What is ANAD? I'm Confused.

[penthotal]

Wow. Just like the old 616. Nothing different!!

Well, you point to this list like it contains a lot of big changes, but it actually reads like: Blue Marvel has some iso-8, SHIELD has some iso-8, the Collector has some iso-8.

The last two points, if one reads the interview and not the forum poster synopsis, are not accurate. Ewing says:

I’ve been working closely with [Marvel Games Creative Director] Bill Rosemann on CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS, which is obviously our main Iso-8 book, but the plan was always to make it a viable part of the Marvel Universe, as a building block of new ultimate-power items.

and

The “cosmic counter” stuff is me trying to add a little extra oomph to proceedings.

So, the cosmic counter stuff it's just "a little extra oomph" nothing significant and "major power are going to be proliferating like never before" it's a flat out lie, it just says there will be new power items made of iso-8 not that they "are going to be proliferating like never before". Cosmic power items have always existed and new ones are always more powerful than the previous ones, otherwise there would be no reason for them to exist, and the reason they exist it's quite simple: if I say the Infinity Boot it's stronger than the infinity gauntlet, when the villain attacks with the Boot, reader won't think "it's okay, they just have to look for the Infinity Gems and they will win".

[jackolover]

Certainly it was in doubt. I can't even count the number of storylines in which the entire Earth, galaxy, universe, multiverse were in peril and therefore the underlying security of the MU was in very serious doubt.



These kinds of changes (to the extent you describe them accurately, considering that Steve is definitely still the patriarch in Uncanny Avengers) have often happened before. There was Civil War, then Steve was dead for a year; the FF has disbanded or been thought dead multiple times before; in fact, all of the current FF and Avengers were thought dead for an extended period of time after Onslaught, during which period the Thunderbolts first showed up, remember that?

ANAD has some significant differences to the status quo to what was happening right before Secret Wars, true, but apart from the smattering of multiversal and remnant Ultimate characters around, most of that can be attributed as much to the eight month time gap as to the cosmic reboot in-universe. And honestly, on balance, it's not any of it all that new or different. In fact, many of the most significant changes from the perspective of somebody who, say, stepped away from comics for a decade or two were actually brought in well before Secret Wars.

On your first point, of security in doubt, the threats you describe aren't what I was talking about. Sure the Earth was getting threatened a lot, but it was the underlying assurance the Earth would be saved. Now, I'm not so sure in ANAD.

One your second point of Steve's authority and the FF and Avengers being missing while other teams filled the gap, I wasn't aware after Onslaught that there was that big a gap between heroes disappearing and returning. Maybe a few weeks? Steve Rogers being less influential could be said to have happened before Secret Wars, sure. I think I felt he was just a crotchety old man by that stage, and he seems the same in ANAD.

[jackolover]

Point 2 is incorrect. There have always been stories in individual titles where the entire world or universe was under threat, and it might have made sense from a shared universe perspective for there to be more crossovers to other groups like the FF or Defenders or other Avengers teams or whatever, but the storyline gets resolved without such intervention, solely by the hero or heroes on the scene or privy to the nature of the threat. Always. Think the Hank Pym-led version of the Mighty Avengers stopping Chthon's Chaos Wave, except without even the little cameos showing the other teams being useless.

Yes I remember the MA and Chthon. That should have happened over a few hours all around the Earth. But this thing with the Shredded Man in Boston ruined ANAD for 50 years if we are to believe the Cable prologue, (which may be a misdirection I grant you), isn't a few hours. It's like an Age of Ultron type thing, but then I don't know how Cable was born, (that's another whole direction on X-Men that has to be considered). What I'm saying is for a start up fresh, universe, ANAD didn't waste any time getting to Earth destruction so quickly. I think the nice new fresh Silver Age took a few years before something like that happened.

[jackolover]

Why on Earth would you think that when he's shown flying through the car and rescuing them in the very next panel? Were you thinking that he was suddenly homicidal, or that he sucked that much at throwing the shield with accuracy?

Yes I saw the next panels of Sam rescuing everyone.

Just saying, the artist showed a shield flying through a car which couldn't help but have struck everyone in its path. Sam flying into the wagon may have got stuck in the back window by his wings frame on his back too, so it just seemed an unlikely rescue by the way it was drawn. If a real metal disc flew into a real car full of people it would have done some real damage to the people occupying the space.

