Avengers #41 - Spoilers

[Indian Ink]

............... the Ebony Kings are at war with them. We already know that the Swans had previous interaction with the Ebony Kings when they were given the library.

Ivory Kings, not Ebony Kings.

[itspopularnowitsucks]

Ivory Kings, not Ebony Kings.

Who are Ebony Kings? Did Hickman slip? They are only mentioned in New Avengers #13 Inhumanity tie-in by Black Priests.

[hawkeyefan]

Who are Ebony Kings? Did Hickman slip? They are only mentioned in New Avengers #13 Inhumanity tie-in by Black Priests.

Yes, it was an error. There are no Ebony Kings, just Ivory Kings.

[itspopularnowitsucks]

Yes, it was an error. There are no Ebony Kings, just Ivory Kings.

Cool, one less loose end. Where did they publish such information btw? Is there some errata of sort? Did they correct it in trades?

[jphamlore]

Yes, it was an error. There are no Ebony Kings, just Ivory Kings.

Maybe Hickman was thinking of the song Ebony and Ivory?

[hawkeyefan]

Cool, one less loose end. Where did they publish such information btw? Is there some errata of sort? Did they correct it in trades?

Not sure if they corrected it in trades. Pretty sure he pointed out the mistake on twitter. Either him or Tom Brevoort.

Maybe Hickman was thinking of the song Ebony and Ivory?

Yeah, an easy mistake when you think about it. Plus, there was Ebony Maw, so the word had been in use during his run. And a bunch of similar ones...Midnight King, Cull Obsidian, Black Order, Black Dwarf, Proxima Midnight.....

[megaharrison]

Ultimate Richards by Hickman joining the Cabal is pretty much the best possible thing that could happen. Hopefully he undoes the damage done to the character in in the Galactus fiasco.

[jackolover]

I have to wonder, with all this suggestion that Adult Franklin can recreate a Universe after the last war, what was Franklin made for in the first place? Was he just supposed to sacrifice himself to save the Marvel Multiverse, or does he have a higher calling after that? All this character build up since his birth in the 1970's, and he was a member of an adolescent super group, aged a litle, got deaged again, went to Hell and back, and was part of the Future Foundation and met his Adult self. It seems like a pretty chaotic existence for the son of Reed Richards, and he isn't even given the chance to grow in the 616, because he dies with everyone else in 2015. Not only that, but his highlight comes after he is grown up in some future, that apparently is destroyed when everything dies, so adult Franklin doesn't appear to survive Secret Wars, no?

[jackolover]

It's interesting this thing about Chess that's being mentioned in regard to Battleworld, with the Ivory Kings and the Beyonders that there was a mention of something similar in Invaders 13. One of the Eternals Makkari met with the Pursuer because they've noticed odd behavior among their kind. Where they met was a giant chessboard in space with pieces depicting a lot of fallen species and races. What's interesting about the whole "it's like a game of chess" thought process is, what if this isn't the first time this has happened? We're assuming that this is the first time this reshaping has happened, but what if it's not? What if, no pun intended here, these Celestials did this once already a while ago, causing something like Secret wars to happen but not the one we know of, something different well before the first marvel came about. Could this be just them deciding to play a game to reset the clock?

.

I like the idea that a sort of Ragnarok cycle has happened with the Multiverse as well, so that everytime a situation arises that too many occupy the Multiverse, and house cleaning occurs and an Earth is later enplaced in a Universe. Then a smattering of characters is left after Battleworld, but they don't know they are characters yet, until they have an accident and gain powers. Sort of like a restarting of the Silver Age. One day, 4 travellers into space get bombarded with cosmic rays and fall to Earth with powers and join to make a super team.

(But it starts earlier than that. There is the time when the Men on the Wall existed when the Martians invaded at the turn of the 20th Century in the 616, and the parents of the super heroes had lives of significance like with SHIELD or the CIA, and lets not forget Logan and earlier mutants either. But this can all be inserted later as flashbacks anyway). The Marvel Multiverse could be this magical place that could be culled on a regular basis, and this is one of those moments in time. Secret Wars may recall the last time this had to be done, and how this is a natural cycle, much like the Builders had done for millions of years.

Something like this sort of reset of the Marvel Universe would achieve many aims in simplifying the landscape and making the playing field brand new. Who knows, maybe the Monster line of Martin Goodman from the 1950's was the first inkling of the Silver Age appearing, by landing all sorts of aliens and machines, like the Continuity Engines, as seeds, until the advent of the Heroic Age in 1961?

[jackolover]

I think we've solved Marvel's loophole, vitruvian. Between this and one of your following posts (which I will quote momentarily), I think we know what they're planning.

Here's your other post that I'm talking about:

The Beyonders will offer the survivors of these various universes the opportunity to have their universe restored by defeating all the rest, and then Franklin will subvert their plan by granting everyone's desire -- they will all get their universe back, but they will have to share the space. Franklin will detonate Battleworld and the various pieces will grow into the new, unified Marvel Universe.

Marvel has been giving us the answer all along: "Battleworld is the Marvel Universe going forward."

Not because they plan to keep stories going on Battleworld rather than Earth (in what we've established would be a measure of absolute insanity when the movie franchise is at the height of its popularity), but because Battleworld literally will become the new Marvel Universe, complete with an Earth based on the one most familiar to us and a new cosmos to be explored and charted. It's been right in front of our faces.

The announcement for the "Warzones!" banner gave it away in so blatant a manner I don't know how we missed it until now:

"'If you want a glimpse of what the future holds, you’ll find it in the WARZONES titles,' Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso said in the teaser image'saccompanying press release. 'Our creators let their imaginations run wild as they lay down the foundations for the future.'"

