If you ever looked for a brief change of scenery outside of the regular comics titles you picked up, and yet didn't really want to make a commitment beyond a few issues, you probably sampled a few of Marvel's various Limited Series that were published beginning in the 1980s and extending into the early 2000s. If so, you may appreciate the 2006 six-issue series, Beyond!, which I'll have to admit is one of the few comics which sold me on the first issue because of the sci-fi style of its masthead.
Yet the book's title has connotations, er, "beyond" the sensational and the vast void of outer space. Written by Dwayne McDuffie with art by Scott Kolins (the latter whom you may remember from his work on the Earth's Mightiest Heroes series from 2005), the story is an interesting follow-up of the Secret Wars concept from the mid-1980s which had sizable groups of both heroes and villains abducted and brought to an alien world to take part in a conflict that would have them at each others' throats. Unlike its predecessor, however, Beyond! had no commercial build-up associated with it, no ominous launch, no crossovers with its cast of characters and their own respective titles, and (as far as I know) no licensing deals for action figures. It does, obviously, depend in part on reader familiarity with what the word "Beyond" signifies in the Marvel universe--but there are sufficient alterations in its plot to tug at your curiosity and have you investing yourself in the story on its own merits. And yes, the Beyonder can again be said to be the driving force of this story, in a manner of speaking--the meaning of which becomes clear when the story reaches its climax.
As for the characters involved this time around, we can already see that they all make up a single group of nine, rather than distinctive opposing sides--yet the group is diverse enough so that some could respond to the Beyonder's standard word-for-word challenge of being granted "all they desire" should they "slay their enemies." At the story's beginning, those individuals are: Henry Pym, the Wasp, Gravity, Medusa, Firebird, Spider-Man, Kraven the Hunter (son of Sergei Kravinoff), Venom, and the Hood. And while one-third of this group immediately stand out as those most likely to adhere to the Beyonder's conditions to the letter and slay their enemies for a prize such as what the Beyonder offers, there is one in particular who wastes no time making it clear to everyone how little value he holds for human life should push come to shove.
McDuffie and Kolins clearly have a way of getting our attention--and yes, we're indeed seeing this story's first fatality, as shocking as it seems. Not a dream! Not a hoax! Not an imaginary story! Two of these three claims will turn out to be true; the third, not so much, though there's more to it than meets the eye.
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