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Die Laughing posted:It's kind of amazing that Doom is trusting the Cabal to handle the incursions. They fail once, and it's game over for Doom. Yeah but they do not have the morality of Reed and co. They enjoy the genocide.
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Sep 25, 2014 20:43
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Die Laughing posted:It's kind of amazing that Doom is trusting the Cabal to handle the incursions. They fail once, and it's game over for Doom.
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Sep 25, 2014 20:44
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Doom probably realises that Thanos, Proxima and Corvus are powerful enough to deal with most threats so the Cabal failing wouldn't be a pressing concern.
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Sep 25, 2014 20:49
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redbackground posted:What are you talking about? Everything he said is right. Sorry, far be it from me from getting in the way of TQIRL trashing the Illuminati for the umpteenth time because he thinks he (and now Doom) are smarter than comic book people. It's like he can't divorce Hickman's narrative from the characters in it.
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Sep 25, 2014 20:58
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...Okay, interesting interpretation on my post. I have no problem with the story Hickman is writing, I've said many times that I like the story, I just disagree with the actions that the main characters (the Illumanti) have been taking up to this. (Then again, and this is the paradoxical part, if the Illumanti came up with a perfect solution early on the story with end really quickly. So I can forgive that they haven't come to the solution yet.) As far as the Cabal goes, their actions are super monstrous. But I always saw that as essentially being the ultimate end result in taking part in the Incursion World Killing game. If you start down the path to killing someone else's home just to save yours while maintaing a slow death for all Universes, then you are going to be standing on a mountain of corpses. Anyway, I'm a huge fan of Dr. Doom whenever he is cool and larger than life. So I would have liked this issue even if it was Doom deciding he was just going to build even bigger bombs. The fact that he is going with a better plan is pretty cool.
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Sep 25, 2014 21:20
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First Bass posted:Sorry, far be it from me from getting in the way of TQIRL trashing the Illuminati for the umpteenth time because he thinks he (and now Doom) are smarter than comic book people. It's like he can't divorce Hickman's narrative from the characters in it. What does this even mean? Are you saying the narrative has no bearing on the characters? This seems like a weird snipey little post.
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Sep 25, 2014 21:25
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The Question IRL posted:As far as the Cabal goes, their actions are super monstrous. But I always saw that as essentially being the ultimate end result in taking part in the Incursion World Killing game. If you start down the path to killing someone else's home just to save yours while maintaing a slow death for all Universes, then you are going to be standing on a mountain of corpses. There's a huge difference in how that happens though. The Illuminati took no joy and used is as a last resort. The Cabal are reveling in the cruelty. There's monstrous and there's necessary to survive. It's like if someone invaded your home. If you shot them in self-defense, that's one thing. But if you tortured them before making them beg you to kill them, that's monstrous.
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Sep 25, 2014 21:43
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Codependent Poster posted:There's a huge difference in how that happens though. The Illuminati took no joy and used is as a last resort. The Cabal are reveling in the cruelty. There's monstrous and there's necessary to survive. Yeah the Illuminati did feel bad about the world blowing up and they did it as a point of last resort. But they still blew it up, after killing the other members of the Great Society. And walking away while Sun God was begging them not to. And the Illuminati were still trying to play the good guy card while doing it. About how they are sorry about blowing up the world as they do it. And when that's your world they are blowing up it comes across less as a sincere apology and more an attempt to lessen their own guilt. As Sun God said "If you are attempting to construct an argument that makes you the most moral mass murderer in the history of mass murderers, congratulations." Like if the Illuminati did decide to commit to the World Blowing up as a plan and hadn't let the Cabal do their thing they would have to be killing the worlds. And how would they do that on a consistent basis? Try and sneak in, plant the anti matter bomb and kill the other world unaware as they were sleeping? Make some announcement to the other world that they have 1 hour to leave the planet before it explodes? Kill everyone around the Incursion site and say "sorry but it's us or you and we choose you? Really sorry, don't down vote us." Like when you start off on the path of consistent world killing, there is no happy way of doing it. The Cabal are utterly despicable. They torture and kill when they don't have to, because they are sadists. But when you look at the overall macro scale of what is being done (when you factor in the overall purpose as well as the method employed to do same) it's still both abominable and virtuous in equal measure.
