About six weeks ago, we mused that one interesting part of any event series from the Big Two publishers is its immediate aftermath. Specifically, when there’s a threat to all of the universe/multiverse/continuity for either Marvel or DC, as there was last year (and part of this year!) in Secret Wars, there’s usually a token character or three who remembers what went down.

You might recall that Secret Wars began with an occurrence that usually takes place in the second act of any event series, which was the entire Marvel Comics reality getting wiped out. All that was left was Battleworld, a patchwork planet that was held together by sheer force of will by Doctor Doom, with power supplied by Molecule Man.

Things eventually got better, resulting in a new Marvel Universe with most of the history of the prior one. Considering most of the inhabitants of said universe ceased to exist for the duration of the series, it stands to reason that they wouldn’t know exactly what transpired.

With the All-New, All-Different Marvel books jumping forward eight months after the end of Secret Wars (something this writer forgets on a regular basis), not many of them have touched on what the average denizen of the Marvel Universe remembers about the Incursions and what followed. Happily, the letter column of All-New, All-Different Avengers #6, on sale now, has an explanation.

It’s from Marvel Assistant Editor Alanna Smith, who just happened to serve in the same capacity on Secret Wars. Smith was asked flat out by a reader, “Does anyone know/remember the events of Secret Wars?” Here was her response:

Almost everybody just knows a cataclysmic event happened eight months ago but they think tragedy was averted.

For sanity’s sake, that’s probably for the best. A whole Earth full of people who realize that everything in all of existence was temporarily gone would keep the psychologists of Earth Prime working overtime for months.

That still doesn’t answer our original question about which heroes and villains remember which parts of Secret Wars, but it’s a start. Until the next multiversal calamity scrambles brains again, that is.