New Avengers #23 (spoilers)

[MetaComix]

Writer: Jonathan Hickman

Artist: Kev Walker

Colorist: Frank Martin

Publication Date: Aug 20, 2014

Summary: The Illuminati prepare for a second incursion, one they can do nothing to stop, so each member deals with their last day on earth in their own way.

What I Liked

✔Loads of character development
✔Perfect pacing with excellent build up and dramatic tension
✔Fantastic character interactions
✔Chilling cliffhanger
✔Outstanding art

What I Didn’t Like

✘Not a lot of action, but its a minor gripe barely worth mentioning

Themes:

Living with regret and bad choices
What would you do with your last day on earth

Score: 10/10

[ShaokhaN]

Personally, I found the art quite poor. I wish Epting or Deodato had stayed with the book (or, if I could choose anyone, that Checchetto was on it!).

[hawkeyefan]

Except it doesn't only work from a meta standpoint.

Say I'm supposed to go to work tomorrow, but the universe was about to end.

If Namor keeps the universe from ending, he made it possible for me to get to work tomorrow.

See how that works? Namor saving the universe ensures that all options are open, meaning he's the only one ensuring that stopping the incursions remains possible.

Do you still think we're just overstating the importance of Namor's actions?

Yes. Because your analogy is flawed.

Sure about that? There is a major weakness in your logic, for Namor allowing you to "go to work tomorrow" other seven billions people won't be able to go, therefore saying that he "ensures that all options are open" it's factual incorrect, all your options will be open, many more won't be anymore. You can only say what your are saying because you are outside of the story, you know that Earth 616 will be the one where the Incursion will be solved and consider it the "main" Earth.

Imagine if the story was told from many point of views from different alternative Earths, without telling you in advance on wich Earth will the Incursions be solved, without knowing which Earth is "the main", or better, with all the Earth being equal, would you be able to say that 616 Namor destroying other Earths it's helpful? You could not know.

Or imagine that the Earth where the Incursions will be solved is Earth 414, would you still take the side of Namor 616 ?

There is also the fact that the Illuminati would have asked to residents of other planets if they had some better solution than world killing, something Thanos and company I doubt will take the time to do, but this is another issue.

There you go. Well put...better than I was wording it.

[TresDias]

So any discussion you deem pointless, you feel entitled to put an end to it...?

Pretty much.

That's huh, very generous of you but, precisely because this a public forum, why don't you just go be part of discussions - sorry, disputes - you think are more useful/interesting/appealing/less pointless to you ?

I think I'll stick with trying to weed them out of the threads for the books I find most interesting/appealing/least pointless, thank you.

No, it doesn't.

Unless you consider that, out of the infinite number of universes being part of the multiverse, only the three universes that Namor saved hold the potential to solve the Incursion problem.
It is this idea of "uniqueness" that I'm refuting.

Who was pushing for an idea of uniqueness? Again, only you have been harping on about this.

Let's look at the original statement you started this over once more: "Furthermore, I also agree that the Cabal won't be the ones to solve the problem, however, they are the ones who made it possible for the problem to be solved, since the Illuminati decided to let the universe die twice in a row."

Putting aside -- but not forgetting -- that this statement does not have to assume that only someone from the 616 or those other two universes can solve the issue, at its most basic level, what was said here is that the only ones who provided the opportunity for the problem to be solved are Namor's team. This is a factual, inarguable statement -- not because it's inarguable that only someone from one of these three universes can solve the issue, but because the possibility remains for someone from one of these three universes to do so.

That possibility remains because Namor's team stopped the death of these universes. That is what was said. That is inarguable. You playing a semantic game in which you pretend to be unaware of the context of the statement and address it only for the words within the sentence is not only intellectually dishonest, but undermines how communication works.

There's a reason we can use pronouns instead of names every single time we refer to someone specific. There's a reason we can use metaphors and idioms. The way you're carrying on? None of that would be possible.

Added to this, the wording of the statement allows for the inclusion of future actions as well, so it's not even limited to the three universes already saved by Namor and the Cabal. It includes all the universes that will be saved by their actions, which will likely amount to many by the time the last Incursion is reached.

