I’ve just read Marvel’s Secret Wars series from 1984/5. (Fun!)
In it, a bunch of heroes and villains are transported to the far reaches of the universe, and (in a surprising turn of events for a comic book) fight each other a lot.
My question is: how was this tied in with the continuity of the comic series in which these heroes were regularly appearing at the time?
Secret Wars was published between May 1984 and April 1985. I’m pretty sure that, for example, Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four didn’t stop publishing for a year while we saw what the heroes got up to on Battleworld. But the events of Secret Wars certainly had lasting consequences for the characters:
Spider-Man got a mysterious alien suit, and the Thing even left the Fantastic Four and stayed on the planet.
So how were these events integrated? Were the Secret Wars not referred to in the participants’ regular titles until they were over, and was there then a break in storylines in the regular titles to allow for Secret Wars to have happened? Or was Secret Wars pre-planned, meaning regular series could show post-Secret Wars events even though Secret Wars hadn’t finished publishing yet?