Secret Wars II #9

Secret Wars II #9 (1986)
by Jim Shooter & Al Milgrom

We are the end of the main Secret Wars II miniseries, which I have to guess was greeted with a massive sigh of relief by everybody.

The Beyonder has decided to destroy the entire universe, and we’re off to a nice start: this is a rather good beginning!

Aaaand then we immediately ruin the moment with a “Volcana likes to eat because she’s overweight” joke. Stay classy, Jim Shooter.

She’s trying to warn the Avengers of the Beyonder’s plan, and she manages to reach the Fantastic Four (who were living at the Avengers mansion after Kristoff blew up the Baxter Building in Fantastic Four #278).

But then EVERYBODY is teleported near the mountain that the Beyonder is currently using as his headquarters.

This is just dumb. Secret Wars also had a similarly awkward shopping list at the beginning of its first issue, but the fact that Shooter gives the dialogue to the Human Torch doesn’t really fit the character.

I expected Molecule Man to be behind this, but nope: it was Rachel Summers, using her Phoenix powers.

Alright, is Volcana FINALLY allowed to be a real character again and prove she’s not a joke in this series? I mean she IS pretty powerful!

NOPE!
What does Shooter have against Volcana!? He created the character and wrote her spectacularly in the original Secret Wars, but this miniseries never misses a chance to crap on her!!!

Jumping ahead a bit, Volcana uses the time to go back checking on Molecule Man who had a full psychotic breakdown when she left him.
But he’s fine. Shooter is trying to get deep, and while it’s not BAD this is basically the most shallow exploration of one’s suicidal thoughts you could come up with.

We haven’t seen the Beyonder for a while. What’s he up to?

After a brief recap of his origin, the Beyonder gives us a nice bit of perspective on how his omnipotence is the source of frustration.

If you have even a passing interest on philosophy this isn’t anything revolutionary, but it’s still well done. I will strenuously defend this passage: it’s pretty great!

Then again, this is WHAT THE MINISERIES WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT, except Shooter wasted pages on stupid crap.

After spending THE ENTIRE LAST ISSUE complaining that everyone was praising being mortal and not listening them, the Beyonder NOW decides he wants to try being mortal.

He’ll be using a machine that looks SLIGHTLY less ridiculous than the Beyondersbane™ from issue 7.

He tests this by using the machine to re-create the New Mutants, which he atomized in a tie-in.

Okay, not gonna lie, this got a chuckle out of me.

Aaaand then Shooter loses me by having the Beyonder praise the machine for re-creating Mirage’s braids, as if that was more impressive than REBUILDING EVERYONE FROM A FEW SCATTERED MOLECULES.

So now we have the New Mutants as complete blank slates. Spoiler alert: this won’t go anywhere.

Since the machine works, the Beyonder wastes no further time using the machine to turn himself into a human. That’s a relatively well-drawn scene, DEFINITELY Kirby-inspired.

Interesting to see he’s blond: his body was based on Captain America’s, so I guess he simply dyed his hair.

And he IMMEDIATELY freaks out, rushing to the machine to get his powers back.

That was a good scene as well, giving an idea of how alien the Beyonder really is.

But he decides to commit to this change, and even enjoys having limits. This feels like a throwback to his decidedly less irritating personality of the early issues… what is it about the Beyonder that only makes him tolerable when he has blond hair!?

He quickly discovers that not being omnipotent also has a downside when he’s attacked by Mephisto.

However, this comic operates under the logic that Mephisto doesn’t have power over mortals unless they agree to his actions: he can only cast illusions.
The Marvel canon is definitely sketchy on this, which I guess is not surprising considering the subject matter.

It’s a fine interpretation of the character, but I prefer when Mephisto has SOME power to back up his boasts. Not that it would matter against the Beyonder, but still.

During ALL OF THIS, the heroes has just been standing around!!!
Granted, the Beyonder’s base is under several miles of rocks, but there ARE heroes camping around that should logically be able to reach him.
But nope! They’ve been SITTING ON THEIR A##ES and it takes Molecule Freaking Man to wake them up!!!

