New Avengers 32 *spoilers*

[eaebiakuya]

If Sol's Anvil actually gets all its power from the Sun, then evidently crushing a Beyonder is easier than destroying a planet, and Starbrand is more than up to the job. After all, calculations of the amount of energy required to actually pull a Death Star on an Earth-sized planet have it take a good week's worth of the Sun's total power output, expended in less than a second:

http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts...he-death-star/

So, what Starbrand can do at any time, Sol's Anvil would have to charge up for (assuming it even has the storage capacity) a week, multiplied by the inverse of whatever percentage of the Sun's energy it captures, in order to do the same.

Son Anvil multiplies the energy of the Sun. Hickman said that in his old formspring.

[Anarchist]

Really folks? Trying to apply physics to comic-logic?

[Gordonstar]

If we had real world comics they would like earth Prime and not Marvel.

[DrTraveler]

I agree with you that if all that we knew about Beyonders was that individual ones could be "crushed" by Sol's Anvil, then I would have much less of a problem with the Kevin Conner Star Brand being apparently able to defeat one in its "solid form".

What we saw from the Beyonders seems to suggest that them being defeated by Sol's Anvil should also be rather implausible, though. Such a weapon was unable to do anything more to the Mad Celestials than disassemble them (although perhaps it was not as powerful as the one the Council of Reeds used). In any case, and like I've said repeatedly, I'm perfectly fine with other people disagreeing with my position and seeing the two Beyonders' defeat to a few Ex Nihili, an Abyss, and Kevin Connor's Star Brand as plausible.

I totally understand what you're saying here. IIRC, and I may be wrong, in F4 603 Sol's Anvil actually does kill one of the 4 celestials and knocks out the combined form. That isn't exactly an unimpressive feat given the combined form just took down Galactus. So understand, Sol's Anvil is a pretty serious weapon. Used by the Reeds I can believe it "crushed" a Beyonder, where I'd take "crushed" to mean "destroy his physical form".

Once you accept that, Kevin taking out the physical form of a Beyonder isn't that big a stretch.

You still do have the problem that the Beyonders do kill the Cosmic Entities of the Multiverse, but here I think part of the problem is that we don't know how tough that was for the Beyonders to do. Pym implies that the battle took a very long time and was very protracted. Thanos was able to knock out all of the assembled Cosmics in the space of one issue with the Gauntlet, Nebula could do that too. A long protracted battle seems to imply that the Beyonders are not necessarily on the power level of the Gauntlet. It is also heavily implied that the Beyonders had set some sort of trap to stack the deck in their favor.

Of course they do take out the Tribunal, but again it looks like that was a prolonged multi-front multiversal battle. Logically, I can believe that the Tribunal could shut down the Gauntlet (he's multiversal, the Gauntlet only works in it's Universe) yet still fall prey to the Beyonders as they can engage him on a level the Gauntlet can't.

This all nicely sets the stage for the idea that the Ivory Kings CAN be beat, but it will certainly not be a trivial task to do it.

PS: I've always wondered if the Great Society managed to meet and defeat the Ivory Kings during one of their "missing" incursions. They seemed to be aware of their existence.

[vitruvian]

Son Anvil multiplies the energy of the Sun. Hickman said that in his old formspring.

Do you happen to have the link? I wonder where the energy to multiply the energy from the Sun is supposed to come from, if they can get multiple Suns worth of energy from nowhere, they shouldn't really need the Sun in the first place.

[vitruvian]

Really folks? Trying to apply physics to comic-logic?

Sure, applying science to a book Hickman is writing basically as science fiction. If the writer chooses to bring scientific and science fictional concepts such as Dyson Spheres into things, the writing can be judged on that basis just fine.

[TresDias]

It can be, but you have to expect more fiction than science. The science just gives it flavor.

[vitruvian]

It can be, but you have to expect more fiction than science. The science just gives it flavor.

Sure, it's not going to be hard science fiction... we've got superpowers and FTL drives and a multiverse where you can travel between universes and times and all that. All stuff you have to hand wave since it's not going to work according to real world physics.

