New Avengers #17 - Summary and Review *SPOILERS*

[vitruvian]

Yeah, as powerful as the Black Priests and Map Makers are I am starting to suspect they're not quite as uber as the Black Swan makes them out to me. The moment we saw Doom beat one straight up, they lost a bit of their mystique. Same with seeing Black Swan (who was defeated by T'Challa fairly easily) soloing a Black Priest. As much as Black Swan is trying to paint them as unbeatable boogy man, they don't seem to be anything the earth heroes can't handle. They've seen worse.

Kind of what I've been saying all along... Reed's been in almost precisely this situation before, with the whole Abraxas destroying the multiverse storyline.

[XPac]

Great issue. Makes me want a Black Panther/Namor mini where the bro it up and do kingly things.
Loving Hickman's JLA/Squadron Supreme team.

I think it would be fun to expand that and even throw in Black Bolt and Captain Britian (if Brian's still a king and not just a school headmaster now). If not for Hudlin having Doom feud with T'Challa, I frankly would think even he would have a place in that since he had somewhat of a working relationship with T'Challa and Namor back in the day. Too bad... could have been fun.

[Mr MajestiK]

I think it would be fun to expand that and even throw in Black Bolt and Captain Britian (if Brian's still a king and not just a school headmaster now). If not for Hudlin having Doom feud with T'Challa, I frankly would think even he would have a place in that since he had somewhat of a working relationship with T'Challa and Namor back in the day. Too bad... could have been fun.

Well, in light of this panel here....



it's obvious that nothing is as solidly set in stone as would appear to be the case upon initial examination.

Doom's issues with T'Challa predated Reginald Hudlin so citing Hudlin's writing of said feud between the two characters as a hinderance towards their working together in future, is somewhat hyperbolic to say the least.

If Hickman's story requires either one of these characters to put aside their differences long enough to deal with a common threat, that's how it'll play out on paper.

[XPac]

Kind of what I've been saying all along... Reed's been in almost precisely this situation before, with the whole Abraxas destroying the multiverse storyline.

Yeah, I think the scale of cosmic which Hickman is playing with is a good notch some of what we've seen in the past, like some of Starlin's stuff for example.

The Builders for example, were just a powerful alien fleet of ships. It's a good credible threat, but there's no reason to assume Galactus couldn't have entirely wiped them out the same way he did the Annihilation Wave. The problem itself is massive, ie entire universes being endangered, but the actual antagonists we've seen at least so far are well below the threat level which might require the higher end cosmics to get involved.

At least so far. Something seemingly took out the Living Tribunal. And LT is essentially the top of the cosmic food chain, short of his boss which never really gets involved. So there is someone or something out there bigger than what we've seen so far.

I'm assuming since the Ivory Kings are showing up seperately from the Map Makers and Black Priests, they're a step up in the threat scale. Then again, contrary to what Black Swan implied I'm not certain there's reason to believe the Map Makers and Black Priests are less of a threat than the Builders, so that sort of logic doens't necessarily apply.

[dupersuper]

Not if you can connect the dots by reading this first, and then either reading Avengers or seeing in the discussion here that that's where him joining happened. It was a good story, though, so no harm reading it.

Oh, I'm reading all of Hickmans Avengers stuff and quite happily, I just happened to grab New Avengers from my pile before Avengers, put it back to read Avengers first as warned, then wondered why.

[Daeron]

Yeah, I think the scale of cosmic which Hickman is playing with is a good notch some of what we've seen in the past, like some of Starlin's stuff for example.

The Builders for example, were just a powerful alien fleet of ships. It's a good credible threat, but there's no reason to assume Galactus couldn't have entirely wiped them out the same way he did the Annihilation Wave. The problem itself is massive, ie entire universes being endangered, but the actual antagonists we've seen at least so far are well below the threat level which might require the higher end cosmics to get involved.

At least so far. Something seemingly took out the Living Tribunal. And LT is essentially the top of the cosmic food chain, short of his boss which never really gets involved. So there is someone or something out there bigger than what we've seen so far.

I'm assuming since the Ivory Kings are showing up seperately from the Map Makers and Black Priests, they're a step up in the threat scale. Then again, contrary to what Black Swan implied I'm not certain there's reason to believe the Map Makers and Black Priests are less of a threat than the Builders, so that sort of logic doens't necessarily apply.

Have these Ivory Kings been shown anywhere, or are they just an anonymous threat for now? I've been wondering whether I've missed something.

[jphamlore]

Actually the Great Society has an interesting phrasing of the dangers of the Multiverse incursions:

"What do you think is going to happen if we have to face Black Priests this time? My g*d, what if it's an Ivory King? What then?"

