New Avengers #29 - Spoilers

[Andy]

I see we made it a whole 8 pages of good discussion this time before the nonsense started.


Good job guys.



This was a good issue. The slow burn has worn on me, and this didn't do anything to fix it, but at least the issue was strong in it's own merits. It's really, really good to see our heroes all in one room again all working together towards a solution.

[XPac]

Asking what they've been doing. Same as Steve, when they know they've been hunting them.

Asking what exactly they've been doing is a fair question. And it's one readers have been asking for months. If Reed doesn't have a plan, at least going over what they've tried to do so far makes sense.

[Spider-Man24]

Tony will be the savior

[SKJoker]

Asking what exactly they've been doing is a fair question. And it's one readers have been asking for months. If Reed doesn't have a plan, at least going over what they've tried to do so far makes sense.

You know exactly how he said it. It wasn't "give me a runback," it was very clearly accusatory. Damn, do we have to do this?

[XPac]

You know exactly how he said it. It wasn't "give me a runback," it was very clearly accusatory. Damn, do we have to do this?

As I said, it's a fair question. And it's the exact same one countless readers have been asking for months.

This is what happens when the Illuminati decide to play god and decide things for themselves without letting else know. They have reasons for their decision, but that comes with a price. If they don't want others to second guess them, don't go around making decusions for others without letting them know.

This is nothing new. The Illuminati go through this at the climax of every Illuminati story, and odds are good we'll be going through this again.

[SKJoker]

As I said, it's a fair question. And it's the exact same one countless readers have been asking for months.

This is what happens when the Illuminati decide to play god and decide things for themselves without letting else know. They have reasons for their decision, but that comes with a price. If they don't want others to second guess them, don't go around making decusions for others without letting them know.

This is nothing new. The Illuminati go through this at the climax of every Illuminati story, and odds are good we'll be going through this again.

Okay, final response: You do not get to be accusatory when asking for results if your efforts have been directly inimical to those results.

[XPac]

Okay, final response: You do not get to be accusatory when asking for results if your efforts have been directly inimical to those results.

After mind wiping Steve, I'd argue he's got the right to say any damn thing he wants at this point. It's not like he hasn't been more than fair about working with them since they all got back together. Are there hurt feelings? Yes. That's what happens when you mind wipe people. But they're still doing the job. Aside from T'Challa and Namor, everyone has put aside their personal beefs which is about as much as you can ask of them at this point. Asking them to be "nice" to each other is probably asking too much.

[chaosfist]

Tony will be the savior

There is no savior. Everything Dies there is only Secret Wars.

[XPac]

There is no savior. Everything Dies there is only Secret Wars.

They do say Stark represents death. Considering he hasn't really done jack so far in the story I presume they're saving him for something big. Not that I think that him being a savior is that thing.

[vitruvian]

Yes, that's the reason that I said that knowing what happened to the Earthless universes is relevant.

Anyways, if the Beyonders are taking a direct approach to the remaining universes, then there can't be a way out. Whatever you try, they will undo. The only way to survive may be to find a way out to the known Multiverse, or maybe to create a new one using an Atomic Compressor. And that last one may fail too, if the Beyonders bother going after you there.

Something occurred to me after that post, though... from what Doom and Owen are doing in the white space between universes, it looks like it's possible to time travel to the past from there.

As for your supposition about the Beyonders, I haven't seen much if any support for it in this issue. The Ivory Kings have been mentioned as one set of players, possibly linked to the Mapmakers since Owen is on their frequency and his powers derive from Beyonder/Cosmic Cube energy, but they weren't shown to be the ones making the Illuminati's various plans mess up. It could just as well be Rabum Alal taking an active hand, or Black Priests intoning power words remotely, or just them miscalculating how quickly the universe was falling apart. About the only one where I think a direct connection to the Ivory Kings is even hinted at, is when their Cosmic Cube dissolves on the Illuminati after very little use, since the Cubes are how the Beyonders send their energy/selves into our type of universe to explore or mess around, so if that power was unexpectedly withdrawn it could likely be because they didn't want it used in that way.... but that's really it.

[vitruvian]

If you pull at the string TOO much things do fall apart. There's also things like counter earth out there. If push comes to shove I honestly don't believe that it would be impossible for the Illuminati to evacuate the earth. There are options and there's no way they tried everything.

Hickman did his best to sell the idea that no other options are available... and for the sake of this story I think he did about as good a job as anyone could. But at the end of the day you do need suspeion of belief to make this story work.

Well, the Mars idea falls prey to the same problem as the exodus worlds they did try to create... who's to say that the Sun is not the next star to commit suicide? Of course, if that depends on where they're trying to evacuate people to, that implies somebody taking an active hand against their efforts, but still.

[vitruvian]

So the Beyonder went from being the literally omnipotent visitor of a foreign reality to an incomplete Cosmic Cube to a very powerful Inhuman to......a member of a new race?

The poor guy gets no respect, really.

No, the Beyonders were a race mentioned before the first Secret Wars, and then in the Cosmic Cube retcon it was established that they were a race of plural Beyonders in some extradimensional plane or space, and that the creation of Cosmic Cubes was how they inserted themselves into our sort of universe... so their appearance here appears to be a move back from the Illuminati mutant/Inhuman thing to the Cosmic Cube thing.

[vitruvian]

Doom led Ben Grimm's Fantastic Four into the universe of the Beyonders back in FF#318-319 to find him so that Doom could get back his memories from being a part of a time loop that the Beyonder created when Doom was brought to Battleworld. So I assume The Beyonder has always been part of one of the Beyonders.

Exactly, this is going back to the Cosmic Cubes as essentially probes from Beyonders-space thing from that era. Evidently more of them end up 'incomplete' (like Beyonder) or stick around long enough for users' personalities to rub off on them (like Shaper of Worlds) than we had previously thought. Of course, even if it's a one in a million for each universe, over what used to be 'nigh infinite' realities you could still end up with thousands of these guys.

[robreedwrites]

Something occurred to me after that post, though... from what Doom and Owen are doing in the white space between universes, it looks like it's possible to time travel to the past from there.

As for your supposition about the Beyonders, I haven't seen much if any support for it in this issue. The Ivory Kings have been mentioned as one set of players, possibly linked to the Mapmakers since Owen is on their frequency and his powers derive from Beyonder/Cosmic Cube energy, but they weren't shown to be the ones making the Illuminati's various plans mess up. It could just as well be Rabum Alal taking an active hand, or Black Priests intoning power words remotely, or just them miscalculating how quickly the universe was falling apart. About the only one where I think a direct connection to the Ivory Kings is even hinted at, is when their Cosmic Cube dissolves on the Illuminati after very little use, since the Cubes are how the Beyonders send their energy/selves into our type of universe to explore or mess around, so if that power was unexpectedly withdrawn it could likely be because they didn't want it used in that way.... but that's really it.

We don't know whether or not the Ivory Kings are deliberately causing the Illuminati's methods to fail, but we do know they are actively working to end the multiverse, as per Doctor Strange. He states that they are working towards the same goal as Rabum Alal but in opposition to him is yet to be revealed.

[Captain M]

Are we completely sure Hank is not 80 years old now?