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Sep 25, 2014 22:15
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The Question IRL posted:As Sun God said "If you are attempting to construct an argument that makes you the most moral mass murderer in the history of mass murderers, congratulations." That quote is really relevant for exactly that reason. The Illuminati might not have wanted to twist the knife, but it doesn't really matter in the long run. They'd still be mass murderers. It's like arguing one serial killer is a good guy because they didn't torture their victim a little first. The Illuminati even provided the weapons the Cabal are using, and using for their intended purpose.
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Sep 25, 2014 22:44
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The Question IRL posted:Yeah the Illuminati did feel bad about the world blowing up and they did it as a point of last resort. But they still blew it up, after killing the other members of the Great Society. And walking away while Sun God was begging them not to. When there is no outcome without at least one world dying, that sort of Sun God morals don't really work though - there's no real world situation that could possibly be equivalent to the situation they're in. When the options as far as they know are both worlds dying or just the other world dying, by blowing up a world you don't somehow make it /more/ dead than it would have been seconds later otherwise, and you did in fact save every other living thing in that universe as well as yours - the number of dead goes from literally infinite to a finite number. The fact that their reasoning or behavior wouldn't cut it in the real world is because the real world has practically no situation so catastrophic and inevitable that it could hope to compare. It's an impossible situation so it just seems wrong to accuse them of being actual irredeemable mass murderers, and the fact that the whole world is hunting them down when they found out, and with everyone knowing what's actually happening and still hasn't figured out an alternative a year later, does make their initial plan of keeping things a secret seem a reasonable one. Imagine if they had told all of the Avengers/the world immediately or hadn't mindwiped Cap - Cap would have nixed the world bombing option, they would have desperately tried to figure out another option in the hours they had before an incursion, and then both universes would die. Now, we all know because comic books if that actual situation had been written a miracle would have occured, but making moral decisions based on knowledge of plot conventions doesn't really work.
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Sep 25, 2014 22:45
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Going into the moralities of the actions of the Illumanti and their bombing plans and weather it is really their only option is something that we've gone over in this thread. I don't want to necisarily rehash all of that, but I do want to bring up the recent new point of information we have gained from the recent issue of Avengers. That the rest of the Marvel Universe is dying, literally. Healthy suns are just winking out of existence. And it's implied that is happening in the other universes too. So if you just focus the idea that while blowing up worlds is bad but that it's the only way to save lives, then it isn't. Not in anything but a short term measure. Everything is dying. The Earth's crashing into each other (and the linked destruction of their universes) is bad, but it's just a part of the overall theme that all Universes are dying due to whatever started all this. Even if you blow up an Earth, it doesn't seem to stop the Universal rot. There has to be a solution to all this that isn't just "bomb more." (which was the Builder's solution.) Otherwise all the Illumanti will have accomplished is to have personally killed a lot of people, before everyone died anyway. The Question IRL fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Sep 25, 2014 |
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Sep 25, 2014 23:01
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Ok, help me out goons, so far we've seen: 1) Mapmakers 2) Sidera Maris 3) Black Priests Have we seen yet: 1) Ivory Kings 2) Sinnu Saruum Also, at this point, with time jump, are the Cabal out in the open? (Forgive me for these questions, I have not yet caught up this week, if they are spoilers, I apologize)
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Sep 25, 2014 23:42
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The Black Priests are the PVP covenant you get in Drangleic Keep, right?
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Sep 25, 2014 23:44
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:Also, semi related to NA everyone here should read the latest Loki: Agent of Asgard. It's basically DOOM is the best: the book. At the end. It starts with a good ol' reminder that even the mighty can get clowned once in a while.
