New Avengers 30 *spoilers*

[PlanetaryDevastation]

I think Black Swan is playing them as well. I think she even premeditated Black Panther " finding " here at the right moment. She was collected and ready to answer his questions before he asked them (he didn't or wasn't shown to noticed that she was already acquainted with him yet). Then of course she was the one directing their actions from there on out right up until they found she had a hobby of killing alt Illuminati from Earth to Earth (and particularly reveled in taking her time with Tony). Then here " true colors " show and her spite for most of these characters. I think she was there to sabotage them and just hid right in plain view knowing she could tell them the truth and they wouldn't either comprehend nor believe it at least until it was too late. As well her driving to them to destroy planets and then leaving to a party more interested in doing so once they opted out. Finally the non-verbal exchange with Thanos. Most of these things are all immediate marks of a Marvel villain. It seems Hickman even played that the Illuminati knew this soon enough but couldn't deny the advantage that she was ahead of them on all this, particularly thinking as scientists, and let her have enough rope though of course only to end up hanging themselves with it.

Oh, she is definitely playing them. She met alternate versions of them and done this before after all. She worships this Great Destroyer. She wants this to happen. We seen her play the alternate Reed and Tony. I want to know why the Swans sided with this Destroyer rather than the kings.

[Rosebunse]

Oh, she is definitely playing them. She met alternate versions of them and done this before after all. She worships this Great Destroyer. She wants this to happen. We seen her play the alternate Reed and Tony. I want to know why the Swans sided with this Destroyer rather than the kings.

the Destroyer could have made them, or whoever it is could have just plucked the different women from dead universes for just this purpose.

When it's all said and done, I think these Beyonders will be someone else. Either they were created by Franklin or they are the Infinity Gems become sentient. Speaking of the Gems, how does the time gem breaking and the OS future come into play? Clearly there is a future where all of this has happened already, so I have to believe that Franklin has some master plan he's working on.

What evidence is there that they are Infinity Gems?

[teepee]

To sum up this issue in a nutshell: Exposition the Comic!

Hope you like dry, never ending, and boring exposition that sounds stilted and inhuman, because that's all this issue is. No characterization, barely any plot advancement, killing tons of characters to make creator's own pets more threatening, and average artwork. What a comic for the ages. Dear god, Hickman, you can write so much better stuff. I've seen East of West! What's with this comic?!

These are all very valid criticisms. And yet the story trumps everything.

[jphamlore]

1.It's not his expertise or knowledge on the metaphysical science. According to this issue it's his shrinking tech. He can shrink down enough that he can see through the quantum technobabble (Quantum entanglement?) and tracked stuff and not got lost in the multiverse.

My interpretation is that Pym can shrink so far down he can break through the walls that separate the universes in some models of a bubble universe (multiverse):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_inflation

It's interesting to me at least that in Mesopotamian flood myth, one account is that the god Enki warned the analog of Noah about the gods plans to flood the Earth through a wall.

http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/sumerianmyth.htm

Enki contacts the pious priest-king of Nippur, Ziusudra ("He saw life"), who already has had a vision of the gods meeting and swearing an oath. Enki speaks to the flood-hero Ziusudra through a wall, perhaps to avoid breaking an oath not to tell the people what the gods planned.

This is all the Flood myth, with some accounts of the gods reasons being fairly capricious:

As in the later Story of Artrahasis, the flood probably comes about because mankind makes too much noise, angering the chief god Enlil ("Lord of wind"), who can't sleep because of the noise.

[teepee]

In the panel where the Beyonders kill Eternities there was a female-esque figure that I presume represents another universes' Eternity .

No that's Infinity, Eternity's errr sister or something.

[Habis]

Well, this was pretty informative. We have learnt what happened to the Captain Britania Corps, what happened to the Celestials, the Living Tribunal and the other Cosmic Entities, and why the remaining universes were suddenly erased: Once the Beyonders killed all the Cosmic Entities, it was a piece of cake for them to erase the Multiverse...

The questions that remain are: Who is Rabum Alal? Why do the Beyonders want to destroy the Multiverse? And why were a couple dozen universes spared?.

Is Hank someone that is suppose to know more about universal/multiversal science than Reed cause it seems like he does

Well, that was kind of his thing before he started building robots. He's the specialist in quantum physics and dimensional manipulation.

So, every being connected with the Ivory Kings started to project the same frequency. That explains Molecule Man and the Mapmakers, but I thought the Mapmakers where just the AIM adaptoids who evolved in the Thin/White Space between universes (which is where the Ivory Kings come from). So did the Ivory Kings take control over the adaptoids?

Well, the Beyonders created the Cosmic Cubes, the first Superadaptoid was created using a shard of a Cosmic Cube as a power source, and, since the Superdaptoid claimed many times that he could create duplicates of himself, the new adaptoids probably were created using him.

That means that all the Mapmakers/Superadaptoids are powered by the Beyonders. It makes sense that they can manipulate the Mapmakers.

Also, aren't Thor, Hyperion and team floating around the white space now? I remember the old Hyperion telling himself (OS tie-in) that he's place belonged in the white space. That he had to go out and make it his own. I wonder if Hyperion will end up being some all power being from thin space.

