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The covers to the last issues of the current runs of "Avengers" and "New Avengers," leading into "Secret Wars."; Credit: Marvel

Marvel Comics held a press conference this week announcing details about "Secret Wars," a company-wide comic book crossover that they promise will change everything.

Promises of change in comics often don't amount to much, but here's why this one just might, with Marvel teasing that it will produce a whole new world for its characters.

"We see this as putting an endcap to decades of stories and starting a new era," said Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso. "And when you see the scope of the event, you see what we're doing, what we're willing to do, this is a place where we're going to be bringing new pieces onto the board and taking old pieces off. You guys will be yelling and screaming, you'll be loving, hating, and in equal measure."

Reboot history

Rival DC Comics has always been quick to have stories designed to streamline their history, with the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" being the most famous one — a story that destroyed the DC Comics universe of the time, birthing a new timeline that gave us the versions of DC's heroes we know today. Several minor and major reboots followed, with the biggest since then being 2011's New 52 (and a tease of another one with this April's "Convergence").

Meanwhile, Marvel still refers back to stories from their early days, beginning with the first issue of "Marvel Comics" in 1939, and more so since the launch of "Fantastic Four" and the interlinked Marvel Universe in the 1960s, led by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Marvel previously launched a line of comics meant to offer a fresh vision of the Marvel characters called Ultimate Comics, but now the worlds of those characters and the traditional Marvel universe are getting combined thanks to "Secret Wars."

"The Ultimate Universe, the Marvel Universe, they're going to smash together," said Alonso. "This is the Marvel Universe moving forward."

"We've never done anything like this, ever," said Marvel senior vice president and executive editor Tom Brevoort. "And what we're going to do to top it, I don't know. Hopefully that will be somebody else's problem."

The stories leading to "Secret Wars," and what is Battleworld?

The story that's been built up so far has to do with different universes colliding into each other — and in the first issue of "Secret Wars," the Marvel and Ultimate Earths collide, with the heroes of those worlds unable to stop it. What's left behind is what Marvel is calling "Battleworld," a patchwork planet with different parts of it inhabited by the characters from different famous Marvel crossovers of the past (you can see some of those past titles in the slideshow above).

Marvel released this video to help you visualize what exactly Battleworld is:

Battleworld video

See a map of Battleworld here, showing the different worlds made up of old storylines to be explored in "Secret Wars" (and click to enlarge):

Brevoort described Battleworld as "The little melting pot in which the new Marvel Universe will be created" after the Marvel and Ultimate versions of Earth are destroyed. He said that Battleworld is what Marvel is going to be "during, through and after" the beginning of "Secret Wars."

"Once you hit 'Secret Wars' 1, there is no Marvel Universe. There is no Ultimate Universe. All there is is Battleworld, and a whole lot of empty void," Brevoort said.

"Every single piece of this world is a building block for the Marvel Universe moving forward," Alonso said. "None of these stories are Elseworlds, or What Ifs, or alternative reality stories. They aren't set in the past or the future. They're not set in an alternate reality. They're set in the reality of the Marvel Universe."

It's also a story that uses an old name — the original "Secret Wars" involved an alien taking heroes from Earth and forcing them into battle for the fate of the universe. It remains unclear if the villain from that crossover will play a role here.

Why is Marvel rebooting?

Observers were quick to speculate on some of the behind-the-scenes reasons for the change. Combining the Ultimate Universe with the traditional Marvel Universe would let them incorporate the half-black, half-Latino Spider-Man from the Ultimate line that grabbed headlines a few years ago. It would let them do something different with characters like the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, who have been a flashpoint for controversy due to Fox retaining rights in perpetuity to any films based on those characters.

It also opens the door to a longtime comic book trope: Bringing back to life the dead.

"If we were to want to resurrect Gwen Stacy, this would be the place to do it, wouldn't it?" Alonso said.

What do creators and fans think about "Secret Wars"?

Speaking of the death of Gwen Stacy, the writer who pulled the trigger on killing her, Gerry Conway, tells Newsarama that he's on board.

