Alonso, Brevoort Discuss Universe-Melding "Secret Wars," Address the Reboot Question

[hawkeyefan]

So, constant moonlight.

Somebody had to say it.

Ha well played.

To help us understand whether Battleworld is all there is, or not.... since if there are a sun, moon, stars, it's not.

Okay, but why? It doesn't seem to impact the story. Battleworld will be habitable, that's really all that matters. The statement that Battleworld is "all there is" seems more about letting everyone know that setting will be the focus of everything for the SW event. The only reason I can see for this mattering is for folks to quibble over how literal the comment was. Like "there's still a sun, so they lied, WE CAN'T TRUST THEM!!!!" That kind of thing . Which just seems silly.

I'm just trying to understand if there's a significance to this that I'm missing.

[vitruvian]

Ha well played.



Okay, but why? It doesn't seem to impact the story. Battleworld will be habitable, that's really all that matters. The statement that Battleworld is "all there is" seems more about letting everyone know that setting will be the focus of everything for the SW event. The only reason I can see for this mattering is for folks to quibble over how literal the comment was. Like "there's still a sun, so they lied, WE CAN'T TRUST THEM!!!!" That kind of thing . Which just seems silly.

I'm just trying to understand if there's a significance to this that I'm missing.

Nah, mostly me taking things literally. Carry on.

The question about whether the less than two dozen universes include those whose Earths were destroyed, and if and how those universes are dying, is actually important to the story, though, to actually understanding what's going on with the Great Destroyer and the Incursions and the End of Everything.

[hawkeyefan]

Nah, mostly me taking things literally. Carry on.

The question about whether the less than two dozen universes include those whose Earths were destroyed, and if and how those universes are dying, is actually important to the story, though, to actually understanding what's going on with the Great Destroyer and the Incursions and the End of Everything.

Okay gotcha on the sun thing.

The number of universes remaining and if that includes those possibly "saved" by destroying their Earth is a question I can totally understand being asked. Even if it made my brain hurt to type that.

I haven't read the newest issue yet, but less than two dozen seems crazy. Things must have accelerated quite a bit in the 8 month gap.

Do you think the 2 dozen are results of destroying an Earth during an incursion? I think the Cabal was said to have destroyed a specific number of Earths right? I can't recall the number, but it wasn't huge. Something like 10 or so, right?

[vitruvian]

Okay gotcha on the sun thing.

The number of universes remaining and if that includes those possibly "saved" by destroying their Earth is a question I can totally understand being asked. Even if it made my brain hurt to type that.

I haven't read the newest issue yet, but less than two dozen seems crazy. Things must have accelerated quite a bit in the 8 month gap.

Do you think the 2 dozen are results of destroying an Earth during an incursion? I think the Cabal was said to have destroyed a specific number of Earths right? I can't recall the number, but it wasn't huge. Something like 10 or so, right?

Finally got to read the issue, and since it makes clear that Reed and co. don't actually know how or why the end of everything suddenly accelerated, from hundreds of thousands of universes left to less than two dozen, I'm okay with not being told yet precisely what happens or happened to universes whose Earths were destroyed.

Emphasis on 'yet', though.

[hawkeyefan]

Finally got to read the issue, and since it makes clear that Reed and co. don't actually know how or why the end of everything suddenly accelerated, from hundreds of thousands of universes left to less than two dozen, I'm okay with not being told yet precisely what happens or happened to universes whose Earths were destroyed.

Emphasis on 'yet', though.

I've noticed a couple of comments here and there, although I didn't read too many because I want to check out the comic myself and don't want to be too spoiled....but if the one comment I read is true, then no matter what is done to save a universe from Rabum Alai, the Ivory Kings undo it.

That's how I interpreted something I read. But again, I didn't read all comments on the topic.

[Habis]

I've noticed a couple of comments here and there, although I didn't read too many because I want to check out the comic myself and don't want to be too spoiled....but if the one comment I read is true, then no matter what is done to save a universe from Rabum Alai, the Ivory Kings undo it.

That's how I interpreted something I read. But again, I didn't read all comments on the topic.

That's my take too. They seem to have taken a personal hand in the issue, removing everybody who cames close to find a temporary solution.

