Secret Wars/Secret Wars II

Plot

Launched on 27 April 1985, Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars was a fortnightly Marvel UK title reprinting Marvel USA's Secret Wars as its lead feature. However its early success meant the comic went weekly from issue ten (coinciding with a title change to simply 'Secret Wars').

Early back-up strips included reprints of Alpha Flight and the first Iceman mini-series, alongside new humour strip 'Marvel's Secret Artist'. Issue 19 saw another original strip - Zoids (based on the Tomy toyline) introduced, and the comic title changed to 'Secret Wars: Featuring Zoids' for issues 20-26 (at which point the story continued in issue one of 'Spiderman and Zoids').

In issue 25 a new Spider-Man strip written by Jim Shooter, exclusively for the UK, was featured, and as of issue 32 the title changed to Secret Wars II as the title began reprinting the second series and its tie-ins (often with modifications to fit the reprints to their new home or remove extraneous details - such as cutting out the references to Wraithworld appearing above Earth in the reprint of Fantastic Four 277, which was a link to the storyline then taking place in Rom).

Lew Stringer's comedy strip Macho Man began in issue 42, and would appear in all the remaining issues of the series bar the last.

Three specials were also published - a CollectedComics Special (reprinting the first two issues of the US series) and two Secret Wars II tie-in specials.