New Avengers #29 - Spoilers

[Habis]

Sorry, I probably should have said aliens. I usually take the term cosmic characters to be anyone who is not from Earth. But, hasn't it been established that destroying the Earth is a temporary measure at best?

Better than nothig. Not even Reed knows what will happen once there aren't more Earths to keep the Incursions happening.

Of course, we know the Beyonders or Rabum Alal would kill the universe anyway, so it doesn't really matters.

[vitruvian]

I'm probably missing something, but I don't understand how going into the future and staying there automatically prevents that universe from being destroyed in the past.

There are two ways that time travel within a specific universe such as the Earth-616 reality could work with respect to the various other alternate universes and multiversal events such as the Incursions with other universes:

Option #1) Time travel within the 616 is time travel with respect to all universes and the multiverse as well. So, if you go to the past of the 616 and then use the Bridge or Crystal Palace or whatever to cross over to another universe, you are in the past of that universe as well. Likewise with the future. If this is the case, then if you send humanity billions of years into the past (hopefully with the equipment to breathe the atmosphere, feed themselves, etc., in the environment as it existed back then), the Incursions are now billions of years in the future from your perspective.

Option #2) Time travel within a specific universe only affects the 'local clock' for that specific universe, not what time it 'is' in any other universe, or the schedule for the Incursions. So, if you were to go into the distant past of the 616 universe and then use the Bridge or Crystal Palace or other means to cross universes, it would still be the 'present' of that other universe that you'd get to. Likewise, going into the past doesn't let you escape the Incursions, since they involve both your universe and the other universe; if it's a day to the next Incursion in the present, and you travel to 1 billion BCE, the next Incursion still happens a day later from your perspective - so congratulations, you just wiped out all that history. However, this would also mean that if you travel a year, or a century, or a billion years, or twenty trillion years to the heat death and natural end of the universe, you haven't affected the time in other universes, or the timing for the Incursions, either. If it was a day away from the next Incursion before you stepped in the time machine in 2014, it's still a day away from the next Incursion in the year Twenty Trillion when you step out of the machine, and there haven't been any Incursions in the intervening years. Therefore, because you chose to jump into the future, the universe and everybody else in it experienced and lived all those years in peace.

So, if it's Option #1 that's true, escaping into the past works. If it's Option #2 that's true, then one time traveler going to the end of time allows the entire rest of the universe to experience its natural life span (with other universes observing it living those trillions of years in the blink of an eye). There doesn't seem to be way for time travel within a specific universe to work that disallows both tactics.

[vitruvian]

I think our perspectives are so missaligned we are almost reading different stories. I at least know why you are using the word 'cheating' now and I agree that stories that do that are poorly structured and flawed. I don't see how that relates to this story, but as I have said I am not sure we will ever agree on this story. We are comming to it with very different mindsets.



That is a very modern way of seeing such a plot, a very active and non fatalistic one. The point isn't to even worry about these issues, you are supposed to identify with the tragic figure all the way down the spiral and in the end gain an insight into yourself. Fighting on the way down and holding your head above water are to be experienced vocariously. Yes maybe you do end up smarting with the unfairness of it all or the futility of action. If, in this story you feel T'Challa didn't really do anything wrong and that life dealt him an unplayable hand then the writer has done his job.


You may have to start digging out your headed notepaper. Not that I think that is the point of the story at all, but it sounds like at the end of it you might feel like this. I certainly don't think their actions were futile and wrong, even if the universe conspires to make it seem that way.


Actually Reed has pretty much handed his fate over to Bast by seconding himself as T'challa's companion on this road. If you stand in front of a Goddess like reed did and pledge to be the companion to the King of the Dead, even when you don't realise the implications, you are tying your fate to his. As to the hubris, they dont just try and save the day they TAKE IT UPON THEMSELVES to save the day. Indeed you aknowledge below some problems with their methods. It is entirely subjective as to whether this is right or wrong, tragedy thrives on this ambiguity and fate just does not care.



That is precisely why I am enjoying the plot (and you are not, I am guessing). They are acting in character and to some extent doing what you would expect their heroic selves to do. Yet they are going about it in such a horrible and portentious manner that makes you scream at them for being so arrogant. If you can read New Avengers #1 and not get the feeling that everything is about to go to hell in a handbasket you are a less fatalistic man than me or Hickman.

Trying to save the world cannot IN ITSELF be either wrong or hubristic for characters that have saved the world before. The specific methods can be, but that in itself leaves the door open to saying that the characters could have chosen other methods.

[bango]

Because Rachel tends to be treated badly in recent events and Avenger stuff? As this is an Avenger book and Secret Wars is an Avenger event I worry that Rachel wont even get mentioned by the Beyonder.

I think you nailed it. This is currently an Avengers story. Maybe Rachel will have a role after the 616 and Ultimate universe are plunged into Battleworld.

