Posted By Dan Greenfield on Nov 14, 2025 | 2 comments

A different kind of look at a landmark series…

By JOHN BARBER

I’m John Barber — ex-Marvel editor, ex-IDW editor-in-chief, ex-Transformers writer, and most importantly, current Pan-Universal Galactic Worldwide editor-in-chief! We just launched our first Kickstarter campaign with our old friends at Marvel. It’s called Behind the Panels of Marvel’s Secret Wars, an in-depth look at the art and process of making Marvel’s 2015 Secret Wars series, the one by Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic, the one that’s inspiring the upcoming Avengers film.

But I’m not here to talk about that! I’m here to tell you about the comic that got me into Marvel comics — into superhero comics in general, and turned me into a Wednesday Warrior at the comic book store: the original 1984 Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars limited series! It was the cover of Issue #3 that hooked me — something I don’t let Behind the Panels editor Mason Rabinowitz forget. (He’s a relative newcomer to comics, having only come on board with Secret Wars #4, a full four weeks after me.) Anyway, when I say “hooked me,” I mean it in the sense that I bit on that fishhook, and I’ve been reading Marvel comics ever since.

Secret Wars was kind of a generational dividing line when I was at Marvel. If you were just a little older than me, you probably looked down on the series as a toy-tie-in-cash-grab, but the beautiful thing was that it helped transition people like me who’d started reading comics with Transformers and G.I. Joe and Star Wars — all of which had toys — into mainline Marvel, which now also had toys (or, I mean, had them again; had them in a form factor competing with G.I. Joe and Star Wars).

The other thing, the more important thing, was that Jim Shooter, Mike Zeck, and Bob Layton packed Secret Wars full of big moments and expertly set up the humanity of the Marvel heroes in a clear-to-any-8-year-old contrast to the titanic expanse of the heroes’ powers. There weren’t just big moments—there were nothing BUT big moments in Secret Wars. It was a 12-issue series, and it had some of the best covers in…well, in Marvel history, I guess.

But that doesn’t mean everything that deserved it made it onto the covers. Combine that with the Bite Size Covers — bridge-card-size reproductions of the 2015 Secret Wars covers on thick, pog-like cardboard that we’re offering on the Kickstarter — we bring you 13 MOMENTS IN 1984’s SECRET WARS THAT DESERVED TO BE COVERS — RANKED:

—

13. Let’s get this one out of the way. Admittedly this would have been a weird-ass cover for Marvel to give you in the mid-’80s, but bear with me on it (and maybe mentally add inset circle panels of Thor and Iron Man looking on horrified, their reactions on the original page). This panel sets the stakes of 1980s comics crossovers: everything. Galaxies die without slowing the story down. This is exactly the kind of cosmic-power through-line that takes you from Shooter/Zeck to Hickman/Ribic.

From Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #1. Pencils: Mike Zeck. Inks: John Beatty.

—

12. This one just looks like a cover. I mean, what a splash page. Here’s a brand-new Spider-Woman in an amazing outfit. And if you were reading Spider-Man at the time, where he debuted the black costume the month Secret Wars kicked off, you’re probably wondering why she has a similar costume. But the whole setup here, with Johnny Storm flying in and Cap running up as a new hero introduces herself… classic cover material.

From Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #7. Zeck and Beatty.

—

11. Imagine the scale of this, where the ship towers above Galactus — GALACTUS!!! — and our heroes are so tiny before even him. The scope of the dangers at play couldn’t be clearer, and that’s something that became a Secret Wars hallmark in any era.

From Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #5. Pencils: Bob Layton. Inks: John Beatty.

—

10. I love Marvel, I love Marvel heroes, I love Marvel villains. Is any villain as good as Doctor Doom? Not many, anyway. But in terms of breadth of villains… if this had been a DC crossover, you’d have filled out the villain roster with top-flight baddies before you even got to Batman, right? Marvel… was kinda struggling. There must have been a decision not to only have Spider-Man bad guys, because some of the guys in Secret Wars were, uh, not necessarily household names.

