This IS one of the best comic stories ever.  And the art is magnificent too.

I'm sorry to hear about all the retooling that had to made.

I was going to express the opinion that this was the only issue that I actually thought was decent with the Beyonder character.  All the other Secret Wars tie ins were pretty much crap along with the SW series themselves.

At least JB was able to make it work, even if it wasn't the intended original plan.

JB,

Do you feel that the whole company wide event is more often than not a burden to the title it crosses into rather than a benefit?

Massive crossovers were an experiment, and I don't fault Shooter for that.  However, SW2 was not a good story, and he does deserve blame.  And the habit of forcing creators to include components in their stories is wrong.  It would be much better to inform everyone of what is happening in the "main event," give them a timeline, and allow them to decide how they'll reference the event in their own titles.  I don't even mind a command like, "You must include x number of references over the course of the event," but ham fisted commands are just wrong.

I happen to think massive crossovers are bad anyway, but I can tolerate experiments.  The sad thing is, if massive crossovers did not boost sales, then they would not have been repeated.  Whatever our complaints are, it doesn't impact sales negatively.