So, again, unless you believe there is no solution coming or that, if there is, it won't be coming from any source seen within the story by that point, you have no basis for calling the statement factually incorrect. There will be the potential for much maintained by the Cabal's actions.

Now, does Emma's Midriff think the 616 will be part of the solution? Yes. I do too, and for the same reasons. That doesn't make what was said any less factual, however. The possibility remains for the Incursion problem to be solved by heroes from the 616, one of those other two universes or one of those that will be saved by the Cabal -- and the reason is Namor's team.

By the way, you still haven't explained how believeing that the solution will come from the 616 is arrogant. I'd really like to hear your explanation now. Please stop ignoring it.

You are assuming Fleming was the only person who had the potential to discover penicillin, I'm assuming that there were other persons as capable as him to find the penicillin too, maybe even without being put in the same set of circumstances than him.

So, this is an example of your intellectual dishonesty. I say the possibility fot penicillin to have been discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928 wouldn't have been there had he died in World War I, and despite that being an inarguable statement, you come back at me with some b.s. about me claiming that he's the only one who could have discovered it.

Are you just this determined to feel like you have "won" something? What are you getting out of this trollfest?

It's the same about discoveries made on the electricity, or the role of tectonic plates, or Earth simply orbiting around the sun, and so on...
The person making the discovery wasn't the only one capable of making said discovery: most of the time others were walking on the exact same road, only making slower progress.
Or had already reached the end of the road but were silenced/ostracized for it because they lived in the wrong era.
Or were walking on parallel roads leading them to other discoveries in sometimes unrelated fields...
They were as capable.
You agreeing or disagreeing really doesn't change that

And you word vomiting obvious, irrelevant facts anyone would be aware of doesn't preclude from being true the statement that the possibility of a solution being found by the people who were saved and still around to seek a solution would not have been possible if they were dead, and that the only ones in the story we are reading seeing to said possibility are Namor and his Questionable Crew.

What also remains true is that the above is what was said, no matter how intellectually dishonest you want to be about it or how many words you want to twist.

TriDent, they *litterally* are not the same statements...
Maybe you should actually take the time to read what is posted, before starting the posturing ?

"I have to pee a lot."
"I have to pee frequently."

Literally the same statements. It doesn't matter that "a lot" can mean either "frequently," "a large quantity" or "with great urgency at this moment." If the context is a discussion about the frequency with which we pee, and someone says "I have to pee a lot" only for some pedantic, elitist jerk to stand up, cock his head to the side and say, "Well this discussion is about the frequency with which we have to dispose of urine rather than the quantity we have to dispose of when our bodies compel us to release it. You should go," then everyone in the room has just cause for telling said pedantic, elitist jerk that he needs to stop making a **** stew over something that was never there to begin with.

Wording does not make the statement. The message does. You being a pedant over wording when you know what the meaning of the statement was is not honest, and it shames you.

Cut it out.

Not really, no.

Page 43:"They are the only ones making it possible for the problem to be solved."

Other page (page 40): "Whoever saves the day wouldn't have gotten to do **** without the Cabal."

Funnily, this last one is from yourself.

Anyway, both statements are factually wrong: anyone - or anything - in any of the universes of the multiverse can eventually come up with a solution too.

I'm going to leave you to figure those out based on what I've gone over already. If you can't do it at this point, the fault is entirely your own.

[Dabrikishaw]

What I am curious about is where did Strange go? I do not recall seeing him at the table with Bruce, TChalla, Tony, Blackagar, Hank, and Reed. I at first thought that maybe Strange ended the incursion with the artifact he had.

[Strangefan]

What I am curious about is where did Strange go? I do not recall seeing him at the table with Bruce, TChalla, Tony, Blackagar, Hank, and Reed. I at first thought that maybe Strange ended the incursion with the artifact he had.