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Sep 25, 2014 23:45
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The Question IRL posted:Going into the moralities of the actions of the Illumanti and their bombing plans and weather it is really their only option is something that we've gone over in this thread. At the top of the list of things required to figure out and stop the incursions:
People act like it was the Illuminati's big plan and not a time buying stopgap because they want pre-Johns DC solutions in the Marvel universe
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Sep 25, 2014 23:50
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Well, as far as the purposes of the story go, we simply have to accept that they haven't been able to find another solution, and that's that. That's the story being told. That's the dilemma as constructed. And so, given the dilemma as constructed, the objective truth is that the Illuminati are nowhere near as morally reprehensible, by any stretch of terminology, as the Cabal. Especially when we consider that they didn't end up blowing up the other Earth in the end after all. We can't just say "both of them did bad things so they're both bad" and call it a day, that's not how ethical processes work. As a reader, though, I should say that I do think it's utterly, irreconcilably, idiotically ridiculous that the Illuminati haven't gone to more lengths, or simply can't go to more lengths, to find out more about the incursions and to stop them at their source. With all the contacts and resources they have at their disposal, it's incredibly lazy and frustrating for Hickman to just put a full stop to that particular avenue of the story by saying "There's nothing they can do. They can't find out more. Why? They just can't. They just don't. The end." And then twenty-something issues in to the story, the first thing that someone like Doom does when confronted by the issue is to find out more about the issue, seemingly without any egregious difficulties. How did he do it? Well, he simply did. How come he could do it when the Illuminati couldn't? Because. The stakes and characterizations of this storyline have been incredibly well-portrayed, but the actual implementation of a lot of the story beats have been as confounding as any other dumb comics event have been prone to.
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Sep 25, 2014 23:54
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I'm assuming a lot of those gaps will be filled as we get into what happened during those missing 8 months though
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Sep 26, 2014 00:00
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I was saying at some point in the past few months that there should be a way to trace the Incursions, and now Doom has done just that. I'm pretty happy with this turn of events. Why the Illuminati never did it, I don't know.
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Sep 26, 2014 00:54
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WickedHate posted:I was saying at some point in the past few months that there should be a way to trace the Incursions, and now Doom has done just that. I'm pretty happy with this turn of events. Why the Illuminati never did it, I don't know. Hey, that giant room didn't fill itself with bombs! But more seriously, it seems having the fragment of rock from the incursion is what allowed Doom/Mad Thinker to do this and the Illuminato didn't have access to that.
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Sep 26, 2014 01:03
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My random thought of the day: 616 Reed and Company blow up half their Earth, Whoever is left in the Ultimate Universe blow up half of their earth and BOOM; you get to write off the crappy parts of each: • "Oh, Ultimate Cap is dead? Well 616 Cap is still alive (and old)"... • "Oh, Ultimate Wolverine is dead? Well 616 Wolverine is... • "Oh, Ultimate Reed is a villain? well 616 Reed is... never mind..." • 616 and Ultimate Hoof-Foot Doom can battle it out • 616 Franklin vs. Ultimate Sue and Ben's baby Thats the eventual reset for Girl-Thor, Captain-Falconmerica", etc Plenty of cosmic Maguffins/fixes here to be had if they wanted. Goddamn do I need an avatar; this is ridiculous.
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Sep 26, 2014 02:46
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:He then wrote a story where he revealed that Reed, as a long-time Isaac Asimov fan, had tried to invent the 'science of psychohistory' from Asimov's Foundation books - in effect, using math to predict the actions, not of individuals, but of entire cultures and worlds and nations - and had essentially demonstrated with math that the SHRA had to happen because Reasons, and then brought in the Mad Thinker to check his math. Actually, this still ended up making Reed look bad, because at the end of Civil War he admitted the lower bound on the number of people necessary to change outcomes psychohistorically was... four. Which it would have to be, otherwise there wouldn't be any point in keeping the Fantastic Four around. And, of course, in the Foundation series what ends up ruining psychohistory's predictive ability is the emergence of a single person with super powers.
