Today, we look at the Secret Wars II tie-in that saw the Beyonder teach Cloak and Dagger a lesson in moral absolutes...and also did heroin with them. For serious.
In every installment of I Love Ya But You’re Strange I spotlight strange but ultimately endearing comic stories. Feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you have a suggestion for a future installment!
Recently, I wrote about the odd arrangement that Mattel made with Marvel to launch the Secret Wars line of toys. Mattel wanted a cheaper line of action figures that could serve as a complement to their red-hot line of action figures based on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. The key to the line was that it would be interesting enough that perhaps it could draw in some fans who weren't into He-Man, but NOT so interesting that it would bogart He-Man's financial success too much. Something that is true in toys and in most other industries (including publishing comic books) is that if you're purely looking towards the way that is easier to add, say, a million in sales, it is a lot easier to get a $50 million-selling toy to sell an extra million than it is to get a $1 million-selling toy to double in sales. So naturally, Mattel was ALL about He-Man and thus, the company didn't spend a lot of money on the Secret Wars toys and the line fell apart fairly quickly. The funny thing was that Mattel insisted that Marvel do a big comic book event to promote the toys and while the toy line fell apart quickly, the tie-in comic, Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars, was a huge success, far outselling anyone's rosiest expectations at the time.
It was SUCH a big seller that Marvel quickly decided to do a follow-up miniseries, but Secret Wars (where a group of superheroes and supervillains were brought to a makeshift planet by a cosmic being called the Beyonder and told to fight, with Doctor Doom choosing to instead steal the Beyonder's powers for himself, leading to the heroes having to defeat Doom to get back home) was a bit of a resolved storyline, so a follow-up was going to be tough, but the writer of the original series (and Marvel's Editor-in-Chief at the time), Jim Shooter, came up with a new approach and this time, Secret Wars II would tie in with EVERY Marvel comic book of the era...whether it made sense or not!
SECRET WARS II BROUGHT THE BEYONDER TO EARTH
Shooter's concept was to have the Beyonder decide that he/it/whatever wanted to experience what humanity felt like, so the Beyonder traveled to Earth where it met up with the Molecule Man, a similarly powerful being who realized the extent of his own powers during the Secret Wars miniseries, so in Secret Wars II #1 (by Shooter, Al Milgrom and Steve Leialoha), the Beyonder shows up wanting to experience life, with a mixed-up and confused looking body (sort of like Combo-Man)...
After choosing to base its body on Captain America, the Beyonder then sought out someone he knew, which was kind of limited, since he only knew the people from the first miniseries, but he found Spider-Man, who tried teaching him a little about life, including how to use the bathroom...
However, the Beyonder then evolved into a new look based sort of on Michael Jackson's then look, as seen in Secret Wars II #3 (by Shooter, Milgrom and Leialoha, where the Beyonder was being influenced by a gangster)...
During this time, he met up with various Marvel heroes and used his powers to have impact on their lives.
CLOAK AND DAGGER WAS INHERENTLY A BOOK ABOUT THE DRUG EPIDEMIC
The early '80s were an interesting time in comic books, as it was becoming increasingly popular for comics to take on social issues. Therefore, it is important to note that Cloak and Dagger were very much of their time when they were introduced at the end of 1981 in the pages of Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #64 (by Bill Mantlo, Ed Hannigan and Jim Mooney).
That issue established both the origins of Cloak and Dagger and their motivations. Tyrone "Ty" Johnson and Tandy Bowen were runaways who were experimented on by some drug dealers who were trying to synthesize a brand-new drug. The experiments left almost all of the test subjects dead, except for Ty and Tandy, who instead gained superpowers. Ty gained a cloak that allowed him to teleport and also send items (and people) to a "darkforce dimension" while Tandy gained powerful blades of light. They promptly decided to hunt down the drug dealers who almost killed them. This was much to Spider-Man's dismay, as while he was surely no fan of drug dealers, he did not agree with the idea of killing them, either...
Interestingly, Cloak and Dagger actually predated the famous "Runaways" story arc from Marv Wolfman and George Perez's New Teen Titans by nearly a year. This is interesting because that "Runaways" arc is often pointed to as the epitome of the early 1980s socially relevant comic book phase (that arc led to the White House commissioning a special anti-drugs issue of New Teen Titans, and that, in turned, inspired the creation of a comic book starring Spider-Man and Power Pack by the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse in 1984), and yet Mantlo and Hannigan were ahead of that game with their pair of runaways dealing with evil drug dealers.
While they were introduced more as anti-heroes than anything else, the characters were so popular that Mantlo soon began to tone down their methods. Cloak and Dagger eventually eased off on the whole killing thing (this was aided by Dagger discovering that her blades of light could also be used to cleanse people of drug addictions rather than simply stabbing people). However, they continued to fight almost only drug dealers in their comics, even when they got an ongoing series soon before Secret Wars II launched.
BEYONDER TAUGHT CLOAK AND DAGGER A LESSON...BY DOING DRUGS WITH THEM
Cloak and Dagger #4 (by Bill Mantlo, Rick Leonardi and Terry Austin) opens with Cloak giving another one of his speeches about how evil is pretty much cut and dry and how he and Dagger have to wipe out the evil of the drug world, while he mocks a priest for thinking about solving the world's problems through prayer...
Meanwhile, the Beyonder has run into some drug dealers who promise him that the drugs they're giving him will make him happy. Before he can take them, though, Cloak and Dagger burst on to the scene...
He is very confused, as if they are trying to keep him from getting happiness, doesn't that make them BAD?
They explain that drugs DON'T bring you happiness. He is unsure, so he decides to use powers to try the heroin he was given by the drug dealers and, well, it's a TRIP for him...
He agrees with Cloak and Dagger, so he then kills everyone involved in the drug trade all at once...
Cloak is now shocked by seeing his own lesson in moral absolutism thrown back in his face and he and Dagger successfully convince Beyonder that punishing everyone is not the way to go and nor is Beyonder's alternate plan to just cure them all at once, so the Beyonder returns them all to life, with their addictions in place, allowing Cloak and Dagger to continue their mission, but leaving them, of course, wondering if they made the right decision...
Especially since Beyonder had also removed their powers and made them back to normal for a little bit, but they asked for their powers back.
Fascinating little story. Mantlo used the whole deus ex machina aspect of the Beyonder well.
If anyone has a suggestion for a future I Love Ya But You're Strange, please drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com