Secret Wars

Jonathan Hickman’s Secret Wars is the most ambitious Marvel event of the modern era. The Marvel multiverse collapses, every reality is destroyed, and the god-like Doctor Doom reassembles the fragments into Battleworld, a patchwork planet where he rules as God Emperor. The surviving heroes must navigate this strange new reality and find a way to restore what was lost.

Why This One

This is where you go after you have read some Marvel and want to see the universe pushed to its absolute limit. Hickman spent years building to this story through his Avengers and New Avengers runs, and Secret Wars pays off every thread with precision. But even without that background, the story works as a standalone epic because of one simple dramatic engine: Reed Richards and Doctor Doom, two men with godlike intellect, fighting over who gets to decide what reality looks like.

Esad Ribic’s painted art gives the book a mythic grandeur that matches the scale of the story. Battleworld is visually spectacular, and Ribic renders both intimate character moments and apocalyptic destruction with equal skill.

What to Expect

A 312-page trade paperback collecting Secret Wars (2015) #1-9 and Free Comic Book Day 2015 (Secret Wars) #0. This is the most challenging read on this list. Hickman’s plotting is dense, and the story juggles dozens of characters across multiple domains of Battleworld. If you are new to Marvel, read some of the other recommendations on this page first. If you have some Marvel experience and want a story that treats the entire universe as its canvas, this is the payoff.