So the Beyonder decides to send the re-programmed New Mutants to fight the heroes (plus their randomly re-created member Warlock).
Why would the Beyonder care!? Either he’s still set on destroying the universe so he wouldn’t care, or even if he isn’t… NONE of these people are ANY danger to him, can’t he just snap his fingers and disintegrate the whole continent!?

Shooter really seems to dislike Hawkeye lately, isn’t it? He’s always the butt of the jokes for every other hero around. Which is WEIRD since Shooter has written a decent Hawkeye before.

The fight against the New Mutants is thoroughly unimpressive. Which is to be expected, considering they’re brainwashed and they’re fighting the greatest heroes on the planet.

I can’t get over the fact that THE F##KING SILVER SURFER has been just standing around doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING DURING THE ENTIRE CROSSOVER.

Yeah it’s easy to forget it since he wasn’t appearing regularly in any book at the time, but Silver Surfer was STILL trapped on Earth in this period! He wouldn’t return to space until 1987 with his new series.
He’ll be used to great effect in the epilogue (which I’ll cover in the tie-ins), which is no surprise since it’ll be a Roger Stern story on Avengers.

But WHY isn’t Silver Surfer a character in the previous 8 issues of the miniseries!? He would’ve fit perfectly! He knows Molecule Man from Avengers #215… a Jim Shooter story too, making his exclusion even weirder… and he WOULD have been a nice comparison with the Beyonder, since they’re both stupidly powerful aliens who have trouble understanding humans.

*groan*

Speaking of stupidly powerful: once Rachel Summers fixes the minds of the New Mutants, it’s up to Molecule Man to bring all the heroes below the mountain to face the Beyonder.
Something that Silver Surfer could’ve EASILY done himself if he wasn’t so busy doing nothing.

Now don’t be shocked, but the heroes turn out to be *gasp* utterly useless in a fight against the Beyonder.
Who could’ve have predicted, after THE SAME EXACT THING HAS ALREADY HAPPENED A DOZEN TIMES.

It was evident from the start that if ANYONE had the slightest chance of putting up a real fight against the Beyonder, it would be Molecule Man. And the moment the two finally clash is suitably epic.

Yeah tell yourselves that you’re being useful, guys, if it makes you feel any better.

This ultimately amounts to nothing. Which is a nice metaphor for the whole event.

As we will see in the epilogue, this is a MASSIVE understatement of the damage done.

Okay I guess the Beyonder doesn’t want to blow up the universe anymore? And he’s going back to turning himself mortal (FOR THE THIRD TIME IN THE STORY)?
Then what was the point of the whole Mephisto scene with him complaining he would always be attacked by his enemies if he tried!?

Despite all my criticism, the part where Molecule Man explains to Captain America how he managed to save everyone is still one of my favorites.
Perhaps because the first time I saw this scene it was a flashback inside the AWESOME epilogue, but I still consider “I transact on power levels unimaginable to you, Captain America, and the Beyonder on power levels unimaginable to me” to be marvelous quote.

What the… Rachel could’ve teleported everyone to the Beyonder’s base THIS WHOLE TIME!?
Then what was the point of everyone just standing around!?!?!

The heroes return to an awkward moment: the Beyonder is still growing his mortal body, so they’re essentially here to fight a baby.
Although from the earlier scenes I was under the impression that this resurrection bit was a much faster deal. 

Yeah, uhm… the story just took a rather distasteful turn. I don’t think Shooter is turning this into an anti-abortion metaphor, but this sure feels wrong.

AND THEN THE HEROES ARE NUKED!!!

That was the Beyonder’s machine way of defending itself. The only reason why the heroes survive is that Spider-Man gave them enough of a warning to have Invisible Woman create a force field.
Which is fine, but SILVER SURFER IS STILL THERE DOING NOTHING.

The heroes are utter morons throughout this whole miniseries, but this is definitely their low point.

They’re launching an all-out assault on the machine that CASUALLY THROWS NUKES AROUND, and it takes Reed Richards that it’s not exactly a wise idea to wreck a machine that contains MORE ENERGY THAN THE REST OF THE UNIVERSE.