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Sep 26, 2014 03:05
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BrianWilly posted:Well, as far as the purposes of the story go, we simply have to accept that they haven't been able to find another solution, and that's that. That's the story being told. That's the dilemma as constructed. And so, given the dilemma as constructed, the objective truth is that the Illuminati are nowhere near as morally reprehensible, by any stretch of terminology, as the Cabal. Especially when we consider that they didn't end up blowing up the other Earth in the end after all. We can't just say "both of them did bad things so they're both bad" and call it a day, that's not how ethical processes work. There are three differences that explain the success Doom has had that the Illuminati hasn't been able to enjoy. First, the Illuminati, has had to spend much of their time worrying about how to survive the next incursion while Doom has taken the luxury of ignoring the incursions as they come. Second, Doom has a critical asset in the Mapmaker homing fragment that he's been able to use to reverse engineer their universe-hopping scheme. Finally, Doom didn't have Black Swan feeding him half-truths that were more misleading than outright lies. If the Illuminati didn't have to worry about the immediate survival of the entire universe, then they probably could have been more forward-thinking on the problem. Instead, they've been guided into having almost their entire focus being on living one more day.
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Sep 26, 2014 04:11
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A.o.D. posted:There are three differences that explain the success Doom has had that the Illuminati hasn't been able to enjoy. First, the Illuminati, has had to spend much of their time worrying about how to survive the next incursion while Doom has taken the luxury of ignoring the incursions as they come. Second, Doom has a critical asset in the Mapmaker homing fragment that he's been able to use to reverse engineer their universe-hopping scheme. Finally, Doom didn't have Black Swan feeding him half-truths that were more misleading than outright lies. If the Illuminati didn't have to worry about the immediate survival of the entire universe, then they probably could have been more forward-thinking on the problem. Instead, they've been guided into having almost their entire focus being on living one more day. And the Illuminati has to hide their secret goings-on from everyone, while Doom is free to act because he's Doom.
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Sep 26, 2014 04:26
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A.o.D. posted:There are three differences that explain the success Doom has had that the Illuminati hasn't been able to enjoy. First, the Illuminati, has had to spend much of their time worrying about how to survive the next incursion while Doom has taken the luxury of ignoring the incursions as they come. Second, Doom has a critical asset in the Mapmaker homing fragment that he's been able to use to reverse engineer their universe-hopping scheme. Finally, Doom didn't have Black Swan feeding him half-truths that were more misleading than outright lies. If the Illuminati didn't have to worry about the immediate survival of the entire universe, then they probably could have been more forward-thinking on the problem. Instead, they've been guided into having almost their entire focus being on living one more day. This is why I think that Reed and Tony did indeed go to Doom and this led to them letting him try to trace the source of the incursions while they try to figure out how to survive them.
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Sep 26, 2014 04:34
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Dammit Who? posted:Actually, this still ended up making Reed look bad, because at the end of Civil War he admitted the lower bound on the number of people necessary to change outcomes psychohistorically was... four. Which it would have to be, otherwise there wouldn't be any point in keeping the Fantastic Four around. Oh, certainly it was still a flawed application of the 'science' - but it still did my heart good to see Reed saying "Hey, look, I know you all think I'm being an asshat, but I have reasons, I can prove them with math" instead of the way he'd been presented earlier in the event saying things like "no, it was good that my relatives got blacklisted for refusing to cooperate with HUAC," which was just mind-bogglingly dumb.
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Sep 26, 2014 04:50
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Codependent Poster posted:And I'm really surprised nobody thought to use Molecule Man until now. If you wanna talk about a heavy-hitter, he's someone that should have come up. The Sentry seemed to have killed him last time we saw him in Dark Avengers. Also, there's really no shortage of heavy hitters just hanging around doing jack poo poo: - Undead Sentry - Franklin Richards - Scarlet Witch - Captain Universe - Morgana Le Fey - Silver Surfer - potentially Quentin Quire, Teen Jean and X-Man Not to mention all the cosmic gods and Allfathers.