I am hoping, since he was looking at the Black Priests helmet when he disappeared, that he went to find Rabum Alal, since he left believing his universe was going to die. Finding some Black Priests who are as much his henchmen as Black Swans are, seems to be a good way to find him. Then he can go all Shuma Goreth on him, absorb his power, and then kill himself. I can see him doing that to even out his karma from when he killed most of the Great Society.

[Mark]

Just had a thought, if the Cabal or some other sort of agency were the ones to learn about and stop the incursions using the Illuminati's methods and the heroes of Earth learned about it after the fact and yet before the next world was set to be murdered; would they try to stop the murder? Not just the Illuminati I mean, if some character like Pariah from DC's Crisis managed to escape just before the last incusion destroyed his world and he ran to the Earth heroes, the Avengers (and by now that's just about everyone in the mu) or the FF or the X-men, would any of them try to stop the organization?

I think I would have preferred to see this sort of tale, it would have preserved the ethical debate but not cast the Illuminati in the rolls that they are in now.

[Mark]

I am hoping, since he was looking at the Black Priests helmet when he disappeared, that he went to find Rabum Alal, since he left believing his universe was going to die. Finding some Black Priests who are as much his henchmen as Black Swans are, seems to be a good way to find him. Then he can go all Shuma Goreth on him, absorb his power, and then kill himself. I can see him doing that to even out his karma from when he killed most of the Great Society.

I still want him to be confronted by one of the survivors or their sons/daughters, in fact I'd like that to happen to all of the Illuminati. Some one who can get right up into their face and say "You killed my father!".

[MichaelAngel0]

I still want him to be confronted by one of the survivors or their sons/daughters, in fact I'd like that to happen to all of the Illuminati. Some one who can get right up into their face and say "You killed my father!".

Then Namor would be like, "Yes, your father may be gone from this plane, and, yes, I am the one that played a hand in that, but in I doing so I ensured the continued existence of the millions of families on my Earth, and the trillions of families that make up both my universe, as well as the trillions that make up yours. Now if you'd come at me saying 'You killed my Earth, and everyone on it!' that would've made you come off in a better, more altruistic light, rather than a self absorbed child. However, the fact that what I did was better for those I've sworn to protect, and these two universes of ours as a whole, still stands.

Now go b*tch to someone else, I've got universes to save."

Yes, that was a satirical response, from a satirical Namor, but if you're gonna keep looking at the extremely negative results, I'm just gonna have to troll you with the extremely positive results (which just so happens to out weigh the negative, by at least a billion to one).

[Link]

The last time we saw Thanos and company, weren't they all frozen or something? And Maximus was drilling a hole to let oxygen in?

Anyway very good issue. I'm not reading this in tandem with Avengers though, so somethings may be lost to me. Im also not reading FF so why Reeds kids aren't with him but other people was weird, and furthers my argument that Reed and Sue are the worst parents ever lol.

[TakoM]

The last time we saw Thanos and company, weren't they all frozen or something? And Maximus was drilling a hole to let oxygen in?

Anyway very good issue. I'm not reading this in tandem with Avengers though, so somethings may be lost to me. Im also not reading FF so why Reeds kids aren't with him but other people was weird, and furthers my argument that Reed and Sue are the worst parents ever lol.

The FF got split up Val went to Doom just before that happened and Franklin is with the rest of the Future Foundation at a military base. That is a result of a judgement because some monsters went out of Reed portal to run amok in NY....but this is more a part of scheme of an unknown enemy so far.

[Link]

The FF got split up Val went to Doom just before that happened and Franklin is with the rest of the Future Foundation at a military base. That is a result of a judgement because some monsters went out of Reed portal amok in NY....but this is more a part of scheme of an unknown enemy so far.

Oh I see, still weird though. I haven't read FF in years but try to stay up to date with whats going on...not gonna lie, the more I hear and see whats going on with them, sadly I just dont have any interest in picking up the title again.

[People Of The Earth]

Pretty much.

I think I'll stick with trying to weed them out of the threads for the books I find most interesting/appealing/least pointless, thank you.