"I think like with any idea, the execution will matter more than the idea itself. The idea of a reset is, by itself, not a bad idea," Conway said.

One who's less on board with it: longtime Spider-Man artist John Romita.

"My guess is new fans will be okay with it, and old fans will grumble," Romita told Newsarama. "I’m not a businessman, but I do know that comic companies, for almost 100 years now, do whatever they can for shock value. They grab attention. Personally, I hate all the goofy things they do. When I was there, I used to fight stuff like this. But you can’t stop them."

Current Marvel writers have been sworn to secrecy about what happens once "Secret Wars" is done:

Dan Slott tweet

The lack of certainty about what this all means has led fans to wildly speculate, as well as poke fun at what might happen:

Fan tweet 1

Fan tweet 2

It's a story that's been years in the making.

"Every single time we've done an event, we've always had to be mindful of 'Secret Wars,' and we've had to make decisions based on the fact that we knew that 'Secret Wars' was headed our way," Alonso said.

Brevoort said that Hickman proposed a version of "Secret Wars" years ago, but that vision has since become significantly larger.

"It sounds like typical Stan lee hyperbole — and there's nothing wrong with typical Stan Lee hyperbole — but it is difficult to imagine something that would be larger in scope, in scale, than what we are doing with 'Secret Wars,'" Brevoort said.

That father of the modern Marvel comics world, Stan Lee, tells Newsarama that the reboot is "probably good."

"Anything they do that’s unexpected and different usually captures the attention of the fans," Lee said. "It sounds intriguing to me."

Lee also tells Newsarama that if he were to do it all again, he'd do it basically the same, describing what he did as "the right way to go, and maybe sometimes, even the perfect way to go."

"I liked making the Fantastic Four superheroes without a secret identity. I liked the tragedy of Spider-Man’s origin, the ‘with great power, there must also come great responsibility.’ I thought it was the right way of doing things at the time. And I still like what I’ve done," Lee said. "I can’t think, off the top of my head, of anything I’d really want to change."

What does "Secret Wars" mean for fans?

More details are promised in the weeks to come, with a free preview issue being released on Free Comic Book Day, May 2. While fans wait, they may want to heed the wait-and-see approach advocated by Conway and famed "Thor" artist Walt Simonson.

"Maybe this is coming back out of my old geology days, but I try not to have instant reactions to things and say, ‘Oh my God! That’s terrible!’" Simonson told Newsarama. "My basic reaction is usually ‘let’s see the evidence in the field.’ Let’s come back in a year and see what we’ve got. That will tell the story.”

And for those who say that Marvel is ruining their childhood by messing with the history of their favorite characters, Conway tells Newsarama:

"I would say to them, no, your childhood is still your childhood. There’s a point to be made, and it’s a universal one: We have to see that there’s a difference between what people do today, and what they did yesterday. Yesterday still exists, those stories still exist. Now someone else is getting a chance at a new childhood. And that’s nice."

Watch the full "Secret Wars" live press conference below:

Secret Wars press conference video

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

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Source: Clive Maund for Streetwise Reports   05/04/2020

Notwithstanding the Fed's seemingly limitless ability to create money to throw at the stock market, which has caused it to rally in recent weeks in the face of a dead economy and apocalyptic jobs data and earnings, etc., all the charts we are going to look at here point to another severe downleg soon.

My attention was drawn to a bearish Rising Wedge completing in the London FTSE index by a colleague in England. So I took a look at it, and sure enough it is. So, I thought I'd take a look at a couple of other European indices, the CAC 40 in France and the German DAX Composite, which showed a very similar picture. Their charts are shown below and as you will see, they are both very bearish, and point to a break lower soon leading to a severe decline.

You will recall that we were thrown somewhat a week or two ago, when the main U.S. indices, the Dow Jones Industrials and the S&P500 index, broke down from their bearish Rising Wedges but then didn't follow through, and instead rose to new highs for the rally from the March lows, which caused us to dump our Puts and then bide our time to see what transpired. The sharp drop at the end of the month—this past Friday—jolted me into action and prompted me to hunt around in a quest for greater clarity regarding what is going on, and it has turned out to be a rewarding search.