What I don't understand...the Beyonders are supposed to have destroyed the Cosmic Cube in order to prevent the Illuminati from "Shading the Apocalypse", don't they? Why bother to do so, if they were going to blast all the Earthless universes in a go, anyways? Maybe they want to have Earth 616 in particular as part of Battleworld, and won't let it be destroyed before the Incursion?

Same goes for removing Galactus and the Celestials. Why bother, if they were going to go in an universe-killing rampage soon afterwards?

Okay gotcha on the sun thing.

The number of universes remaining and if that includes those possibly "saved" by destroying their Earth is a question I can totally understand being asked. Even if it made my brain hurt to type that.

I haven't read the newest issue yet, but less than two dozen seems crazy. Things must have accelerated quite a bit in the 8 month gap.

Do you think the 2 dozen are results of destroying an Earth during an incursion? I think the Cabal was said to have destroyed a specific number of Earths right? I can't recall the number, but it wasn't huge. Something like 10 or so, right?

The screen shows Earths. Those two dozens of universes have Earths.

That said, all those universes destroyed had Earths too, which brings the question, was Reed keeping track of all universes, or only of those with a Earth? Maybe there are many more Earthless universes out there, slowly dying because of their stars's early death...

[chaosfist]

Finally got to read the issue, and since it makes clear that Reed and co. don't actually know how or why the end of everything suddenly accelerated, from hundreds of thousands of universes left to less than two dozen, I'm okay with not being told yet precisely what happens or happened to universes whose Earths were destroyed.

Emphasis on 'yet', though.

I think it's pretty obvious what happened to those universes. They died too. If your asking how they died then that's different. Though the whole crux of the story has been Everything Dies. This does show us that the illuminati and Cabal weren't saving anyone though as people thought. Since these universes die Earth or no Earth then all blowing up an earth in an incursion did was prolong the inevitable. I'm beginning to think that battleworld will be made up of earths that died in an incursion. This is evidenced by 616 and the ultimate universe being there and we know they are destroyed in the last incursion. This can also explain the whole Steve was right comment by Hickman. To continue on in battleworld you have to be wiped out by an incursion. So if they had followed Steve's no plan they would have died in an incursion much earlier.

[Habis]

I think it's pretty obvious what happened to those universes. They died too. If your asking how they died then that's different. Though the whole crux of the story has been Everything Dies. This does show us that the illuminati and Cabal weren't saving anyone though as people thought. Since these universes die Earth or no Earth then all blowing up an earth in an incursion did was prolong the inevitable. I'm beginning to think that battleworld will be made up of earths that died in an incursion. This is evidenced by 616 and the ultimate universe being there and we know they are destroyed in the last incursion. This can also explain the whole Steve was right comment by Hickman. To continue on in battleworld you have to be wiped out by an incursion. So if they had followed Steve's no plan they would have died in an incursion much earlier.

Except 1.-They didn't know about Battleworld back then, and 2.-Only Manhattan will survive, the rest of Earth 616 and its universe will die. The existance of Battleworld doesn't change the fact that their universe and all of its inhabitants were erased.

[chaosfist]

Except 1.-They didn't know about Battleworld back then, and 2.-Only Manhattan will survive, the rest of Earth 616 and its universe will die. The existance of Battleworld doesn't change the fact that their universe and all of its inhabitants were erased.

Of course they didn't know about battleworld. That's why they never considered just allowing the incursions to proceed without intervening. Here's what we do know: Steve didn't want to kill another Earth to save his, Hickman said Steve was mostly right, battleworld is what is left after everything dies, the 616 and Ultimate universe are the final incursion and it is not stopped, remnants of both worlds make it to battleworld. So if you take all that what other conclusion can one come too? As for the rest of the universe it sucks they all apparently just die. Hopefully some of those classified areas are shiar or Kree and I'm overlooking something but right now I can only conclude that when an incursion occurs uninterrupted parts of those earths become part of battleworld and that any of the solutions or interventions didn't work at all.

[vitruvian]

I've noticed a couple of comments here and there, although I didn't read too many because I want to check out the comic myself and don't want to be too spoiled....but if the one comment I read is true, then no matter what is done to save a universe from Rabum Alai, the Ivory Kings undo it.

That's how I interpreted something I read. But again, I didn't read all comments on the topic.