Fair enough.
However, given no one elected you the police of worthy/unworthy discussions, I'll stick with discussing subjects who raise my interest, as long as mods are fine with it.

No offense.

Who was pushing for an idea of uniqueness? Again, only you have been harping on about this.

Let's look at the original statement you started this over once more: "Furthermore, I also agree that the Cabal won't be the ones to solve the problem, however, they are the ones who made it possible for the problem to be solved, since the Illuminati decided to let the universe die twice in a row."

Putting aside -- but not forgetting -- that this statement does not have to assume that only someone from the 616 or those other two universes can solve the issue, at its most basic level, what was said here is that the only ones who provided the opportunity for the problem to be solved are Namor's team. This is a factual, inarguable statement -- not because it's inarguable that only someone from one of these three universes can solve the issue, but because the possibility remains for someone from one of these three universes to do so.

That possibility remains because Namor's team stopped the death of these universes. That is what was said. That is inarguable.

"They are the ones who made it possible for the problem to be solved by someone of these three universes" should have been the proper words employed then.
"They are the ones who made it possible for the problem to be solved by the Illuminati" would have been also correct.
Because that's exactly what the saving of these universes at the hand of Namor allowed - something I never argued against, again go read my previous entries.

"They are the ones who made it possible for the problem to be solved" and "They are the ones who made it possible for the problem to be solved by someone of these three universes" are not the same statements though.
Maybe for you the former sentence is a shortcut version of the latter, but for me it's not.
The original poster, Emma's Midriff, didn't say that s/he imply such a thing either. S/he took the time to detail his/her position and explained it, to which I answered:
"Also, yes, if 616 saves the day, then your statement will prove to be correct and just.
As it was, the statement was exagerrating the impact and reach of what Namor did, even if it wasn't Emma's Midriff intention initially.
Namor saved three universes.
He didn't save the entire multiverse.
Anyone or anything in the rest of said multiverse can find a solution to the Incursions eventually.
That was the case before Namor saved those universes, that's still the case after.

That's what I've been refuting since the beginning.

You playing a semantic game in which you pretend to be unaware of the context of the statement and address it only for the words within the sentence is not only intellectually dishonest, but undermines how communication works.

There's a reason we can use pronouns instead of names every single time we refer to someone specific. There's a reason we can use metaphors and idioms. The way you're carrying on? None of that would be possible.

Ignoring the attack and condescension, I'm fully aware of the context of both the story and the discussion that was happening before my initial post - that's precisely why I decided to point out what was wrong in the statements made.

Added to this, the wording of the statement allows for the inclusion of future actions as well, so it's not even limited to the three universes already saved by Namor and the Cabal. It includes all the universes that will be saved by their actions, which will likely amount to many by the time the last Incursion is reached.

Doesn't change the fact that someone/something from the rest of the universes yet to be saved by Namor can eventually come up with a solution to the Incursions, does it ?

So, again, unless you believe there is no solution coming or that, if there is, it won't be coming from any source seen within the story by that point, you have no basis for calling the statement factually incorrect. There will be the potential for much maintained by the Cabal's actions.

You say that I have no basis for calling the statement factually incorrect, yet acknowledge *the very next sentence* that there's nothing at this point of the story supporting said statement...
I mean...yeah.
Until said potential eventually comes to fruition with someone or something from one of these saved universes finding a solution to the Incursions, for better or worse "They are the ones who made it possible for the problem to be solved" remains factually wrong.

Now, does Emma's Midriff think the 616 will be part of the solution? Yes. I do too, and for the same reasons. That doesn't make what was said any less factual, however. The possibility remains for the Incursion problem to be solved by heroes from the 616, one of those other two universes or one of those that will be saved by the Cabal -- and the reason is Namor's team.

Hence my answer to this remark page 44: "Also, yes, if 616 saves the day, then your statement will prove to be correct and just."
Until then, like I said, at this point of the story it's still factually wrong.

By the way, you still haven't explained how believeing that the solution will come from the 616 is arrogant. I'd really like to hear your explanation now. Please stop ignoring it.

