Morgan Wick, a regular commenter on my Marvel chronology project, has a great essay up regarding the upcoming Secret Wars event*. (Well of course *i* think it's great since it touches on my regular "continuity is the selling point" soapbox topic.)

*For a few months more, at least, all of this must come with a big asterisk that of course we don't yet know where Marvel is ultimately going with Secret Wars.

I have to agree with everything that Wick has written. There's a lot of fan fiction being written by writers of both DC and Marvel.

I think I'm torn on some of the ideas: you have to keep the story going but at the same time respect the fact that when a character reaches a certain noteriety in being a legacy or legend, the company wants to freeze them in place. I guess that was the whole point of the Ultimate Universe but that went in a completely different direction, doing things both applauded (Miles Morales) and lambasted (a lot of the destructive and stupid stuff) You can't keep characters in a box to never change, but its tough to offer a universe where some things have changed when people want something else. I wish there was a way to balance both...but with the never-ending story of American comics, it is hard to find it and it isn't helped by things like these mega events.

Not sure if you saw this article in the Wall Street Journal, but it gives a lot of information about where Marvel is going...

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/06/04/marvel-new-wolverine-spider-man-controversial-hulk/?KEYWORDS=marvel

And, then 20 hours later, they ran this:

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/06/04/marvel-unveils-more-new-look-characters-including-a-female-wolverine/

Bob

ugh. Jane Foster still exists in the comics? i just got to the point in the 60s where Odin mind wipes her and gives her a new life where she can make googly eyes at the cute doctor without having to agonize over how "if only he didn't have a limp, i could almost love him" and i thought i'd never have to see her again. damn you, Marvel movies.

Thanks for the links, Bob. I think it's still not clear if they are really doing a true reboot of the line or not, but we will see.

I'm going with no. The images make me think it's a forced merge, like Crisis.

That's not very reassuring. Crisis was in some ways worse than a reboot, because it resulted in what Paul O'Brien called the "Did this story happen syndrome".