[jackolover]

ISO-8 is just a handwavey explanation for the quirks of the sliding timescale. That's it.

That's it? I think it's a bit more than that. Iso-8 seems to be recurrent enough that SHIELD got a hold of some and something bad happened that Steve Rogers didn't like. How much more of it is out there available to anyone? Maybe the dimension hoppers in Dr Strange have some. Champions seems to have some and Ultimates have some.

But I know the sliding timescale has something to do with ANAD, and we'll learn more about that as more books come out. I've been anticipating that with Secret Wars and its aftermath. I'll see how I like it when it becomes known what this means to history this time.

And I'm not asking for anything, least wise predictability in my comics. Just trying to get a sense of the structure of ANAD.

[jackolover]

Well, you point to this list like it contains a lot of big changes, but it actually reads like: Blue Marvel has some iso-8, SHIELD has some iso-8, the Collector has some iso-8.

The last two points, if one reads the interview and not the forum poster synopsis, are not accurate. Ewing says:

I’ve been working closely with [Marvel Games Creative Director] Bill Rosemann on CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS, which is obviously our main Iso-8 book, but the plan was always to make it a viable part of the Marvel Universe, as a building block of new ultimate-power items.

and

The “cosmic counter” stuff is me trying to add a little extra oomph to proceedings.

So, the cosmic counter stuff it's just "a little extra oomph" nothing significant and "major power are going to be proliferating like never before" it's a flat out lie, it just says there will be new power items made of iso-8 not that they "are going to be proliferating like never before". Cosmic power items have always existed and new ones are always more powerful than the previous ones, otherwise there would be no reason for them to exist, and the reason they exist it's quite simple: if I say the Infinity Boot it's stronger than the infinity gauntlet, when the villain attacks with the Boot, reader won't think "it's okay, they just have to look for the Infinity Gems and they will win".

I'm not sure about that. If what Brashear says, that Neutronium is stable now, it could presumably be distributed to everybody, not just a token artifact you can pull out of a draw. This is potentially a huge revelation.

[Tiamatty]

On your first point, of security in doubt, the threats you describe aren't what I was talking about. Sure the Earth was getting threatened a lot, but it was the underlying assurance the Earth would be saved. Now, I'm not so sure in ANAD.

Really? You honestly think there's any chance of the Earth being destroyed? Seriously? They're not going to destroy the Earth because that's where the stories happen. If it does get wrecked, then time travel will erase it from happening, just like it has for years already.

Yes I remember the MA and Chthon. That should have happened over a few hours all around the Earth. But this thing with the Shredded Man in Boston ruined ANAD for 50 years if we are to believe the Cable prologue, (which may be a misdirection I grant you), isn't a few hours. It's like an Age of Ultron type thing, but then I don't know how Cable was born, (that's another whole direction on X-Men that has to be considered). What I'm saying is for a start up fresh, universe, ANAD didn't waste any time getting to Earth destruction so quickly. I think the nice new fresh Silver Age took a few years before something like that happened.

Because this isn't the Silver Age. This isn't building a new universe. This is using the same universe they've been using for over 60 years already. It's all business as usual.

ISO-8 is just a handwavey explanation for the quirks of the sliding timescale. That's it.

That's it? I think it's a bit more than that. Iso-8 seems to be recurrent enough that SHIELD got a hold of some and something bad happened that Steve Rogers didn't like. How much more of it is out there available to anyone? Maybe the dimension hoppers in Dr Strange have some. Champions seems to have some and Ultimates have some.

But I know the sliding timescale has something to do with ANAD, and we'll learn more about that as more books come out. I've been anticipating that with Secret Wars and its aftermath. I'll see how I like it when it becomes known what this means to history this time.

And I'm not asking for anything, least wise predictability in my comics. Just trying to get a sense of the structure of ANAD.

No! ANAD has nothing to do with the sliding timeline! That shit is going to be treated exactly the same as it's always been treated!


It. Is. Branding. There is absolutely shit-all more to ANAD than that. It's a marketing effort. Why do you refuse to accept that? Why do you keep trying to read shit into the ANAD branding that isn't actually there? It's branding. It's branding. That's all it is. It's branding.