1. The arrogance laid in thinking that only the Illuminati or 616 were capable of solving the Incursion - at this point of the story, that's just not true.
2. I already explained why, in my initial post for the Illuminati page 43 and in my answer to Emma's Midriff page 44...

So, this is an example of your intellectual dishonesty. I say the possibility fot penicillin to have been discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928 wouldn't have been there had he died in World War I, and despite that being an inarguable statement, you come back at me with some b.s. about me claiming that he's the only one who could have discovered it.

Oh I didn't argue against Alexander Fleming potential to discover penicillin, I argued against the idea that he'd be the only one who could have discovered it.
I argued against this idea because I thought you were trying to make a parallel between Fleming finding the penicillin and Namor saving these universes, allowing others in them to solve the Incursions eventually.
In the same way as other scientists could have discovered penicillin eventually - under the same set of circumstances than Fleming did or not at all -, other individuals/beings from other universes not saved by Namor could solve the Incursions eventually too.
That's the point I made in response to you, yes.
If that wasn't the parallel you were trying to make with your example though, then I'm sorry for misunderstanding it.
Though in that case, I don't really see what other parallel you could actually have tried to make regarding our discussion then.

Are you just this determined to feel like you have "won" something? What are you getting out of this trollfest?

"Trollfest" ? You know, if you disagree *this* strongly and are so upset about the points I raised, you don't have to answer. Like, at all.
No one is forcing you.
You can go report your accusations to the mods and move on.
Or simply put me on ignore.
You have options.

And you word vomiting obvious, irrelevant facts anyone would be aware of doesn't preclude from being true the statement that the possibility of a solution being found by the people who were saved and still around to seek a solution would not have been possible if they were dead, and that the only ones in the story we are reading seeing to said possibility are Namor and his Questionable Crew.

What also remains true is that the above is what was said, no matter how intellectually dishonest you want to be about it or how many words you want to twist.

Glossing over the attacks and accusations...I actually *never* said the countrary.

"He's the only one ensuring that stopping the incursions remains possible for the inhabitants/entities of the universes saved." p.45
""They are the ones who made it possible for the problem to be solved by someone of these three universes" would have been factually correct however." p.44

I asked you that earlier, and I'll ask you again now: did you actually take the time to read my posts ?

[Mark]

Then Namor would be like, "Yes, your father may be gone from this plane, and, yes, I am the one that played a hand in that, but in I doing so I ensured the continued existence of the millions of families on my Earth, and the trillions of families that make up both my universe, as well as the trillions that make up yours. Now if you'd come at me saying 'You killed my Earth, and everyone on it!' that would've made you come off in a better, more altruistic light, rather than a self absorbed child. However, the fact that what I did was better for those I've sworn to protect, and these two universes of ours as a whole, still stands.

Now go b*tch to someone else, I've got universes to save."

Yes, that was a satirical response, from a satirical Namor, but if you're gonna keep looking at the extremely negative results, I'm just gonna have to troll you with the extremely positive results (which just so happens to out weigh the negative, by at least a billion to one).

It is an extreme result, but in comics where villains often plan vengeance for years I'm sure it's a possible response as well. Namor after all vowed vengeance on the entire surface world when he first showed up in the FF because of what happened to Atlantis. I can just imagine that the hypothetical person confronting Namor (and it wouldn't be him alone if they were any sort real vengeance seeking character) would think as much of that response as I would. Vengeance is born of pain and fire and a thirst for enough blood to quench both and it is never a rational need.

Keep trolling if you wish -though I'd be careful about using that word in here, this isn't the old days where you could hound me off the boards and into a severe depression- the only time you've actually gotten me mad was when you called me a hypocrite, satirical posts never bother me. We just don't agree that Namor or the Illuminati have done the right thing and I see nothing wrong with that.

[Mark]

Oh I see, still weird though. I haven't read FF in years but try to stay up to date with whats going on...not gonna lie, the more I hear and see whats going on with them, sadly I just dont have any interest in picking up the title again.

I keep expecting SHIELD to experiment on Franklin and the other kids.