? Unfortunately this is where the story goes off the rails.
Up to this point the Beyonder has been saving lives, stopping natural disasters, curing diseases and curing world hunger. And this is SOMEHOW a bad thing for the heroes!!!
Okay, real talk here. This is the classic dilemma from the famous “Must there be a Superman?” story… and I hate this approach to superheroes.
The idea that superheroes should ONLY deal with fantastical threats and should not even TRY to help regular people because SOMEHOW that’s a slippery slope towards some undefined bad results… that’s just dumb.
And I ESPECIALLY detest Captain America’s position here. WTF does the Beyonder’s action have to do with freedom? WHAT FREEDOM!?
Is he taking away the freedom to die by starvation and disease? Is he taking away the freedom to die in a tsunami? Up to this point, the Beyonder hasn’t done ANYTHING nefarious!!!
I’m with Dave on this one: you guys are just afraid the Beyonder is making you obsolete, as he demonstrates by recreating the cover.
Reed, Steve, I love you guys but… YOU JUST SUCK IN THIS SERIES.
The story does recover its sanity when Dave goes a little too far in his sales pitch…
…which gives the Beyonder an idea so big he has to go Kirby to check if it can be done.
The Beyonder’s next idea is to KILL DEATH.
Death is surprisingly fine with dying… talk about ironic… but Mephisto tries to stop the Beyonder.
As do other cosmic beings, who show up en masse and with several coloring errors.
There are some additions to the ones seen before. Adding a Celestial makes sense, and even if he’s mis-colored it’s even the correct one: it’s “The One Above All” (not to be confused with Marvel’s stand-in for God), who is the leader of the Celestials.
I assume the bald guy colored brown is supposed to be Kronos (the grandfather of Thanos), who despite having a completely different origin is sometimes included among abstract entities.
The big error is showing the Gardener among these. He’s one of the Elders Of The Universe (the loose group that includes the Grandmaster and the Collector); while relatively powerful, he REALLY does not belong in this assembly AT ALL.
And so… DEATH DIES.
The first one to notice the change is Molecule Man… and he DOES NOT APPROVE.
This makes Dave realize that maybe killing Death was a bad idea… and the only way to fix things is to have Dave become the new Death.
So, yeah… Death was Dave after 1985.
And that includes Infinity Gauntlet, by the way. Did anyone tell Thanos he killed half the universe for Dave?
The status quo recently changed again, by the way.
In 2022, on “Genis-Vell: Captain Marvel” by Peter David, Death quit the job and made Marlo Chandler (Rick Jones’ wife) the new Mistress Death.
As for the story, this has been completely pointless.
Historical significance: 0/10
While the gathering of abstract beings is interesting from a historical perspective for fans of cosmic Marvel… this has no impact on anything.
Silver Age-ness: 8/10
So we’re going to completely ignore everything the Beyonder is doing, right? Right.
Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
This is the last half-decent issue. The idea of the Beyonder killing death, the follow-up, and Dave’s sacrifice are doing the heavy lifting here: those are by far the best parts.
However… and that’s a big however… the rest of the Beyonder’s actions are almost a joke, and the superheroes are just AWFUL here.
The Beyonder is not particularly likeable, but how could ANYONE root for Captain America here!?
Sparta, Illinois, is where the majority of American comics used to be printed (by World Color Press), so the Beyonder locating his headquarters there was a moderately clever inside joke on Shooter’s part. Sparta is indeed located near St. Louis, so the newspaper headline in the story got that right, although not so close to account for the skyscraper cityscape Milgrom throws in the background. The tallest buildings within 40 miles of Sparta are grain elevators and church steeples.
Sparta’s main claim to fame was as the filming location for In the Heat of the Night, where it stood in for the semi-fictional town of Sparta, Mississippi.
Little known fact: the Watchers invented the Hitler salute.
I agree that Cap’s argument that the Beyonder shouldn’t be helping people because it infringes on their freedom is more than a little stupid. Dead people have no freedoms. Ipso facto, saving or extending lives increases the amount of freedom in the world.
Would Cap have any issue with the United States providing food aid to relieve a famine in another nation? Or the United Nations? Of course not. Would he be bothered if Reed Richards or Henry Pym came up with the cure for the dying child? Of course not.
If the Beyonder were truly omnipresent and solved every problem for everyone ever, I can see there might be a problem with that – science and culture would be deadened and the human race might end up as the Beyonder’s pets. But that is clearly not the case.
The first few issues of Grant Morrison’s JLA treated the same question much better in my opinion: in that, a group of White Martians assumed the shapes of a superhero group and greened the Sahara Desert, among other wide-ranging feats. Superman protested that this was going to infantilize the human race but was shouted down and accused of jealousy that he was being outdone. Of course, the Martians were frauds and their works quickly disintegrated.