Better to read the issue itself, I think. I really didn't get that at all. It seemed like Pym had just made contact with the Ivory Kings, and the Illuminati had not the slightest clue what was causing each of their schemes to specifically fail.

[vitruvian]

That's my take too. They seem to have taken a personal hand in the issue, removing everybody who cames close to find a temporary solution.

What I don't understand...the Beyonders are supposed to have destroyed the Cosmic Cube in order to prevent the Illuminati from "Shading the Apocalypse", don't they? Why bother to do so, if they were going to blast all the Earthless universes in a go, anyways? Maybe they want to have Earth 616 in particular as part of Battleworld, and won't let it be destroyed before the Incursion?

Same goes for removing Galactus and the Celestials. Why bother, if they were going to go in an universe-killing rampage soon afterwards?



The screen shows Earths. Those two dozens of universes have Earths.

That said, all those universes destroyed had Earths too, which brings the question, was Reed keeping track of all universes, or only of those with a Earth? Maybe there are many more Earthless universes out there, slowly dying because of their stars's early death...

Or not even that, because we've only actually been shown the stellar suicide thing in the 616 universe, which retains its Earth and as a consequence suffers scores of Incursions by that point, so it could be that rather than the end of everything approaching per se. And I still want to know what the actual mechanism for the end of everything is, the how and why as well as the what.

So either the Earthless universes are being destroyed in some undefined way that gives the lie to the idea that to blow an Earth is to spare a universe, or everybody involved is so geocentric and parochial that they don't even count the universes that don't have Earths, either because they've been blown up or because they never had one to begin with. I would hope that was not the case, even though there's precedence for that idea in how much the Captain Britain Corps and Omniversal Guardians on Otherworld always focused just on Earth, to the extent of referring to each universe as Earth-Number, as opposed to Universe-Number (although that might be only natural, considering Otherworld seems to be an alternate Earth itself, and one close enough to ours and the 616 to have a British Isles to boot). After all, if the Earthless realities were doing just fine, they would present the best avenue for escaping the oncoming end of 'everything', at least for some. So, on balance, in order to serve the kind of story Hickman seems to want to tell, it seems more likely that they've already been destroyed (or at best being rendered inaccessible*) somehow, and hopefully he'll actually remember to mention how before the end of the storyline. Because for any of these guys to just forget that Earth isn't all there is to the universe would be silly.

[vitruvian]

I think it's pretty obvious what happened to those universes. They died too. If your asking how they died then that's different. Though the whole crux of the story has been Everything Dies. This does show us that the illuminati and Cabal weren't saving anyone though as people thought. Since these universes die Earth or no Earth then all blowing up an earth in an incursion did was prolong the inevitable. I'm beginning to think that battleworld will be made up of earths that died in an incursion. This is evidenced by 616 and the ultimate universe being there and we know they are destroyed in the last incursion. This can also explain the whole Steve was right comment by Hickman. To continue on in battleworld you have to be wiped out by an incursion. So if they had followed Steve's no plan they would have died in an incursion much earlier.

The delay in the vanishing of the Incursion zone, as opposed to the rest of the universe, which Hickman seems to have dropped as a hint about those zones being saved for Battleworld, only seems to have started with the more recent Incursions though.... so it's possible that some delay was necessary in order for even a small chunk of Earth-616 to be saved.

And it is still a rather small chunk of Earth, let alone the whole universe, that gets saved even then, too... so Steve's 'non-plan', while it might have accelerated the process, would still have sucked as a plan from the perspective of every person in the universe not in the Incursion zone.

As for the Earthless universes... I don't think just saying 'they died somehow' or even 'they died because the end of everything was coming' really cuts it at all. Some kind of explanation of how that actually works or happens is needed, otherwise it comes off as just bogus. It undercuts the whole idea of this oncoming threat that you try to do something to stop, but nothing works, because in those universes, there's no drama to it, no choices to make... they just died 'somehow'.

[vitruvian]

Of course they didn't know about battleworld. That's why they never considered just allowing the incursions to proceed without intervening. Here's what we do know: Steve didn't want to kill another Earth to save his, Hickman said Steve was mostly right, battleworld is what is left after everything dies, the 616 and Ultimate universe are the final incursion and it is not stopped, remnants of both worlds make it to battleworld. So if you take all that what other conclusion can one come too?