While it's not exactly clear what is going on with the main U.S. indices, the picture becomes much clearer when we look at the broader but much less used Wilshire 5000 index. Take a look at this first of all—it's a 5-month chart for the Wilshire 5000 that reveals that it didn't break down from its Rising Wedge about 10 days ago, unlike the Dow Industrials and the S&P500 index, but it did last Friday, which happened to be the end of the month, by a significant margin. This is regarded as an ominous development that probably marks the start of the second major downleg of this bear market. We can also see that the countertrend rally got stopped by the important resistance level shown.

Now take a look at this. The following chart shows that the breakdown from the Wedge happened just two days after the Wilshire 5000 had arrived at an upper range Fibonacci target at a retracement level of 61.8% of the preceding first leg down of the bear market. This is normally as far as a retracement following the first leg down of a bear market gets, and the same happened following the Tech bubble peak in 2000 and the start of the 2007–2008 meltdown.

If we now compare the Wilshire charts above with the S&P500 index chart we realize that the breakdown by the latter about 10 days ago was a false breakdown, inasmuch as, as we have just seen, the Wilshire did not break down at that time.

If we see another heavy drop in the broad stock market shortly, it is of course reasonable to presume that it will coincide with a strong rally in the dollar, so how does that look now? On the following 5-month chart for the dollar index, which has the S&P500 index placed above and gold below for direct comparison, there are several very important points to observe. The first is that when the market tanked into mid-March, the dollar soared just as we would expect it to and as happened in 2008. Then it dropped back sharply later in March as the market rebounded, but it has since been tracking sideways in a trading range marking time as the stock market continued to ascend to complete its relief rally. Right now it is at the support at the bottom of this range where a doji candle formed on Friday suggesting that it is about to start higher again. If the market now proceeds to tank in a second major downwave then we can expect the dollar to soar again, bust out of the top of the current range and probably exceed its mid-March highs.

If the dollar soars then commodities are likely to take another broadside, just as in the first half of March, and just as in 2008, and gold and silver are unlikely to be spared—the Gold Miners Bullish Percent Index is now at an extreme reading of 92% bullish. Copper in particular looks like it will get crushed by another downwave that should take it to new bear market lows by a wide margin.

Originally posted on CliveMaund.com at 4.35 pm EDT on 2nd May 2020.

Clive Maund has been president of www.clivemaund.com, a successful resource sector website, since its inception in 2003. He has 30 years' experience in technical analysis and has worked for banks, commodity brokers and stockbrokers in the City of London. He holds a Diploma in Technical Analysis from the UK Society of Technical Analysts.

Disclosure:
1) Statements and opinions expressed are the opinions of Clive Maund and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. Clive Maund is wholly responsible for the validity of the statements. Streetwise Reports was not involved in any aspect of the article preparation. Clive Maund was not paid by Streetwise Reports LLC for this article. Streetwise Reports was not paid by the author to publish or syndicate this article.
2) This article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.
3) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article until three business days after the publication of the interview or article. The foregoing prohibition does not apply to articles that in substance only restate previously published company releases.

Charts provided by the author.

CliveMaund.com Disclosure:
The above represents the opinion and analysis of Mr Maund, based on data available to him, at the time of writing. Mr. Maund's opinions are his own, and are not a recommendation or an offer to buy or sell securities. Mr. Maund is an independent analyst who receives no compensation of any kind from any groups, individuals or corporations mentioned in his reports. As trading and investing in any financial markets may involve serious risk of loss, Mr. Maund recommends that you consult with a qualified investment advisor, one licensed by appropriate regulatory agencies in your legal jurisdiction and do your own due diligence and research when making any kind of a transaction with financial ramifications. Although a qualified and experienced stock market analyst, Clive Maund is not a Registered Securities Advisor. Therefore Mr. Maund's opinions on the market and stocks can only be construed as a solicitation to buy and sell securities when they are subject to the prior approval and endorsement of a Registered Securities Advisor operating in accordance with the appropriate regulations in your area of jurisdiction.

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