YMMV / Secret Wars (1984)

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The apparent one-nighter between Magneto and Wasp had absolutely nothing to do with advancing the plot, and was never mentioned again in either the X-Men or Avengers books. This happened because Chris Claremont had told Jim Shooter that he was preparing Magneto's Heel–Face Turn, and Shooter thought Magneto would become an Avenger due to his power level and the fact that his children were in that team, so Shooter tried to give him a tighter link to another Avenger. However, Magneto joined the X-Men and this became a weird subplot.
• Broken Base: Excessive, goofy, and nonsensical story that represents comics at their worst and being merchandise and marketing driven to boot, or alternatively one of the wildest, most creative, and inventive stories ever put out by Marvel and a Crisis Crossover as Character Showcase for the entire line done right.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The Lizard steals the show in his brief appearances where his animalistic and bizarre nature is a nuisance to both groups, and he's unpredictably hilarious and goofy in a way the regular Marvel villain isn't.
• Fridge Logic: OK, so you're an alien entity that has never known the concept of desire. So you decide to explore it by... having a bunch of heroes and villains fight each other? (To his credit, the Beyonder was almost as innocent as a baby at the time.)
• Gateway Series: The success of this series and its character showcase actually repopularized and reintroduced the Marvel Stable to new audiences and it served as the first introduction to the Marvel Universe for its original readership.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Hawkeye at the end notes that Hulk is becoming angrier and notes he should probably make some heavy duty arrows just in case. In Civil War II, Hawkeye kills Bruce Banner out of fear of him transforming.
  • Wolverine accuses Captain America of never doing enough for mutants, though he changes his tune when Cap proves he is indeed an All-Loving Hero. The initial complaint strikes a shriller tone, however, after Civil War and Avengers vs. X-Men, where different mutants condemn the Avengers for never doing much to help mutants (particularly after M-Day). In the latter crossover, Cap even admits he failed in this regard.
  • The above rant by Wolverine towards Cap is triggered by Cap's distrust of Magneto despite them being on the same side. When Captain America replies that despite Magneto's Well-Intentioned Extremist motivations, "nothing justifies terrorism...or murder," Wolverine angrily replies that terrorists "are what the big army calls the little army!" a comment that would be considered unacceptable post-The War on Terror.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In issue 9, James Rhodes proudly proclaims that he is the true successor to Iron Man, "now and forever". Of course, this didn't last long in the comics, and Rhodes would only be War Machine in the public conscience.
• Hollywood Pudgy: Volcana isn't fat enough to warrant all those insults from Enchantress. Of course the Enchantress is supernaturally beautiful, legendarily vain, and and doesn't have much use for mortals to begin with; it's entirely possible she was just zeroing in on something Volcana was self-conscious about and exaggerating it to make her feel bad. Then again, later artists tend to draw her much chubbier, so either she gained weight after the mini-series or she was supposed to be larger than the art depicted her.
• Signature Scene:
  • The opening panels showing the arrival of the heroes and villains to Battleworld and the panel showing Battleworld being formed by chunks of different planets into a brand new world.
  • The scene and the cover of Secret Wars #4 showing Hulk holding a mountain barely above his shoulders and protecting the other heroes from being crushed. This scene is so iconic that it was homaged in Avengers: Endgame, directed by Secret Wars fanboys Joe and Anthony Russo.
  • Spider-Man fighting and beating the X-Men.
  • Spider-Man getting the Alien Costume, and of course the legendary cover of Secret Wars #8 which is much homaged and parodied, and widely considered the image of the series.
  • Doctor Doom's battle with the Beyonder and ascending to godhood, and the covers for Secret Wars #11 and #12 (which show Doom maskless).
• Spoiled by the Format: In their regular comics, the characters arrived to the dome to check it. They are teleported elsewhere, and the Secret Wars begin. At the end of Secret Wars Reed teleports them back to Earth in groups, and they resume their lives. Does this mean that the regular comics came to an halt for a year, while the crossover was published, and then continued from there? Or that they proceeded for some months without their usual protagonist? No. The standard comics proceeded with the aftermath of Secret Wars while Secret Wars itself was still being published. Many "unexpected" things that take place in the story, such as Spider-Man's black suit or the Thing staying behind, were no surprises for those reading comics in real time back then, as they had already seen those things in the specific comic books.
• Strangled by the Red String: Colossus falling for Zsaji. Wolverine lampshades it through his interior monologue, theorizing that it must have something to do with her alien chemistry and the Florence Nightingale Effect (since she was a kind of healer and nurse).

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