scans_daily | New Avengers #6: "Blue Hell"

superboyprime posting in

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The Illuminati have created a weapon:

Another "incursion" from an alternate reality has occurred. In about seven hours, the alternate Earth will collide with theirs unless they destroy it first or figure another solution out.

This time, the incursion site is Latveria. The Illuminati teleport there, bringing along the world-destroyer. Just in case.

They travel to the other Earth, only to find that it's completely barren.

They return to their Earth, leaving their anti-matter bomb behind.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

captainbellman

I find this "Black Swan" character to be one of the most annoying I've ever seen in a comic. Literally just walking exposition in a remember-we-need-to-hook-the-teenage-boys-market body.

From:

salinea

you're right, it would be much less sexist to keep this title to only male characters.

From:

captainbellman

...Fair enough, but not my point. Involving a couple of female characters who actually fulfil a function other than "Eye Candy That Shunts The Plot Along" would help, yes, but I'm not talking about the many, blindingly obvious solutions there could be.

I'm just expressing my frustration with the stupidity that is present here.

From:

salinea

Complaining about her being exposition only (which is not completely accurate, since she's obviously scheming something and will probably be a threat or something akin down the line but okay) is fair enough. But when you target the only female character for being "eye candy" it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, especially given that the art doesn't use her in a very exploitative sexy way (no more than your average comics, that is). It's the sort of criticism you see again and again that pretends to use feminist skew to actually be against female characters which pisses me off. Particularly blatant here when it's THE all male characters title.

From:

bewareofgeek

She's Ms. "I'm going to tell you what I know, but only in the most obscure and mysterious way, so that it can sound more portentous, and less like the writer throwing up concepts on the page."

Seriously, she's every bad Hickman dialogue tic rolled up into one.

Oh, and if any piece of the soon-to-be destroyed earth serves as a marker... "no matter how little", then the dust on their feet (and Tony's knee) just doomed their planet.

From:

silicondream

Not really clear why they need a marker, since they've already got an invasion force right there on the new Earth. Why doesn't the rest of their army just follow it? And why are they even targeting these Earths in the first place? They're not particularly easy pickings, so far as we've seen.

And aren't these mapmaker guys saving the universes involved, by blowing up each Earth after they raid it? Not sure why that's a problem, even from Torturedly Expository Hot Topic Lady's POV. They seem to be doing exactly what she wants, just in a slightly more roundabout fashion. Or is it cheating if you don't pick one Earth as a home base and stick with it?

From:

junipepper

Torturedly Expository Hot Topic Lady\

Nice. :-)

From:

captainbellman

I get what you're saying, but my point is that I hate that she has to be the eye candy by dint of being the only female character there. The fact that this is the standard that the average comic lives up to - where the majority of the male characters are wearing practical, functional outfits for the job at hand and the one woman looks just about ready to go to a goth rave - is appalling in and of itself.

You misread my intent: what I want is better-dressed women with actual character traits. What I don't want is no women at all.

From:

salinea

Sure.

From:

captainbellman

Poe's law, dude. I can't tell what your tone is - are you sincerely agreeing with me, or sarcastically doubting my intent?

From:

salinea

Oh, I believe it wasn't your intent.

From:

icon_uk

Since the planet is completely dead before he blows it up why is T'Challa feeling guilty? Yes, he's committing a very large bit of demolition, but it's a dead world.

Generally the dialogue here feels terribly stilted. Plus the "Now you are a man" bit? Seriously?

And I still feel neither admiration nor empathy for the Illuminati as a team

From:

fungo_squiggly

I think it's the "slippery slope" thing again.

The first world was conveniently eaten by that universe's Galactus, and hey, they even tried to stop him.

This world was already dead/dying, thanks to the mapmakers, but this time they did in fact blow it up themselves.

The next planet will have living microbes that die in the explosion. The one after that will have ugly animals. Then cute animals. And so on.

Next thing you know, the illuminati will be murdering all 7 billion people on a planet, individually, in person, before blowing the whole thing up anyway.

From:

sadoeuphemist

Probably the same reason Oppenheimer thought "I am become Death" during the Trinity test. Seeing the awesome destructive power of the device being used, it became undeniable that it would be used again.

From:

bruinsfan

I wonder if whatever the mapmakers did to the planet in question also killed off Gaea, or if T'challa's action counts as a mercy killing of her/it?

From:

nate_abril96

"Could be problematic sometime in the future." Well jeez, hope that doesn't become important later on! Seriously, can you at least try and be more subtle when setting up future story-lines.

From:

superboyprime

Eh? You talk as if they're not trying to make it obvious that Doom will be returning to the story. I don't think they're going for mystery or doubt here.

From:

fredneil.livejournal.com

Done properly, Namor is noble, honorable, has a huge chip on his shoulder, is hot headed, and often has a sarcastic sense of humor, but does he do anything other than stand on the sidelines and bring the snark here? He and Beast come across as a superpowered version of Statler and Waldorf (or Beavis and Butthead, whichever outdated pop culture reference works best for you) here.

From:

icon_uk

Statler and Waldorf aren't outdated, they're "retro". :)

Beavis and Butthead on the other hand... ick!

