What is this book about?

The series follows a group of mismatched superheroes and supervillains — Hank Pym, the Wasp, Gravity, Medusa, Firebird, Alyosha Kravinoff, Venom (Mac Gargan), The Hood, Deathlok and the Space Phantom —who have been abducted by a cosmic entity, supposedly The Beyonder, to the alien Battleworld for unknown purposes.

For those of you who don’t know, in the 1980’s a comic book series called Secret Wars was published wherein a cosmic entity called the Beyonder observes the mainstream Marvel universe. Fascinated by the presence of superheroes on Earth and their potential, this entity chooses a group of both heroes and supervillains and teleports characters against their will to “Battleworld,” a planet created by the Beyonder in a distant galaxy. The Beyonder then declares: “I am from beyond! Slay your enemies and all that you desire shall be yours! Nothing you dream of is impossible for me to accomplish!” Battles are fought, things happen, blah blah blah, etc etc etc…

Then in 2006, the series Beyond! came out. Where heroes and villains are again, transported to “Battleworld” by who they think might be the Beyonder but are unsure this time since Hank Pym claims he’s heard from reliable sources that the Beyonder is dead.

So the heroes and villains do what they can to get off the planet without creating unnecessary bloodshed and figure out who is pulling the strings this time around.

Why should you read this book?

Because of the social commentary surrounding this quote. (PS: Major spoilers within the remaining text).

Deathlok: Nice to finally know who’s been messing with us.
 
The Stranger: My reasons are my own but rest assured, they exist.
 
Deathlok: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport.”
 
The Stranger: “Sport”? You think I brought you here to play with you? I brought you here because I fear you. My power, and the power of my ilk came with hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of years of scientific advancement. You…you’re doused with radioactivity that should kill you. Or you’re the product of a googolplex-to-one genetic coding error that should have resulted in stillbirth…but instead of dying, you thrive. The Earth. One little planet. An insignificant speck in an ocean of space. And yet, Galactus shrinks from power. The Kree, Skrull, and Shi’ar give you a wide berth, whenever possible. The pheonix force manifests there. The sorcerer supreme calls it home. I barely scratch the surface. There is a saying among beings of great power, the translation is difficult…”When the apocalypse comes, all that will remain are cockroaches and human beings.”

One of the reasons I like comic books is because they simultaneously make humanity feel insignificant in the grand scheme of things yet extremely significant despite the grand scheme.

I feel that this book centers around the character, Gravity. (Don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of him, he’s a new character that popped up a couple years earlier; very short lived). But, the writer, Dwayne McDuffie, felt as though he was a perfect vessel to bring across the very point for why I want you to read this book.

See, without giving away the ending to the book it turns out that Gravity is really important in the universe and was chosen to be transported to Battleworld for specific reasons, possibly more so than the other characters. Which is interesting because hardly anybody, including hardcore comic fans have barely heard of him.

So why is a character that no one has ever heard of in the real world or in the Marvel Universe so important? Well, I suppose that’s ultimately the decision of the writer of Beyond!, but, I personally feel that McDuffie chose this obscure character to point out that no matter how small and unknown you are, your life and your decisions are of great importance to the universe and have a significant impact on it.

The Stranger even states, that “I brought you here because I fear you,” “…but instead of dying, you thrive. The Earth. One little planet. An insignificant speck in an ocean of space,” The Stranger is scared of a small planet in the vast universe because he recognizes and also I think kind of respects our impact on the universe.

I’ve always said, that, our decisions or indecision affects everything around us on a level our human brain can perceive and on a molecular level which our human brain cannot. Regardless of whether you can understand the effect you have on the things around you and as part of this universe, matters not. So long as you willing to perceive that you do. Becoming self aware and open minded to the decisions and indecision that could and will most likely effect something else.

A close friend of Now is not the Rhyme, wrote a blog post once that really affected me. What he wrote was minimal and nothing I haven’t heard before, however, as my reaction describes, I realized that every person’s vote counts. Which, chalk it up to me being naive and taught from fellow hardcore anarchists, but I just didn’t believe for a long time it did until I began to realize that the very concept that he was telling his reader’s to do filters into quite literally every molecule in this universe.

Which made me really respect Beyond! not just for it’s geeky awesome story that brought together oddly mismatched cult favorite characters but also told a significant intellectual important story with a moral explaining that contradictions are normal and that they define humanity. And what I mean by that is, to think the universe revolves around us isn’t doing us any good but it also is. For, to realize your importance and your affect on things in this universe you must be narcissistic while being altruistic.

Now, for the nerdy parts I loved…

Spider-man, dies in the first issue:

Marvel is so transparent. They throw Spider-man into comics because they know people will buy the issue that he appears in. So it was so hilarious to me that they killed him in the first issue. Then later in the series fans get an even more “fuck you” from Marvel by revealing he wasn’t actually Spider-man, but the Space Phantom. So all those Spider-man fans who bought the book just because he was in it (like I did), didn’t even truly see their favorite character in the book. Oh man I love Marvel.

The greatest selection of characters ever put together period:

Mini-Quinjet RIP:

So after Hank Pym unshrinks a Quinjet that he had tucked away to fly themselves out of the jungle they’re trapped in, Deathlok recommends not to fly because it will attract attention. Hank Pym, appreciating the advice but decides to fly anyway are then attacked by Dragon-man who was apparently on Battleworld and rips the Quinjet apart making for the the shortest Quinjet flight ever.

The surprise appearance of Deathlok:

I was wrong THIS was possibly the greatest selection of characters ever put together period:

The floating head line-up treatment throughout the series in the beginning of the book:

At the beginning of each book the producers of the book would write up a page of what happened in the previous issue as well as line up the cast of characters you’ll see in the book and I just thought the treatment was cool from start to finish since in the first book it showed Spider-man in the roster when it turned out it wasn’t him so then they replaced him with the Space Phantom.
 
Then, when Hank Pym was thought to have killed everyone they replaced the line-up with this image:

These two pages (click on below image to open them [RSS readers go to actual post]):