I mean, who would be so unbelievably dumb to just shoot at the thing!?

And so the entire universe is destroyed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or not?

Molecule Man was the one to save everyone, which checks out since THE HEROES SUCK IN THIS MINISERIES.

I hope you guys are really proud of yourselves.

Part of me wonders what happened to the baby’s body after this story.

But mostly I want to say YOU GUYS SUCK.

And so we end with the revelation on how Molecule Man saved the day: by moving the Beyonder’s energy back into his original universe, be basically unleashed a new Big Bang that created a whole new universe.

The basic concept is fine… the Beyonder wanted to become mortal so he got his wish by becoming a whole universe full of mortals… but did we REALLY need to get through a dead baby to get here?

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Historical significance: 2/10
As far as the vast majority of superheroes is concerned, this is the end of the Beyonder. Even that doesn’t make this really significant.

Silver Age-ness: 6/10
This SHOULD be an easy 10/10, but that dead baby seriously brings down the score.

Does it stand the test of time? 0/10
Even if there are a couple of moments I liked, I can’t in good conscience give this crap a higher score.
I know it can generally be asked about the whole miniseries, but WTF was Jim Shooter thinking!?
The Beyonder abruptly changes his mind about everything, Molecule Man barely gets any characterization, Volcana and for some reason Hawkeye are the targets of some tasteless jabs, and don’t even get me started on how EVERYONE IS AN IDIOT IN THIS STORY.

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And that’s it for the main miniseries. Next we’ll have a quick look at the tie-ins of Secret Wars II; I won’t do a full review of each since there’s over THIRTY of those!

But before that… and the Secret Awards II… whatever happened to the Beyonder?

It would be revealed only 2 years later: as we’ve already seen in Fantastic Four #319, the universe created in this story will be used exactly ONCE.

That story included the retcon that the Beyonder was REALLY an incomplete Cosmic Cube, so he fused with Molecule Man to create an incomplete one.

Just two years later, Fantastic Four Annual #23 will have that cosmic cube evolve into Kosmos.

Kosmos has a couple of very minor appearances in the early 90s, but she’s completely forgotten until 2004 when Keith Giffen has her appear in a Thanos miniseries, of all places, changing her name to Maker.

That miniseries is one of the foundations for the Annihilation event and the Guardians of the Galaxy relaunch; it’s really good! And Maker is an interesting villain there.

Speaking of Annihilation, that’s when Maker dies in 2006. Which I guess is when EVERYONE was certain the Beyonder was dead for good.

The only blip was in 2007 on the pages of New Avengers: Illuminati #3, when Bendis made the BAFFLING retcon that the Beyonder was actually a mutant Inhuman.
Probably the dumbest thing Bendis has ever written, WHICH IS SAYING SOMETHING.

Even the Bendis superfans couldn’t defend this one. Heck I place a couple of issues of that series into the 3% Bendis stuff that is really really good! But the Beyonder stuff is definitely in the 90% that is utter crap.

The same story attempted to retcon Secret Wars II into having taken place on a duplicate of Manhattan that the Beyonder created. Which, needless to say, doesn’t work AT ALL.

The 2016 Secret Wars had A LOT to do with the BeyonderS, the race that was retconned to being the origin of the Beyonder, but the guy failed to show up.

So it was REALLY a surprise when, in 2022, the Beyonder returned in the AWESOME Defenders: Beyond series!!!
That whole series is a Al Ewing masterpiece that I wholeheartedly recommend.
Just be warned: to understand anything that’s going on, you REALLY need to read Defenders vol.6 from 2021. Fortunately enough, that is also an Al Ewing masterpiece that I highly recommend.

Seriously, if nothing else this series proves that even the Beyonder can be a great character.

Just stay away from the truly awful Avengers: Beyond from 2023 (which confusingly enough is set before Defenders: Beyond).
It’s a very stupid story that discards Ewig’s carefully crafted cosmogony just to have the Beyonder be scared of a generic new bad guy. Hopefully it’ll be ignored the next time Ewig gets his hands on him; at this point he’s the only writer I trust with the Beyonder.