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Sep 26, 2014 05:19
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A.o.D. posted:There are three differences that explain the success Doom has had that the Illuminati hasn't been able to enjoy. First, the Illuminati, has had to spend much of their time worrying about how to survive the next incursion while Doom has taken the luxury of ignoring the incursions as they come. Second, Doom has a critical asset in the Mapmaker homing fragment that he's been able to use to reverse engineer their universe-hopping scheme. Finally, Doom didn't have Black Swan feeding him half-truths that were more misleading than outright lies. If the Illuminati didn't have to worry about the immediate survival of the entire universe, then they probably could have been more forward-thinking on the problem. Instead, they've been guided into having almost their entire focus being on living one more day. At the end of the day, the real reason that Doom had been able to get his hands on a convenient MacGuffin that enables further understanding of the threat while the Illuminati hadn't been able to do so (along with the fact that the MacGuffin just so conveniently happened to be something that enabled further understanding of the threat instead of the numerous dead ends that the Illuminati have encountered ad nauseam) is because that's the story being told. If the story felt like it, Reed could have easily discovered some important clue or another by viewing his Bridge, or Strange could have maybe sensed some kind of astral trail to follow to some great revelation or another, so on/so forth, and it could've happened just as naturally and made just as much sense as how Doom managed obtain his Mapmaker map (which was, lest we forget, completely on accident in the first place). But those things didn't happen, because that's not the story being told, and that's fine...that is to say, it's fine until it becomes avoidably frustrating and makes these characters look incompetent.
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Sep 26, 2014 05:49
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Also, 616 Doom has become relatively unique in the multiverse, with all the Reeds lobotomizing every Doom they ran into. This could lead to 616 making progress none of the other worlds could make. All the more reason to buy 616 some time.
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Sep 26, 2014 05:58
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PelvicNerve posted:Also, 616 Doom has become relatively unique in the multiverse, with all the Reeds lobotomizing every Doom they ran into. Apparently 616 Doom is the 'best' Doom. (excluding the alternate Doom that won the secret war, of course) BrianWilly posted:On the flip side, there had been seven or more of the Illuminati and only one of Doom. On an aggregate they've had far more time and resources than him. They've observed and directly interacted with significantly more incursions than Doom, even the exact same one that gave Doom the opportunity for his current research. I mean, they were standing on the Earth that gave Doom what he needed. Even considering Black Swan's manipulations (which is still kinda vague and that we're not really sure what she's trying to accomplish), I'd place them much higher on the playing field than Doom, as far as chances to truly study the incursions go. That first part isn't entirely true. He's got Kristoff handling the day to day operations of his kingdom, and has the help of the Mad Thinker, Valeria, and the Molecule Man. Between himself, Thinker, and Valeria, Doom has a LOT of wattage he can devote to the problem. Thanks to the Molecule Man, there's no device, material, or MacGuffin they cannot possess once they conceive of it. Doom Gets poo poo Done.
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Sep 26, 2014 12:02
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Was it shown that Valeria is helping Doom? I don't think she is, in fact I think she might be with her dad which could be another reason that Susan is so pissed off.
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Sep 26, 2014 12:50
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I haven't read most of Fractions's/any of Robinson's F4, why is Valeria staying with Doom?
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Sep 26, 2014 13:28
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TomWaitsForNoMan posted:I haven't read most of Fractions's/any of Robinson's F4, why is Valeria staying with Doom? She's pissed at Reed due to the events of Fraction's Run, where he lied to everyone about the reason why they were going on a vacation in space. The real reason was because Reed discovered the F4's powers were destroying them.
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Sep 26, 2014 14:38
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Valeria is a smarter Rochards so Doom having her help is both beneficial to him AND a nice gently caress you to Reed so I don't see him not having her help.
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Sep 26, 2014 14:44
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goldenoreos posted:She's pissed at Reed due to the events of Fraction's Run, where he lied to everyone about the reason why they were going on a vacation in space. The real reason was because Reed discovered the F4's powers were destroying them.