It's not that Owen was a sentient part of a Cosmic Cube. It's that the power he gained was part of the energy that should have belonged to The Beyonder. So The Beyonder should have become a Cube at some point, as his power plus Owen's constituted the power of a Cosmic Cube -- but the accident that released some of The Beyonder's energy wasn't a controlled procedure like what AIM or the Skrulls did. Instead of all the energy being contained in a Cube, some of it flowed into Owen and the rest was left free.

I knew I was missing something. It's still confusing, but I'll take this over an inhuman mutant origin any day.

i like the theory that Isaac Newton and the Quiet Math is behind the great destroyer

You just blew my mind. I need to reread Hickman's 2010 SHIELD run.

This makes me wonder. We know of at least one reality where Doom kept the Beyonder's power (due to a What If?). This means there are undoubtedly other realities where he did. How did those Dooms handle incursions?

I'd be very interested to know if one of these is part of the remaining two-dozen universes left.

[jackolover]

I've since read Fantastic Four #319, called Secret Wars 111, and in that the Beyonder and Molecule Man joined to make a complete Cosmic Cube, (like the ones the Skrulls and AIM made into Kubik and Shaper of Worlds). Then Beyonder and Molecule Man disappeared as Kubik and the Shaper of Worlds stayed with the new Cosmic Cube and sent Doom and the FF back to Earth 616 reality.

What I don't know is that since that issue, Reece and the Beyonder split up that Cosmic Cube to become incomplete again, and Reece exists on Earth, and the Beyonder was last seen in New Avengers :Illumunati #4. So how did they reappear after FF#319?

What issue #319 does explain is that a Cosmic Cube is just a vessel that expounds desire, so we are given a hint that Beyonders may be seeking "Desire" through the human experience. That may not lead us to the Great Destroyer, but considering Ivory Kings are these mysterious Beyonders who are aiding the Incursion process, there is a connection between Doom aligning with Reece again and going looking for some answers. If the Incursions are some mechanism to discover "Desire", and that's why the Battleworld is being brought back into play, then it's just a more elaborate play ground to find out the same thing. That "Desire", the attractor of Cosmic Cubes, is somehow the driving force in all this. Because the only reason a Battleworld was formed the first time in Secret Wars 1 was because the Beyonder was trying to function as "Desire".

[Ciriaco]

What I don't know is that since that issue, Reece and the Beyonder split up that Cosmic Cube to become incomplete again, and Reece exists on Earth, and the Beyonder was last seen in New Avengers :Illumunati #4. So how did they reappear after FF#319?

I think they both reappear in FF annual 23 and 24. I haven't had time to read them myself yet (I'm also backtracking the history of the Beyonder) but I've seen them there .

[jackolover]

I think they both reappear in FF annual 23 and 24. I haven't had time to read them myself yet (I'm also backtracking the history of the Beyonder) but I've seen them there .

Okay, thanks.

[teepee]

Probably not the case but possible if his future self becomes the great destroyer in the past. He just went through space and time

otoh...

[Trident]

J. Hickmans tweet:


https://twitter.com/jhickman/status/575842589036912640

The greatest villainess of them all!

Lol

[somebody]

I got it. It's so simple it's stupid.

ALL HOPE LIES IN DOOM. Right?

So get this, the Beyonders are out there with a scheme to destroy the multiverse. So how do you combat that? You cut them to the chase. You set off this chain of events that will cause the untimely deaths of universes before the Beyonders can get to them! The less Earths to mark, the less universes there are to destroy.

I'm going to call the first part of my statement as what's happening. Doom is playing hero here to combat the Beyonders.

Why? And what are the Beyonders doing (besides destroying everything) isn't known yet. But ALL HOPE LIES IN DOOM

[dkrook]

The reveal of Doom just smacks of business as usual writing. I couldn't be anyone else, or even a new villain?

[Rosebunse]

J. Hickmans tweet:


https://twitter.com/jhickman/status/575842589036912640

The greatest villainess of them all!

Lol

Oh, that would have destroyed the fandom.

The reveal of Doom just smacks of business as usual writing. I couldn't be anyone else, or even a new villain?

There was no build up for a new villain! It would have been weak and would have made no sense! And none of us were really guessing at Doom being Rabum Alal.

[XPac]

The reveal of Doom just smacks of business as usual writing. I couldn't be anyone else, or even a new villain?

In a way we did get new villains. The Beyonders. Not that they're exactly new per say... they've been around for awhile. But we're certainly get something different.

[Darkspellmaster]

J. Hickmans tweet:


https://twitter.com/jhickman/status/575842589036912640

The greatest villainess of them all!

Lol

All I have to say is that while I don't always agree with what he writes, I do love the way he writes his scripts! I really wish Marvel would put out the scripts as they are in a book just to see how the writers construct these stories to the artists.

That is a great troll.