From:

leoboiko

I was expecting more Doom in this issue…

From:

skemono

I was expecting these scans to have Black Swan (or whatever her name is) try to impress upon the Illuminati how dangerous these robots that showed up in Latveria are, and how they'll start taking over the Earth, and none of you will be able to stop them...

...and then they come back to their Earth to find all the robots in mangled heaps. "This trash is not even worthy of being felled by my Doombots. Farmers! Boot up your techno-mattocks!"

From:

biod

Ultra Compotent DOOM should be a punchline to more overblown threats.

Edited Date: 2013-07-04 06:12 pm (UTC)

From:

draganoche

There's more doom in the next issue with him trying to figure out what's going on and Reed telling him to basically sit down and shut up if he knows what good for him

From:

leoboiko

welp, I hope this comes back to bite them.

From:

draganoche

it obviously will, i mean Reed has known Doom for years and he thinks vaguely threatening him will work? serious handling of the idiot ball there, plus doom has pieces of the dead earth so the mapmakers will be invading soon

From:

bruinsfan

To be fair, while I doubt Reed is capable of intimidating Doom in any way, Stephen Strange just might be able to. Especially if that warning was backed by his mesmeric powers.

From:

icon_uk

Strange has acknowledged in the past that Doom is a very skilled magic user in his own right, I doubt he'd remotely intimidate Doom.

From:

donnblake

I think intimidating Doom is the wrong way to go about it in any case. Even if you do manage to overawe him, all you're doing is putting yourself at the top of a very dangerous list. It's not like it's even particularly hard to manipulate Doom in other ways. How many times did the Red Skull get him to do something by going "Hey Doom, I bet even your genius can't..." (okay, just once that I know of, when he had him build a Robo-Bucky, but it worked like a charm).

From:

silicondream

Reed was so awkwardly villainous there, I figured there's going to be a reveal about how he's actually one of the alternate earth evil Reeds or something. Maybe the real one's still kicking around the universe with his family and has no idea this is going on.

From:

silverhammerman

Funny how nobody else, other than I guess Doom, noticed the fact there was another planet suddenly in low orbit over Earth. A planet that then exploded spectacularly. In a highly noticeable fashion. You'd think that'd be something that the real Avengers would notice. Or the X-Men. Or the rest of the Fantastic Four.

I think I'd like this a lot more if it were unconnected to the Marvel U, like, if this was just a grand scifi story I'd actually be intrigued. But as it is it just feels so like a different kind of "Comics are for grown ups! So adult!" but instead of gore and nudity we get the heroes making "tough decisions" and questioning their morals. It just doesn't interest me at all.

From:

coldfury

I believe this is explained in that outside the 'incursion zone', the other planet is not visibile until near the end of the incursion.

Multi-verse timey wimey stuff, to be sure, but they did go out of there way to note it early on.

From:

silverhammerman

Yeah, I kinda figured there'd be something like that. Very handwave-y.

From:

superboyprime

Well, it did get us one of the best 'whoa' moments in the series, when T'Challa (and we) discover the incursions for the first time:

From:

joetuss

Remember when these guys would just punch or zap the problems away?

From:

zabilac

Well, at least their using their heads-sort of.

From:

joetuss

Yeah ''sort of'' is right.

From:

leoboiko

Well technically they have been figuring ways of doing very, very intensive zappings.

From:

skemono

Yeah, they're still basically punching their problems away. It's just that the "problem" here is a planet, and the "punch" is an anti-matter bomb.

From:

mrstatham

I'm just a little bit confused as to why you wouldn't want Doom in on this. I know it's your Illuminati boys-club get-together, but it'd be easier to have a genius like Doom on board as opposed to Mr 'I committed genocide and still get to snark like I'm innocent' AKA Namor. I mean.. Doom has as much to lose as them, in this one.

Also, why is this book not called Secret Avengers? And the current Secret Avengers book called 'Avengers: Agents of SHIELD' or something like that?

From:

superboyprime

The problem with Doom is that he'd have no qualms about just killing every alternate Earth that incurs their way.

Hickman's reasoning is that the Illuminati stories have traditionally occurred in either NEW AVENGERS or books with "New Avengers" somewhere in their title (http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20061222203337/marveldatabase/images/0/00/New_Avengers_Illuminati_Vol_2_1.jpg). Whether you buy into that reasoning or not, that's the stated one.

From:

mrstatham

But then these heroes are pretty much doing that anyway, just.. With some half-baked moral-handwringing and the like.

And I suppose I can see his reasoning, but.. Really, it just feels like Marvel said 'no, the guy running the franchise gets these two names.'

From:

superboyprime

They're Silver Age-originating Marvel heroes. Hand-wringing is very important to them. :)

More seriously, the Illuminati are "willing" to kill a planet as a last resort. (I put "willing" in quotes because it hasn't really been put to the test. I don't think blowing up a world that was already dead counts.) Doom would do it as a first resort. It's a crucial difference.

From:

mrstatham

Fair point. Still, Doom's that guy they can all point at and say 'HE DID IT' when Sue and others eventually find out, and to be honest, I fully expect that anyway, only they'll do it to Namor.

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New Avengers #6: "Blue Hell"

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