Doom probably figured that out too, so he made a couple new villains from some handy civilians. And this panel, where Titania and Volcana emerge with their powers, has a classic EC Comics feel to the staging. And, also, then and now, I absolutely can’t believe Titania had that costume, the one with the spiked collar Doom holds. And I feel like, even after giving her super powers, going, “Here, wear this” is a big swing for Doom to make.

From Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #3. Zeck and Beatty.

—

9. There of course IS a Doom-injured cover later on in the series, but there he’s bold and defiant (and, make no mistake, I love that cover). There’s something compelling about Doom at his lowest. We’ll have a lot of Doom at his biggest and best on this list, but this one would make me wonder, “What did he go through?”

From Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #7. Zeck and Beatty.

—

8. Heroes-with-their-backs-to-us do not a traditionally good cover make. And this is the second one of those on this list. And this is also not the last. But the Avengers looking at the MASSIVE screens, towering over them, showing Galactus and WEATHER BAD ENOUGH TO BE ON A SCREEN NEXT TO GALACTUS… I mean, this looks hopeless. Plus, the heroes are so recognizable in Zeck’s art, even from behind. Things are desperate, but that star on Cap’s back reminds me there’s always hope.

From Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #3. Zeck and Beatty.

—

7. Speaking of that weather. You can see here that some of these images I picked are big splash pages, and some — like this — aren’t. But just imagine if Thor were fully rendered here, standing in deadly rain, battering back meteors with his hammer. Powerful staging, and an impressive sense of scale in a small panel!

From Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #3. Zeck and Beatty.

—

6. Walking away from an unconscious Galactus without looking back is the most bad-ass thing that’s ever happened in a Marvel comic, and nobody talks about it.

From Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #1. Zeck and Beatty.

—

5. Panel 5 of a six-panel page. A nuclear explosion next to Galactus. I don’t think the explosion even comes up again. The scale of it all!

From Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #9. Zeck and Beatty.

—

4. I mean, come on.

From Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #10. Zeck and Beatty.

—

3. Almost feels like cheating, but this isn’t even the cliffhanger or the opening splash. It’s the second-to-last page of the book, and the situation changes completely by the end of the next page. And I know we’re about six years too early for Marvel to break a logo that much, but… wouldn’t that have been cool? All-powerful Doom. He’d been seeking omnipotence since… well, I guess college, but I was going to say since he captured the Silver Surfer. He got it here, but is too overpowered to really use it right. That doesn’t happen until the 2015 Secret Wars, and was worth the wait, but here’s the moment the seeds are really planted.

From Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #10. Zeck and Beatty.

—

2. OK, maybe all the rest of these feel like cheating. But what a moment! Remember, I started reading Marvel comics with Issue #3. This was eight months later, and by then I couldn’t believe they were going to show Doom’s face. I know putting it smack on the cover would give everything away, but nowadays that’d be an incentive cover that’s not revealed until FOC or something. For sure would be a cover.

And not for nothing — how do you show this is Doctor Doom without his mask in one image… when we’ve never seen Doctor Doom without a mask so we won’t recognize him? Not an unsolvable problem, but Mike Zeck solves it so elegantly I never even thought about it before right now.

From Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #11. Zeck and Beatty.

—

1. Obviously. This is the “That WASN’T a cover?” one. Back before Avengers: Endgame came out but after the trailer had, I was in a movie theater handing the agent my ticket, and he was saying to his friend, “The broken shield is canon—it really happened!” What an image. Nothing says “Uh oh, the heroes are really in trouble” like Cap’s shield torn apart like it was paper. He repairs it later by sheer willpower! But still.

This looks like the Death of Superman cover from several years later, with the cape hanging like a flag. But this one IS a flag… one torn and cracked, giving you the state of the heroes without showing a single one. ’Nuff said.

From Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #12. Zeck and Beatty.

—

All those covers were made by John Barber himself! The Kickstarter runs for about another 10 days and it’s funded. Which means it’s happening. It also means you can get in on the ground floor! Click here for more info. — Dan

—

MORE

— COMIC BOOK DEATH MATCH: Secret Wars vs. Crisis on Infinite Earths. Click here.

— Dig This Gorgeous Gallery of MARVEL SECRET WARS Figures. Click here.