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Sep 26, 2014 15:25
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:Valeria is a smarter Rochards so Doom having her help is both beneficial to him AND a nice gently caress you to Reed so I don't see him not having her help. See seemed to recognize the gravity of the situation as well when Reed came to visit so I don't see any reason why she'd say no.
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Sep 26, 2014 16:45
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redbackground posted:How did that all get resolved, anyway? He fixed them and also something to do with alternate DtAC and alterante Johnny in a time loop and ugh. That whole run was kind of dumb but everything is gonna look dumb following up Hickman. A.o.D. posted:There are three differences that explain the success Doom has had that the Illuminati hasn't been able to enjoy. First, the Illuminati, has had to spend much of their time worrying about how to survive the next incursion while Doom has taken the luxury of ignoring the incursions as they come. Second, Doom has a critical asset in the Mapmaker homing fragment that he's been able to use to reverse engineer their universe-hopping scheme. Finally, Doom didn't have Black Swan feeding him half-truths that were more misleading than outright lies. If the Illuminati didn't have to worry about the immediate survival of the entire universe, then they probably could have been more forward-thinking on the problem. Instead, they've been guided into having almost their entire focus being on living one more day. This is what makes me most curious about what the Illuminati has been up to the last 8 months. As soon as the Cabal was formed and took over Wakanda there was probably a short term immediate fight before they retreated. But now we have a huge team of scary badasses destroying worlds while the Illuminati is recruiting all the super geniuses but leaving SHIELD and the Avengers totally in the dark. No more Black Swan, no more having to deal with the incursions. The Xorn/Zorn in the most recent issue were refernces to the ones from Ultimates right? Which in turn refernced the originals from 616?
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Sep 26, 2014 17:20
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PaybackJack posted:Was it shown that Valeria is helping Doom? I don't think she is, in fact I think she might be with her dad which could be another reason that Susan is so pissed off. Based on?
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Sep 26, 2014 18:27
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goldenoreos posted:She's pissed at Reed due to the events of Fraction's Run, where he lied to everyone about the reason why they were going on a vacation in space. The real reason was because Reed discovered the F4's powers were destroying them. It's really more because at the end Reed (and Johnny to a lesser extent) let an alternate Johnny walk off to a certain death just to fulfill a time loop. Look, it was complicated and you kinda had to read it and FF to get the whole story but most people only read FF. (I actually thought Fractions Fantastic Four was okay, it just took a bit to get going. It really all clicks once you realize that it and FF are actually telling one big story, even if they don't seem connected.)
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Sep 26, 2014 20:25
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Senor Candle posted:Based on? Valeria, in Hickman's FF has shown herself to be more like Reed without a conscience or scruples or whatever. She's a pragmatist who lacks experience and while protective of her family only her older self seemed to realize/embrace that. When it comes to solving the incursions I could easily see her siding with the Illuminati for the same reasons that they built the bombs in the first place; she's a kid but she's shown that she'll take matters into her own hands when she feels its necessary. Contacting Doom to help the Future Foundation was an example of this back in Hickman's FF. She finds the Bridge and instead of confronting Reed about it or telling Sue, she teleports herself to Doom and reinforces Reed by adding Doom to the team. She's more than willing to make unilateral decisions and in the case of the Illuminati I would guess that just like the bridge incident she not only sees what's going on, but possibly has a better plan that her mother wouldn't approve of(possibly involving Franklin and his powers). PaybackJack fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Sep 26, 2014 |
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Sep 26, 2014 20:45
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PaybackJack posted:Was it shown that Valeria is helping Doom? I don't think she is, in fact I think she might be with her dad which could be another reason that Susan is so pissed off. If you check out the latest Loki, Agent of Asgard (and you should, it's good) it's clear that Doom is Valeria's Uncle, Teacher, Godfather (kind of), and Peer.
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Sep 26, 2014 21:54
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