Marvel Comics General

Dammit, Expy Reed!

your doing it wrong. You supposed to bellow "expy RICCCHHHAAARRRDDDDSSSSS!" at the top of your lungs

The penultimate G.O.D.S. issue and... wait, didn't I only just mention Planetary? Because this feels very Planetary.

We get glimpses of Dimitri's childhood in the 1960s USSR, with a subdued color palette. Lots of red, lots of grey. And his parents sent into space on Vostok 7, which vanishes. And wherever it went is outside the limits of good and evil, life and death and magic and science. Which means his tools have never been able to find it.

The devices he's been placing throughout the series are to increase the power and scope of those tools. After a deal with Doctor Strange, revealing some of Wyn's secrets, he finally finds Vostok 7 in another realm... somewhere. But his power means that the things there react as soon as he steps through a portal, and the tentacled horrors wake. He just manages to rescue his mother, only for her to age to death on Earth. She tells him his father's still in there. He goes back.

Two months later Wyn finds the portal setup and Dimitri's handheld A.I., "He's not coming back, is he?"

It's a good character piece. Another standalone story. The second half of the series has been much stronger than the first, perhaps because it's been built from less crowded stories with major impacts for the cast.

Edited by Mrph1 on Apr 24th 2024 at 8:10:32 PM

A new Avengers #13

Last time, the Avengers blitzed key Orchis facilities and saved a prison full of mutants. Turncoat 3-D Man/Triathlon sent every spare Stark Sentinel to storm the Impossible City in orbit.

The Impossible City has a lot of guns but there are a lot of Sentinels. Enough to eventually overwhelm the City before it can dimension shift. The Avengers pop into orbit to fight Sentinels to buy time and even so, some Sentinels slip past the giant guns and the Avengers.

But the other side of the plot is good news for Triathlon enjoyers. Like Firestar, Triathlon is a mole. Albeit under deep deep cover. He had T’Challa hypnotize him to really want to destroy the Avengers and his known bitterness over his firing got him in the door. When Black Panther and Captain Samerica bust into his command center, T’Challa says the trigger phrase and Triathlon remembers Orchis sucks. He deactivates the Sentinel attack. And the damage has been done thanks to this and his leaked intel. A bunch of critical Orchis facilities have been destroyed and all their surplus Sentinels are chunked and floating around in space.

Afterward, some days later, the Avengers have a cookout in the Impossible City. I do love post mission relaxing time. There’s a fun moment where T’Challa backseat drives while Sam is trying to grill.

And then Blood Hunt starts.

This is reminding me of the bad ol days where books went from event to event and weren’t able to establish their own identity and plots with all the tie-ins they had to do.

I guess this at least fits into the Tribulation Events theme this Avengers run is doing. But still very annoying for one event tie in to foreshadow the very next event.

And this is Tom Brevoort’s last issue as editor on Avengers. I hadn’t really thought about it but he’s been the longest serving editor on Avengers, going back to Busiek’s run.

Makes sense T'Challa was the one the recruited 3-D Man, he too killed several Skrulls during Secret Invasion.

And current Avengers leader Carol took one into space to watch him asphyxiate. Secret Invasion was grim.

Edited by Bocaj on Apr 24th 2024 at 9:14:41 AM

Apparently Oblivion's return in GODS was supposed to be a big deal.

But for someone who doesn't know, what's his deal?

He's Death's daddy and represents non-existence. An equal to Eternity and Infinity. He was introduced in an Iceman solo miniseries of all things, as Iceman feverishly insisted he was straight by falling in love with a lady that was actually a runaway part of Oblivion. Oblivion is Malestrom's patron and Deathurge's master and later Doorman's employer.

He's cosmically important but not a super prominent character. Usually anything he can do for a plot, Death does. Even things where he should be used as Eternity's opposite, Death often gets used instead. He's only got 21 appearances, apparently.

Edited by Bocaj on Apr 24th 2024 at 9:49:28 AM

Sounds super redundant tbh.

Marvel especially nowadays suffers from having a glut of redundant "darkness-themed destroyer" entities. Death, Oblivion, Knull, Rokkva, Black Winter, all sorts. So many that Al Ewing riffed on it by tying them all together as the "Children of Anti-All", essentially establishing that they're all just a race of Eldritch Abomination spawned from the first Devourer of Worlds/Galactus figure in a previous multiverse.

That's kinda why Knull fell so flat for me. It doesn't matter how many times you warn "God is coming", you can make only so many 'Darko, God of the Darks' so many times before the concept becomes quaint.

All the Darkos being different aspects of a pre-universe proto-evil was cool though.

“Anti-All” is one of the best names for a Lovecraftian horror I’ve ever seen, too.