It's not like Steve was against trying to stop the Incursions, though, he was the first to suggest using the Infinity Gems. He was just against using certain means to do so.

As for the rest of the universe it sucks they all apparently just die. Hopefully some of those classified areas are shiar or Kree and I'm overlooking something but right now I can only conclude that when an incursion occurs uninterrupted parts of those earths become part of battleworld and that any of the solutions or interventions didn't work at all.

That's the thing, the fact that the rest of the universe dies makes 'just letting it happen' and speeding the entry of that small number of survivors to Battleworld simply not an acceptable plan to most people on Earth, let alone in the universe at large. The way it was originally set up, universes that lost their Earth were no longer subject to Incursions, and according to Reed's analysis, it was only the successful Incursions (i.e., the ones that wiped out both universes) that shortened the time frame for the entire multiverse incrementally; ones where an Earth got blown up were not thought to bring the end any closer. Now, that last part appears to be untrue (indicating a flaw in Reed's thinking) due to the whole stars committing suicide thing, at least in universes like the 616 where the locals are fending off Incursions by taking out the other Earth (don't really know for sure yet about the ones where Earth is blown up in the first and only one)... but even that seems like a gradual process, which now has been vastly accelerated. It looks like somebody has changed the rules on everybody involved in the last little while, otherwise it would make sense to assume that the process could be halted for good and no more damage done, simply by eliminating every Earth within the multiverse preemptively, either with or without evacuation.... and aliens at least would be making "The Builders Were Right" t-shirts.

[chaosfist]

It's not like Steve was against trying to stop the Incursions, though, he was the first to suggest using the Infinity Gems. He was just against using certain means to do so.



That's the thing, the fact that the rest of the universe dies makes 'just letting it happen' and speeding the entry of that small number of survivors to Battleworld simply not an acceptable plan to most people on Earth, let alone in the universe at large. The way it was originally set up, universes that lost their Earth were no longer subject to Incursions, and according to Reed's analysis, it was only the successful Incursions (i.e., the ones that wiped out both universes) that shortened the time frame for the entire multiverse incrementally; ones where an Earth got blown up were not thought to bring the end any closer. Now, that last part appears to be untrue (indicating a flaw in Reed's thinking) due to the whole stars committing suicide thing, at least in universes like the 616 where the locals are fending off Incursions by taking out the other Earth (don't really know for sure yet about the ones where Earth is blown up in the first and only one)... but even that seems like a gradual process, which now has been vastly accelerated. It looks like somebody has changed the rules on everybody involved in the last little while, otherwise it would make sense to assume that the process could be halted for good and no more damage done, simply by eliminating every Earth within the multiverse preemptively, either with or without evacuation.... and aliens at least would be making "The Builders Were Right" t-shirts.

Everything ends all that is left us secret wars. What part of that isn't sinking in? I will say that some explanation on how the earthless universes are ended would be nice. It isn't necessary though. As for the rest what have I pointed out is wrong? Steve wanted to stop the incursions without killing another world. Hickman said point blank that Steve was mostly right. So without a plan to stop the incursions what would have happened if they listened to him? I would think that the 616 earth would have been destroyed in an incursion. I'm not saying that they would have planned to just let it happen because as you pointed out most people won't survive that scenario. It's just the way it is. We know the end result here. What other way is there to interpret Steve was mostly right other than the way I am interpreting it? This is a scenario where there is no solution. Which I believe is kinda the point.

[vitruvian]

Everything ends all that is left us secret wars. What part of that isn't sinking in? I will say that some explanation on how the earthless universes are ended would be nice. It isn't necessary though. As for the rest what have I pointed out is wrong? Steve wanted to stop the incursions without killing another world. Hickman said point blank that Steve was mostly right. So without a plan to stop the incursions what would have happened if they listened to him? I would think that the 616 earth would have been destroyed in an incursion. I'm not saying that they would have planned to just let it happen because as you pointed out most people won't survive that scenario. It's just the way it is. We know the end result here. What other way is there to interpret Steve was mostly right other than the way I am interpreting it? This is a scenario where there is no solution. Which I believe is kinda the point.

He was only mostly right if letting most of the universe die was right, though. Based on what they knew at the time, an objective judgment would have been that the Builders were closer to right.