The End of the Marvel Universe

We've covered Marvel's upcoming Secret Wars event before, and why I think the long rumored reboot that came with it is a terrible idea. Today, Marvel held a press event to give all the details on the aftermath of Secret Wars, and it sheds a little more light on what they're doing. The good news - it's not a reboot. The bad news - it's the End of the Marvel Universe. Read on for more details:

In a similar way to the way DC collapsed all of their alternate universes during the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, Secret Wars will combine all of Marvel's major universes into the Battle World. The big news from the conference was that, at the end of it all, the universes will stay combined. The Ultimate universe is specifically mentioned as "ending" and merging with the 616 Marvel universe which means that Peter Parker and Miles Morales will officially be living in the same universe for the forseeable future.

"Once you hit 'Secret Wars' #1, there's no Marvel Universe, there's no Ultimate Universe. It's all Battleworld." Sr. Vice-President of Publishing Tom Brevoort

"The Ultimate Universe, the Marvel Universe, they're going to slap together. Imagine two pizzas: They're going to combine toppings, some toppings are going to drop off. And that is the Marvel Universe moving forward. It's more than the Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Universe, it's all the universes you can imagine. That is the Marvel Universe going forward." — Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso

 Marvel will be putting out a Secret Wars #0 for Free Comic Book day that will bring all of us up to speed on the events leading up to this, specifically the plans of writer Jonathan Hickman, who's been steering the universe towards this in issues of Avengers.

Honestly, this sounds like an interesting way to move the universe forward. It allows you to take characters from any alternate universe and make them "official," while trimming the fat and making some major changes as well. And instead of a reboot that steps all over the stories and creators of the past, it creates a new world where all of that still happened. 

So what do you think? Which characters do you want to see be part of the official Marvel universe? Who do you think won't survive? And how quickly do you think they'll use this to bring Wolverine back? Sound off in the comments, and check out the full press event below.



For me, there's only one guy I want to see in the official Marvel Universe fulltime:

You heard me.