Anti-All had an awesome name, design, and concept (an entropic dragon being the first supervillain fighting the first superhero, a cosmic knight). It's kinda hilarious that a character who is more a plot device than anything and only appears for a single issue manages to be far cooler and more inspired than most of the generic "dark god" figures that he was created to tie together.

I dont think knull was ever supposed to be the end all be all of darkness gods, we already knew he had been beaten by another God so gorr could steal all black, and then he was trapped by his own creation for millenia. He was just a God of the void and if we can have a bunch of thunder gods for just earth I think we can have different void gods.

Yeah but as far as the Venom then-ongoing was concerned, Knull was the Darko.

It then admitted at the end of King in Black that he was just a Darko, but that was a few years down the line and when Venom was being integrated into the greater cosmic level of Marvel.

I mean luke I said even in the comics while trying to hype himself up his past track record didn't scream ultimate God of forever darkness.

Sure, but he lost to a/the "God of Light". And a host of Celestials. And Thor only gave him a concussion through proxy.

Knull's win/loss record was still slated to hype him up even when he was losing.

Yeah but not to the levels the one true God of death/darkness/void etc. Should be hyped up to. He was killed by being thrown into the sun that doesnt scream unbeatable darkness to me.

Granted, it wouldn't be the first time a god was killed by being thrown into the sun.

Something pointed this out, the most striking about Knull is that he's a good abuse metaphor since his story features the symbiotes rebelling against him and trapping him for quite some time. With themes of control that are already relevant to the dynamics of those who have symbiotes, Knull becomes the uber toxic partner who controls everyone.

Death is currently imprisoned by Thanos as of the last Thanos mini by Cantwell.

Which leaves Oblivion to pick up the slack I guess and he's even more of a dick than Death was, there is a difference than simply dying vs absolutely nothing after all.

Edited by slimcoder on Apr 24th 2024 at 3:07:22 AM

I do wish Cates had leaned more into that whole "abuser" angle for Knull, it would've made him far more interesting and unique than "Darko #10" as he ended up coming off, especially if he had been given a more appropriately eldritch design instead of looking like an edgy elf. It would've all really fit in better Venom in general and Cates' run in particular, which had abuse between loved ones as a major theme. Hell, Al Ewing seems to have recognized that, since his run - when it brings up Knull - tends to frame him less as a destroyer and more a petulant bastard throwing a tantrum rather than facing the consequences of his choices or the responsibilities he had.

Hey, I’m catching up on Miguel O’Hara Spider-Man 2099

Why is the future such a monster mash now? Originally the 2099 setting was very cyberpunk but now it’s cyberpunk t-boning a gothic mansion

Knull definitely suffered from being redundant with other evil cosmic darkness Marvel characters and under powered compared to some of his predecessors, but if we're being honest, Marvel is the KING of redundant cosmic beings. Take the web of life, Great Weaver, Spider-Man. There was already an interconnected web of everything spun by The web spinners in Dark Angel. Spider-Man can't even decide who it's particular web of everything spinner is.

I'd lean into to it. The Marvel Universe is like an airplane. There are lots of redundant systems so if one gets damaged the whole vehicle doesn't crash. If we had to establish some sort of order though I'd designated Amadeus Q Terminus as the ultimate destroyer, as he and the other Fallen Stars are supposed to predate the Marvel Universe, by like predate Galactus and the concept of Marvel, with each one being some public domain character/concept(so far only Adam Kadmon has actually been tied to one, but still). Not the ultimate darkness though, as dark isn't inherently destructive. I might go with the idea that Marvel doesn't actually have an ultimate darkness. There were just a bunch of beings who existed before light as we know it did, some want to go back to the way things were, a Silent Majority is embarrassed by them.

DC comics oddly enough did the opposite with their darkness related entities. A previous comics crossover seemingly tied all of the various dark baddies like Darkseid, Empty Hand, Nekron, etc. to the Great Darkness introduced long ago. It was building up the Great Darkness as DC comic's ultimate evil.

Then it turned out the Great Darkness has zero interest in conquest and destruction and actually finds mortals interesting. The actual Big Bad of the crossover was Pariah from the original Crisis on Infinite Earths who had found a way to tap into the Great Darkness' power and was hallucinating the Great Darkness' voice the whole time.

Hilariously enough, the idea of the Marvel Universe having a bunch of redundancies in it's cosmic hierarchy for safety's sake actually has canonical support; Immortal Hulk explicitly established that while Franklin Richards is the chosen successor of Galactus, Immortal Man exists as a backup in-case anything happens to Franklin, and the current Venom run - by the same author - notes that any of the Venom hosts like Spider-Man or Flash Thompson could've become the new King In Black like Eddie Brock has if they'd never gotten rid of or lost the symbiote, but "life happened" and Eddie wound up being the one who progressed far enough to initiate the ascension process.

Edited by immortaleditor on Apr 24th 2024 at 7:21:04 AM