From Black Swan's perspective perhaps due to direct confrontation the Black Priests are the big bad, but the Great Society believes just one Ivory King is an unimaginable danger.

Adaptoids, evolution, science, their peak is the Mapmakers. Magic, it's peak is the Black Priests. What in the current Marvel 616 universe can be extrapolated to be an Ivory King?

[StoneGold]

Well, in light of this panel here....



it's obvious that nothing is as solidly set in stone as would appear to be the case upon initial examination.

Doom's issues with T'Challa predated Reginald Hudlin so citing Hudlin's writing of said feud between the two characters as a hinderance towards their working together in future, is somewhat hyperbolic to say the least.

If Hickman's story requires either one of these characters to put aside their differences long enough to deal with a common threat, that's how it'll play out on paper.

I'm actually kind of hoping some of the animosity still sticks.


Namor and T'Challa are both complex characters. With Black Bolt apparently dead, they're the only two that really understand the pain each other feels. So they can laugh. They should be friends.

They should also still want to kill each other, because that is what being a monarch demands. There's friendship, and then there's duty.

[ShaokhaN]

Three other things:

1) Is anyone else a bit annoyed that the Great Society apparently managed to deal with Incursions more creatively than the Illuminati? Not in terms of the Norn using the words of power against worlds used by the Mapmakers, but, as the Rider mentions in NA #16, by "moving a planet through time -- fracturing and then resealing the breach". I mean they don't seem to have any scientist among them, or if they do I find it a bit of a stretch that this (or these) scientist(s) would be more intelligent than Reed/Stark/McCoy/T'Challa (and now Maximus) put together. Ok, that's a minor gripe coming from a Reed fanboy ,-)

2) In Avengers #4, the narrator tells part of the backstory of Hyperion, and says "he saw the great society they had built, but he also saw the people". Could there be a link with this new Great Society team? Ok, probably a coincidence. [edit: also, in Avengers #13, the High Evolutionary calls Hyperion "Sun God".]

3) It seems weird to me that the current members of the Great Society were apparently "outcasts" (NA #16) on their world prior to their Skrull/Kree invasion. Why would that be, according to you?

[Daeron]

Hmm, kings ruling from an ivory tower, ivory kings. Sounds familiar if put in such a context. It might be relevant considering we've seen multiple versions of the illuminati across the multiverse.

Three other things:

1) It looks like they've been dealing with incursions on their world for a lot longer than the ones in 616. But at least one of those solutions could have been done with the Infinity Gauntlet. It might have been hubris by Captain America to go for 'pushing' an entire freaking universe away while there are more delicate solutions at hand. But then they had little time and might not have been sure on what would work anyway.

2) And GS Sun God is called post-universal which implies he joined the team through an incursion. But he was also shown fighting with them in the past, which would be an issue were it not for the fact that time seems to run differently across the multiverse. So maybe the GS faced their first incursion around the time of the Skrull/Kree invasion. Which again would imply they have been dealing with it for a long time.

3) The earlier version of the GS are labelled archetypes of justice. Meaning the GS views have some sort of basis in how those heroes acted. But yeah, they're pretty powerful so it's weird that they wouldn't be involved at the time, unless they weren't active yet.

[jphamlore]

I predict things will not end happily for the Great Society Earth. Because the entire storyline has been Black Swan's assertion that the Great Wheel crushes all hope, destroys all morality. And the story is at most only in the middle so it has to get much darker.

There are two plausible ways out for the Great Society to justify that their world has to be sacrified, both that rely on their world being "dead man already walking". One is that their incursions seem to be happening faster. Perhaps Reed will tell them in their part of the Multiverse the incursions have sped up so that they are going to happen within minutes and maybe even seconds of each other. The other is they might be wrong that the Mapmakers failed to contact their Host and that the Host of the Mapmakers is close to upon them.

On the other hand both sides will be desperate in their possible final minutes. I am hoping there is some hint as to what creates the power of an Ivory King.

[Lady Warp Spasm]

Sounds like a good issue. I might pick it up this coming Wednesday.

[Danny Wall]

Wait... there is Atlantean wine? How does that work for a race of beings who live underwater?

[Alvarez]

Wait... there is Atlantean wine? How does that work for a race of beings who live underwater?

Ocean Grapes!

[Danny Wall]

Ocean Grapes!

And salt water?! how do you put it in the bottle, and if you hold the glass by the stem, how do you swirl it? Can you rate the wine by "nose"? Do you rate the clarity in proportion to the visability underwater?
These Atlantean scientists have some pretty advanced technology!