That's still no reason not to get things right in terms of orders of magnitude and so on when you can, or not acknowledge that things like violations of conservation of mass/energy require some kind of hand wave. Growth and shrinking get Pym particles to explain them, so likewise extra energy coming from somewhere to multiply the Sun's output can be hand waved as zero point energy or something similar.

[JKtheMac]

Sure, it's not going to be hard science fiction... we've got superpowers and FTL drives and a multiverse where you can travel between universes and times and all that. All stuff you have to hand wave since it's not going to work according to real world physics.

That's still no reason not to get things right in terms of orders of magnitude and so on when you can, or not acknowledge that things like violations of conservation of mass/energy require some kind of hand wave. Growth and shrinking get Pym particles to explain them, so likewise extra energy coming from somewhere to multiply the Sun's output can be hand waved as zero point energy or something similar.

I always got the impression it was storing energy for later use. Whether it then uses some kind of light amplification process with this stored energy is not clear to me.

[OceanStar]

One thing concerns me though that observing from the outside (reading forms like this) is how easily it seems how the cosmic gods are killed. Apoc twins killing an Celestial!!?? Give me a break. A Watcher killed by an "shotgun"?? Those Ex Nana beings,ugh. I hope someone comes along before I die and fix this crap. As long they are doing stuff like this,I'm staying away. No wondering comics don't have the sales they once did (I know their are other factors also. Make mine not Marvel or DCU).

[misterfranklin]

Do you happen to have the link? I wonder where the energy to multiply the energy from the Sun is supposed to come from, if they can get multiple Suns worth of energy from nowhere, they shouldn't really need the Sun in the first place.

The energy comes from a stable geothermal vent under Old Atlantis, a dynamo in the Blue Area of the moon, and the High Evolutionary's Ascension Engine, all focused through a portal to the Negative Zone. Unfortunately the archived version of Hickman's formspring only goes back to the beginning of 2013. Here's a panel from FF #15, though.
FF-15-P.3.jpg

[vitruvian]

The energy comes from a stable geothermal vent under Old Atlantis, a dynamo in the Blue Area of the moon, and the High Evolutionary's Ascension Engine, all focused through a portal to the Negative Zone. Unfortunately the archived version of Hickman's formspring only goes back to the beginning of 2013. Here's a panel from FF #15, though.
FF-15-P.3.jpg

So, none from the Sun, despite the panel saying so? Or are all those in addition to the solar energy?

Geothermal = piddly relative to the solar power gathered by even a small fraction of a Dyson sphere.

Dynamo in the Blue Area = no telling without knowing what kind of dynamo or where it's getting power from.

Ascension Engine = needs to consume energy/power from somewhere in order to operate and affect evolution - so would subtract from the power available, not add to it. Could be that's the active, weaponized part of the thing, though, rather than part of the power source....

Portal to the Negative Zone = real potential there. Conceivably, what with the Negative Zone being an antimatter universe, so that folks traveling from there to the regular universe or vice versa need to have all their particles reversed to the antiparticles in order not to annihilate upon contact with anything on the other side, if you omitted that step at the interface you could access pretty much limitless energy by allowing the mutual annihilation of matter and antimatter. The only problem is controlling and channeling the results of that reaction so you didn't just blow up everything around the portal on both sides.

But if the thing was running on matter/antimatter conversion, there wouldn't really be any point messing about with solar energy. It would be like throwing a match onto a bonfire....

[vitruvian]

I always got the impression it was storing energy for later use. Whether it then uses some kind of light amplification process with this stored energy is not clear to me.

Amplification requires more energy, though. Doesn't come from nowhere, and if it did, then you'd just use your energy from nowhere directly....

But saying that the thing has practically unlimited storage capacity for the solar energy it absorbs, and has been active for long enough, pretty much works. Just makes it a one-shot device until you've had more months or years to absorb a full charge again.

[TresDias]

Let's just say there's a bunch of magnifying glasses arranged inside the sphere's firing doodad or whatsit. Problem solved. =P

[vitruvian]

Let's just say there's a bunch of magnifying glasses arranged inside the sphere's firing doodad or whatsit. Problem solved. =P

Just checking... you're just joking about how badly science is written in comics, even by Hickman, not suggesting that lenses actually add energy to a beam of light rather than concentrating it, right?