Sundays are known for folks gathering around tables on television and pontificating about some of the hottest topics out there, offering their expertise. We bring that tradition to Graphic Policy as the team gathers to debate in our Sunday Roundtable.

On tap this week?

Does the end of Secret Wars still matter now that the All-New. All-Different Marvel relaunch is already several issues deep in some series?

Mr. H: I think it just serves as formality at this point. I still would like to see how the story ends as I’ve enjoyed it as a whole event. I just think the punch has been depowered thanks to the jump ahead in the rebooted err.. excuse me. All new universe.

Brett: The wind is definitely out of the sails at this point. The new series all jumped ahead 8 months, so it’s clear this would end anyways with a lot of mysteries. I wonder if the end of the series has been altered now because of this mess up.

Alex: Honestly, I think the end only matters to those still reading the story, at this point. Like Mr. H said, it’s a formality; Marvel wouldn’t want to leave it unfinished.

That the series has suffered so many delays is a massive hit for Marvel’s relaunch now (but in a year it’ll become more of a joke).

Brett: The other thing, has there been a Marvel event that hasn’t suffered from delays for years now? It’s almost to be expected.

Alex: Aye – but I don’t think any of those events have been as integral to what comes next as Secret Wars.

Brett: Secret Invasion led to Dark Reign, and both of those shook up things pretty well after.

Alex: Fair point. I recall really enjoying Secret Invasion in trade format (never read it at the time).

Mr. H: Last good event they had was Civil War. #nuffsaid

Elana: there have been books within events that have been good. but those were books that were already good.

Alex: Was that delayed any?

Brett: Civil War was delayed.

Troy: Secret Wars was also massively delayed….(I think because of Gabrielle Delotto’s beautiful painting) I don’t think it hurt its critical reception though.

Alex: You’d think, then, that by this point the Marvel higher ups would try and have a longer lead time for the creative team to get at least half the event comics done before the first issue was released.

Paul: At this point, I want to see the end just to see how it ends…but we’ve seen that 616 is back, tweaked with new teams and characters now in ‘our’ universe, and others are missing, so really the ending is just as mentioned previously, a formality. For me, only a couple of titles for ‘All-New, All-Different’ have lived up to this statement, and seeing as we’ve jumped ahead 8 months, without Secret Wars ending, somethings have been confusing and I feel I have missed things as I’m reading (the X titles have mentioned several times that Scott has done something….but what?). So yeah, I want to see the end just to see that it does end, but I think the delays and launches before the end has really messed this up.

Alex: I wonder if what Scott did would have been as big of a deal if we knew, or if the waiting to find out is part of the fun?

Paul: Definitely waiting and seeing it happen would have had more of an impact. Now it will be just be ‘ohhhh that’s what they were talking about’. Any shock or plot building from it has been lost

Alex: Ironically enough, there’s not much of a difference for me as I wasn’t reading Secret Wars until after it was collected, so I was always aware I’d be in this position. However, had I chosen to read Secret Wars, then I’d not want to read any of the post-Secret Wars stuff till it was over. Which, in the current situation, would suck.

Brett: And that wraps up this week’s discussion! What do you think readers? Sound off in the comments below.