Most likely he intuits that the answer to the Incursion lies beyond the White Space.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

There was one incursion of the three that the Great Society survived but didnt disclose how. (NA#19 pg.10-11 digital)
some possibly conflicting information:
-the Great society faced two mapmaker incursions
-they must have faced the Black Priests at least once, since the Norn has learned their Words of Power and has a helmet of theirs
-based on NA#16, the Norn used the Words of Power at least once before their 3rd incursion.

My guess is the following:

1st incursion: probably red incursion with Black Priests, used "Wishing Box", Norn acquires Black Priest helmet and learns Words of Power
2nd incursion: possibly mapmaker world (the one in NA#16 was "second mapped world in two weeks"): Words of Power used. this is the most likely incursion where they faced an ivory king. Something else must have happened that allowed them to survive the incursion, because it wasn't the Words of Power that did ("we don't talk about that")
3rd incursion (depicted in NA#16): mapmaker world, destroyed by Words of Power

The only clue we have is when The Rider accounts for their two previous incursions in New Avengers v3 #16:

New Avengers v3 #16:
THE RIDER: We've found a way each time. Push the world back through. Move a planet through time - fracturing and then resealing the breach... we are only limited by ourselves.

So the Illuminati saw the 2nd one (what they described as moving the planet out of phase with the wishing box) and the 3rd one (the time Norn destroys the dead Earth with Words of Power). The mystery is the first incursion where they pushed the incursion back without using their Infinity Gems. Perhaps they sacrificed their Manifold to do that?

Is it a coincidence that Black Vortex Beast looks a little like a Beyonder?

[itspopularnowitsucks]

I'm no English Lit, but pretty sure this issue is not exposition. Exposition is filling background information, world building, historical events etc. This is Hank Pym's narration of his journal taken place during the course of the saga. If it's exposition, Hank Pym would constantly tell you who's who for each of these cosmic entities. Instead he told you the story where the signal is a trap and they are decimated by Beyonders and all hope is lost.

[jphamlore]

I applaud Marvel for killing off terrible ideas like the Celestials and other abstracts and the Captain Britain corps bureaucracy such as Saturnyne. The Beyonders are heroes to me in this issue. To paraphrase I believe some Western, no one got killed who didn't deserve killing.

The last scene of the Captain Britain corps reminds me of Hickman's Ultimates depiction of Asgard being destroyed by Ultimate Reed's Children. Here the last Captain Britain serves as both Ultimate Thor and Ultimate Modi combined, Ultimate Modi being given Mjolnir and pushed into the World Tree.

[Ite]

When it's all said and done, I think these Beyonders will be someone else. Either they were created by Franklin or they are the Infinity Gems become sentient. Speaking of the Gems, how does the time gem breaking and the OS future come into play? Clearly there is a future where all of this has happened already, so I have to believe that Franklin has some master plan he's working on.

Why do you keep mentioning Franklin? He was shown already trying to stop the Incursions but couldn't and now you are trying to say he is behind the whole thing?

[Mr MajestiK]

To sum up this issue in a nutshell: Exposition the Comic!

Hope you like dry, never ending, and boring exposition that sounds stilted and inhuman, because that's all this issue is. No characterization, barely any plot advancement, killing tons of characters to make creator's own pets more threatening, and average artwork. What a comic for the ages. Dear god, Hickman, you can write so much better stuff. I've seen East of West! What's with this comic?!

[Petotto Parkavius]

Everyone pretty much covered it all so not much to echo. I agree it wasn't much in the line of characterization with the exception of maybe Pym and more of an explanation than anything. But the intricacies of Hickman's overall story are tasty to me so I really enjoyed this. The scale of the scenes were gargantuan, one after another. So these Beyonders then yes? If I was right on that one I should probably feel good but I sort of looked at a wiki and guessed, oops. Still neat though, all of it.

The Watchers weren't really the subject of the issue here whatsoever, maybe that derailment should drift to a thread asking " What is the nature of The Watchers? " or something so we can discuss NA#30 proper?

Oh, Sick Alice. You're my kind of poster. The meat of this story is so delicious, it overwhelms me. I await each issue breathlessly at this point. The moral conundrums, the focus on the nature of the multiverse and its high concept science fiction, and its overall grandiose and horrifying scale, is just so awesome.

[Mr MajestiK]

Okay so I'm a bit confused in this issue

what did pym see that actually made him go mad?

I might have to read this issue again

Hickman's convoluted storyline would drive anyone to madness.

Pym was already halfway there.

[jiazhouhuaqiao]

What we learned from this issue is that at least *some* Manifolds are based on NEED. The dichotomy between Need and Desire is a theme that Hickman has referred to since Fantastic Four. In FF v1 #10 Gray Reed asks Nathaniel Richards whether this universe's Eldrac is based on Need or Desire, and Nathaniel replied that it was Need. Black Swan also claims that she is a servant of Need. Need can also refer to Eternity.

Perhaps in some universes, such as 616, Eldrac is based on Need, and Manifold is based on Desire, while in other universes this is switched.

[AcesX1X]

I applaud Marvel for killing off terrible ideas like the Celestials and other abstracts and the Captain Britain corps bureaucracy such as Saturnyne. The Beyonders are heroes to me in this issue. To paraphrase I believe some Western, no one got killed who didn't deserve killing.

that was not her majestrix opal luna saturnyne. she is so above this nonsense...

pym was so boring this issue. the whole time i just wish he would have stopped talking. no, pym. back to the multiverse with you.