Question about Oblivion and souls From GLA (2016)

[Dcnewb]

So I’ve read the 2016 miniseries of Great Lake Avengers by Zac Gorman and I don’t think I quite understand the idea of Doorman being Oblivions “angel of death”.

So in this series Doorman is tasked to usher the soul of an old man named Gregory Garlick into Oblivion’s “Void” which Doorman states is basically a void where there is no consciousness or existence.

However this entire idea contradicts almost every other example of death and the afterlife in Marvel comics.

There seem to be multiple afterlives in Marvel and many characters have died and found their souls in different afterlives in which they remained conscious and even returned to tell their experience (Logan’s soul went to hell where he met long dead friends and families and the F4 went to heaven to ask for Ben Grimm to be brought back to life). This would be impossible if these examples and many others all had the same fate as Mr. Garlick.

How would you guys fit this story with Marvel canon which shows the opposite?


My original head canon had thought that Marvel souls are immortal albeit still prone to being destroyed. So could it still be considered to be true and that Oblivion’s “void” of non existence is just one of many possible afterlife destinations and that not every soul is necessarily automatically bound to experience impending this non existence? Is there anything in actual Marvel canon which goes against this idea?

[Dcnewb]

So I’ve read the 2016 miniseries of Great Lake Avengers by Zac Gorman and I don’t think I quite understand the idea of Doorman being Oblivions “angel of death”.

So in this series Doorman is tasked to usher the soul of an old man named Gregory Garlick into Oblivion’s “Void” which Doorman states is basically a void where there is no consciousness or existence.

However this entire idea contradicts almost every other example of death and the afterlife in Marvel comics.

There seem to be multiple afterlives in Marvel and many characters have died and found their souls in different afterlives in which they remained conscious and even returned to tell their experience (Logan’s soul went to hell where he met long dead friends and families and the F4 went to heaven to ask for Ben Grimm to be brought back to life). This would be impossible if these examples and many others all had the same fate as Mr. Garlick.

How would you guys fit this story with Marvel canon which shows the opposite?


My original head canon had thought that Marvel souls are immortal albeit still prone to being destroyed. So could it still be considered to be true and that Oblivion’s “void” of non existence is just one of many possible afterlife destinations and that not every soul is necessarily automatically bound to experience impending this non existence? Is there anything in actual Marvel canon which goes against this idea?

Anybody???

[Clea]

Anybody???

I think you answered your own question. "There seem to be multiple afterlives in Marvel." This would just be one of them. Most of the 'afterlife' stories feature standard Western notions of heaven or hell in which a departed soul persists after death with its personality and memories intact (to some extent or another), and you get to go to the Good Place or the Bad Place depending on how you lived your life here on Earth. This conveniently allows Marvel to kill their characters and then bring them back to life in a new story. I haven't read this particular GLA story, but it sounds like this Void is yet another possible afterlife in which the departed soul is just erased from existence instead of being put into a heaven or hell realm. This is a perfectly plausible afterlife possibility in Marvel. I can think of at least one Marvel storyline which dealt with the notion of reincarnation (a series of issues about the character of Morgana Blessing in Doctor Strange). Ultimately I think the afterlife and the fate of souls in Marvel is whatever the writer needs it to be for their story. The departed could retain their personality/memories/history and go to a heaven or a hell, or they could be wiped clean/possibly extinguished in a Void, or the soul could be reincarnated as an entirely new person in an endless cycle of new lives on earth. It all works.

[JudicatorPrime]

So I’ve read the 2016 miniseries of Great Lake Avengers by Zac Gorman and I don’t think I quite understand the idea of Doorman being Oblivions “angel of death”.

So in this series Doorman is tasked to usher the soul of an old man named Gregory Garlick into Oblivion’s “Void” which Doorman states is basically a void where there is no consciousness or existence.

However this entire idea contradicts almost every other example of death and the afterlife in Marvel comics.

There seem to be multiple afterlives in Marvel and many characters have died and found their souls in different afterlives in which they remained conscious and even returned to tell their experience (Logan’s soul went to hell where he met long dead friends and families and the F4 went to heaven to ask for Ben Grimm to be brought back to life). This would be impossible if these examples and many others all had the same fate as Mr. Garlick.

How would you guys fit this story with Marvel canon which shows the opposite?


My original head canon had thought that Marvel souls are immortal albeit still prone to being destroyed. So could it still be considered to be true and that Oblivion’s “void” of non existence is just one of many possible afterlife destinations and that not every soul is necessarily automatically bound to experience impending this non existence? Is there anything in actual Marvel canon which goes against this idea?

Oblivion, the abstract Marvel entity, is itself a conscious being. It is the "something" where nothing is supposed to exist ...or not exist ... by definition. Even beings formed from Oblivion share that common paradox.

The human mind cannot conceive of true nothingness. That goes double for Marvel writers, apparently. That holds true as well for many of the earliest creation myths. Quite often nothingness gives birth to life in many of them.

As for death and oblivion, these can be viewed separately thanks in large part to the advent of philosophy and religion, which insist that all humanity inevitably attains a spiritual afterlife. But what does that mean for the agnostic and the atheist?

For those who believe they have an eternal soul, death. For those who believe otherwise, oblivion; finality. We probably don't need to get much deeper than that.

[Dcnewb]

Yeah that’s true. Also I believe that Oblivion’s role can be usurped, as shown in the earlier Quasar comics, which means that he can be topped, which makes him somewhat vulnerable to physical harm.