[strathcona]

I think the purpose of ANAD was to listen to some of the complaints fans had had over the last few years. I find most of the books seem to stand on their own, and there are no characters that are on more than one team that I can think of. I find that books seem to read longer, feel less decompressed with more happening in each issue. I also think that there is less of a direction in the MU and each book seems to be able to tell it's own story instead of being forced to tell part of a whole. These are all things that have really been needed at Marvel in the last decade or so, and I hope ANAD can continue to bring them. I for one am quite enjoying it so far.

[ImprobableQuestion]

I wonder what Iso-8 could do to effect the ANAD? What sort of effects it has on characters that cosmic cubes are as common as dirt?

This Iso-8 reminds me of the Beyonders essence, similar to the connection Owen Reece, the Molecule Man, had with cosmic cubes. It's almost like the Iso-8 is what's left of the Beyonders after Doctor Doom is overthrown, and the whole universe is dependant on it. A bit scary.

I dunno. I've been amassing thousands of Iso-8 Crystals since I started playing Puzzle Quest last year and nothing scary has happened to me.




That you know of.

[Tiamatty]

I think the purpose of ANAD was to listen to some of the complaints fans had had over the last few years. I find most of the books seem to stand on their own, and there are no characters that are on more than one team that I can think of. I find that books seem to read longer, feel less decompressed with more happening in each issue. I also think that there is less of a direction in the MU and each book seems to be able to tell it's own story instead of being forced to tell part of a whole. These are all things that have really been needed at Marvel in the last decade or so, and I hope ANAD can continue to bring them. I for one am quite enjoying it so far.

Though, again, this is something Marvel was starting to move towards prior to ANAD. ANAD is just an opportunity for them to promote changes they were already making.

Which is fine. I'm totally on board with that. I just wish people would stop trying to read more into it than that.

[BruceWayneJr.]

I guarantee a few of you guys have put more thought into it than the editors. Just don't be disappointed when none of this matters in 6 months. We've been here before. There's really no reason to assume there's more going on than what's on the page.

[Wissenschaft]

All new, all different is just a tagline marvel has used forever. When chris claremont started on the xmen they call it the All New All Different uncanny xmen.

[areacode212]

I dunno. I've been amassing thousands of Iso-8 Crystals since I started playing Puzzle Quest last year and nothing scary has happened to me.




That you know of.

I've got about 340k worth of ISO-8 right now, and nothing yet either. But, I'm hoping to become the Shaper of Worlds or something once I hit 400k.

[vitruvian]

ISO-8 is just a handwavey explanation for the quirks of the sliding timescale. That's it. I am sure that Ewing will do something more with it, since apparently the previous iterations of the omniverse made it unstable, and now it's not, but all it really is, is a way to explain how the past is progressively altered as the sliding timescale advances. It happens slowly so it's hard to see happening, but then you look back an realize that things don't line up, the X-Men, Spider-Man etc. couldn't have happened in the 60's, Kitty Pryde could not have gone to see original Star Wars in theaters, she wasn't even born at that time in the current stories, 9/11 is now pre-FF or will be very soon, (the MU is anywhere from 14 to 16 years since FF #1 in-universe, depending on how you figure) so any story that showed the WTC has to be different now, assorted characters could not have participated in WWII as shown on the comic page, and so on. Before, we were just kinda expected to roll with it and ignore these bits of oddness that resulted from a sliding timescale. Now we have a canon explanation. Every 10 years or so (our time) from the very beginning, the MU has been subtly rebooted with a new iteration to update the universe to conform to the present day. It's still 616, just pre-Secret Wars was iteration 7, now it's 8, and the past has been altered slightly to reflect that, though the characters themselves are largely unaware that anything has changed, and it is mostly the same as it was immediately prior to secret Wars, it's mostly just sliding the events of the characters pasts forward by 10 years, give or take. This is nothing new. The MU has ALWAYS been updated to match the current times, sometimes characters mannerisms and personalities get altered as well so that they don't feel of of place. It's been happening for years. It's just now there is something we can point to in-universe for why it happens.

In a word, no. The impression we are given so far is that while the seventh universe might well have been very, very similar to the present one, with seeming continuity of history and memory, the earlier ones like the fifth one that Moridun comes from were quite, extremely different.

[Michael P]

It helps to remember that stories are about people, not about mechanical minutiae of fictional universes. (Good stories, anyway.)