Trivia / Secret Wars (1984)

• Christmas Rushed: Marvel's corporate offices ordered production on this series sped up so they could get it to stores before DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths. It shows in some of the dialogue and the ham-handed (in-story) way in which the various heroes and villains were shoe-horned into it. One of the more obvious problems this created was that Doctor Doom was dead at the time, but appears here with no explanation, because he's Marvel's biggest villain, darnit. John Byrne, writer of the Fantastic Four comic at the time, had to whistle up a complicated time-travel story in the following months to explain it.
• Dueling Works: With Crisis on Infinite Earths. In fact, it's partly because of DC's incoming Crisis Crossover that Marvel rushed Secret Wars out.
• Executive Meddling: Colossus' falling for Zsaji was the result of writer Jim Shooter disliking the awkwardness of pairing the 19 year old with 14 year old Kitty Pryde.
• First Appearance:
  • Issue #1 introduced the Beyonder and Battleworld.
  • Issue #3 introduced Titania and Volcana.
  • Issue #6 showed the shadow of Julia Carpenter (the second Spider-Woman) before the following issue fully introduced her.
• Recursive Adaptation: It was a comic based on the toys. Now, there are the toys of the comic of the toys.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Marvel: Contest of Champions video game was originally going to be an adaptation of Secret Wars.
  • Kitty Pryde was seen in the original ad, indicating she was supposed to be part of the heroes' lineup in the series.
  • There were plans for an animated series adaptation of the Secret Wars back in the 1980s, but it was never made (mainly due to lack of interest from the major networks- they all just wanted to copy The Smurfs (1981)). The best it got was a three-episode story arc in the 90s Spider-Man: The Animated Series, but even then it was something very different.
• Working Title: The event was originally going to be called The Cosmic Champions.

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