"While the Secret Wars rage, the building blocks of a new Marvel Universe take form within the war-torn Domains that make up Battleworld!"

"All that remains in the cosmos is Battleworld, the strange, patchwork realm playing host to countless realities, all existing side-by-side, fused into a single planet."

"These titles will lay the building blocks and groundwork for what’s next, if that gives any indication of how important they are!”

So we'll see the Manhattan section of Battleworld (the Earth-616 and Earth-1610 section) grow into a new Earth while other territories grow into a multitude of other new worlds. And they were literally telling us this from the start.

In this way, Marvel will get to have its cake and eat it too. To explain:

-They get to streamline the creative sandbox that is the multiverse by condensing it
-They get to clean up the publishing line and start it as fresh as they decide they want to
-They get to jettison the baggage of the Celestials having had their hands in everything back to the dawn of time
-Piggybacking off the previous point, the new creative sandbox is a whole new universe begging to be explored by characters like the Fantastic Four, the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Silver Surfer and Nova
-They get to keep their word that "Battleworld is the Marvel Universe going forward" without sacrificing brand synergy with the Marvel Cinematic Universe
-They get to reboot the sandbox while still being able to say "We've never done a reboot like the Distinguished Competition," since it won't combine a multiverse into a single universe in quite the same way "Crisis On Infinite Earths" did. Rather than seeing their histories merged, the old universes will merely see their remaining physical debris grow into a new shared space. All past continuity technically remains intact even as it simultaneously becomes largely irrelevant

Start placing your bets now, people.

If what you say comes about, I don't think we can expect a single Universe, but many Universes will come into being.

Well, close. I'm not sure if vitruvian agrees (though I think he will), but I'm suggesting there will only be the one universe, but that the different pieces of Battleworld will expand to create it -- so, yeah, still something of a multiverse diaspora, just with everyone sharing one universe.

How can multiple Earths exist in the one universe, though?

I've already expressed my reservations about so many Earths existing in the same physical universe. Do they displace other planets and regions of space we've seen before? Does, for example, the Shi'ar Empire, have truck with multiple versions of Earth? Which one's Jean Grey (or Phoenix duplicate of Jean, whatever) gets credit for saving the universe from the M'Kraan Crystal? Or are all the duplicate Earths so distant in space that they almost might as well be in other universes, requiring the likes of Lila Cheney to get from one to the other in any reasonable time?

My reservations also.

[jackolover]

On a side note, these last few pages of posts are why I love Hickman's style so much. Any of the normally ridiculous theories that have been posted could be true but it will undoubtedly be something even more ridiculous. It's great to get your comic fix as well as your imagination exercise in the same place.

"The wider, interconnected story... could stand up to as much obsessive attention a kid could muster, and did as much for brand loyalty as the visually dynamic, verbally playful Marvel style." Jordon Raphael and Tom Spurgeon (Stan Lee and Rise and Fall of the American comic book)

This is born out through these boards and the years these comic-books have been read, and is a vitality that keeps me coming back.

[vitruvian]

I have to wonder, with all this suggestion that Adult Franklin can recreate a Universe after the last war, what was Franklin made for in the first place?

For Reed and Sue to have a kid after they got married.

Was he just supposed to sacrifice himself to save the Marvel Multiverse, or does he have a higher calling after that? All this character build up since his birth in the 1970's, and he was a member of an adolescent super group, aged a litle, got deaged again, went to Hell and back, and was part of the Future Foundation and met his Adult self. It seems like a pretty chaotic existence for the son of Reed Richards, and he isn't even given the chance to grow in the 616, because he dies with everyone else in 2015. Not only that, but his highlight comes after he is grown up in some future, that apparently is destroyed when everything dies, so adult Franklin doesn't appear to survive Secret Wars, no?

Oh, you mean in-universe, not from the writer's perspective. Answer: we don't know. We also don't know that Franklin doesn't survive to grow up, either. Either the future times Cap visited could turn out to be the recreated universe (it's not like anybody's ever had any trouble traveling past the point in time where Genis-Vell rebooted everything, either), or, since there have been any number of alternate futures with a grown-up Franklin (including DoFP, the variant of that one that Hyperstorm came from, etc.), it could just be that particular version of future Franklin who doesn't happen, which wouldn't bar actual Franklin from surviving at all.

[Rosebunse]

Ultimate Richards by Hickman joining the Cabal is pretty much the best possible thing that could happen. Hopefully he undoes the damage done to the character in in the Galactus fiasco.

I'm sure Hickman is just having a geekgasm right now, that's he's gotten this far in his plan to make redeem Reed Richards.

However, I have to ask, what are the other members of Cabal going to think of him? Namor is already lying to the others, and they're all in unfamiliar territory in the Ultimate Universe. My thing is, are they going to wait until the Incursion is get home, or are they going to try to get Ult Reed to help them?

[hawkeyefan]

I'm sure Hickman is just having a geekgasm right now, that's he's gotten this far in his plan to make redeem Reed Richards.

However, I have to ask, what are the other members of Cabal going to think of him? Namor is already lying to the others, and they're all in unfamiliar territory in the Ultimate Universe. My thing is, are they going to wait until the Incursion is get home, or are they going to try to get Ult Reed to help them?

My guess is that Ultimate Reed...the Maker....will fill them in on the fact that there are only 22 universes left and that destroying Incurring Earths is no longer a solution of it ever was.

He and the Cabal will likely then try to be on the last Earth left, whichever Earth it may be.

Although Thanos's little prayer in this issue..."not yet, Misstress" makes me think that maybe he'll try and end it all in some way.

[TresDias]

To follow up on my previous suggestion that the Domains of Battleworld could expand into strange new alien worlds sharing the same universe -- today we got the Inferno Domain, an alternate New York where the demons won.