|
Gatts posted:Cap himself might not be as useful in solving the problem but he is the solution to hopelessness. The Great Society had 2 victories though at great expense to themselves. Cap is hope and he is the focus and the right mentality. The Illuminati had a pessimistic defeatist realistic vision from the get go and we're all but openly willing to down a dark path early. I'm not getting this logic, and several people have brought it up - The illuminati has had the EXACT SAME VICTORIES as the Great Society. Victory 1. Infinity Gauntlet/Imagination Box or whateverthefuck is used to undo a single incursion. Infinity Gauntlet/box breaks. Victory 2. It's already a dead world, the Mapmakers killed it. The Great Society blows up the other earth, just like the Illuminati did. Victory 3. "We don't talk about that" - presumably this was someone (possibly a villain) blowing up a populated planet. If it was an actual solution they would either share it, or be ready to use it again, or both. I'm not seeing how the HOPE of the Great Society helped at all here. Hell, the Great Society got it off worse - the Illuminati can blow up Mapmaker worlds with a bomb nice and clean, while Norn had to use super awful terrible bad black magic to sacrifice his future lives just to blow up a dead world. If the Illuminati hadn't shown up there, the Great Society certainly didn't have a plan in mind to fix anything in the extremely short time they had left. Both worlds would have died. Who knows, maybe they should have told more people in the beginning, but like many people have said that had just as much chance of backfiring - there's a whole universe of people who would rather destroy earth than let the near-infinite number of people alive in the entire universe die. Not every problem in the universe is going to have an option that lets everyone get out with squeaky-clean morality and zero blood on their hands, and while sure the illuminati may have done things the wrong way, I'm not sure that Cap's kneejerk reaction to let an essentially infinite number of people die rather than compromise his ideals is really an alternative. It'd be one thing if anyone had some sort of even far-fetched idea that was an alternative, but not only did he not, there's an infinite number of universes that has probably tried virtually every possible method of stopping an incursion - this should be a clue that you can't just pull a magic solution out of your rear end in 8 hours. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Sep 5, 2014 |
#
¿
Sep 5, 2014 04:46
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 22, 2024 04:53 |
|
|
Skwirl posted:The point is the great society never built bombs because that would give them option to blow up a populated world which is something they could never consider, whereas giant bombs was literally the Illuminati's second idea. Yeah, and the great society is dead along with their world and the Illuminati is not. And they're considerably more powerful than the Avengers.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 5, 2014 06:56
|
|
|
Skwirl posted:Yeah, and the definitions of morality and ethics, not to mention superhero all revolve around "the last one standing" Yeah, and it's pretty immoral and unethical to doom your two entire universes to annihilation by sitting on your hands and doing nothing. Remember, doing nothing kills exponentially more - and your planet's dead anyway. In the grand scheme of things, the Earth is prolly like not even 0.1% of the population of the galaxy, and the galaxy is probably one in a million galaxies. There are no options where an earth does not die, here, except for the once-per-universe freebie with the Infinity Gauntlet, but only destroying an earth saves the every other living thing in the universe (and also prevents further incursions) in that universe. It's obviously a horrible option, but there's literally no option that does not involve mass-death. I'd be more inclined to blame whichever moron set the whole universal chain reaction in motion than the individual planets killing each other off. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Sep 5, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Sep 5, 2014 07:29
|
|
|
Skwirl posted:Building world killing bombs take time and effort that could be put towards finding a solution that isn't a world killing bomb. Yeah, but an infinite amount of time in an infinite amount of universes has been put towards finding a solution that isn't a worldkilling bomb, and nobody's succeeded yet, so making a bomb to save two universes is better than being left high and dry when an incursion could happen literally any minute and splat there goes two universes because you neglected to build the bomb. Making like a hundred is overkill though, yes. Even when they do eventually inevitably discover some solution, the fact of the matter is they would have died with their entire universe and another entire universe on the first incursion after the infinity gems broke, and would never have had time to discover it in the first place. Honestly the smartest thing would have been to use the infinity gauntlet in some more clever way, like stopping time to give an infinite amount of time to figure out a solution. Or yeah, even moving the entire population of earth to Mars or something, even if it is giving up on the multiversal problem there's plenty of ways to dimension hop without an incursion to help out other worlds. Too late now, though! Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Sep 5, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Sep 5, 2014 07:35
|
|
|
My guess for how Cap is going to fix this (if he's the one to fix this) is going to be some sort of multiversal cooperation to take the themes from Infinity and go exponentially bigger. A million universes fail and die alone, but a million universes cooperating could probably fix pretty much anything. (infinity infinity gauntlets). It seems like only something along that sort of scale would be the only appropriate resolution to this. It'll be really dumb if someone just makes a magic reality fixing machine and poof, problem solved, but hopefully Hickman isn't that much of a cop-out.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 5, 2014 15:44
|
|
|
Is Uncanny Avengers worth reading? Reviews seem to vary wildly.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 8, 2014 16:52
|
|
|
I skimmed through some Avengers Academy, and while not amazing it's pleasant enough, but I find it hard to bother reading all of it when I know every single character here minus two or three is going to be killed off pointlessly in superhero Hunger Games. It's like retroactively ruining the story.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 15, 2014 07:48
|
|
|
Edge & Christian posted:I know it's a HOPELESS case to step into this ARENA and have a BATTLE ROYALE with UNDERCOVER posters who know that it's HOPELESS to talk about that HOPELESS piece of poo poo writing that HOPELESSLY lovely poo poo book that shits all over some of the most beloved characters of this or any century with his HOPELESS lovely PIECE OF poo poo GRIMDARK work that is a BIG gently caress YOU TO THE FANS, THE INDUSTRY, HUMANITY. Uh, apparently I touched on a sore subject or something here, and I haven't read Avengers Arena but from the 20?ish issues I read, Academy seemed to focus mostly on a few specific characters from what I've read it seems like a good number of the main cast proceeded to move on into Arena, where they are either killed or turned into traumatized wrecks with PTSD which just seems kinda tasteless all around for a sequel what was a pretty light story. It's like writing a sequel to a children's book where all the main characters are forced to kill each other. Plus, I'm the kind of person that hates reading/watching something that I know's gunna have a miserable lovely unhappy ending, and that's what I meant by ruining it retroactively for me.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 15, 2014 13:18
|
|
|
TomWaitsForNoMan posted:I'm just starting Infinity so there may be something I missed/haven't got to yet, but how are Reed, Beast, and Strange kings? Seems to me like the critera was more either 'you're one of the smartest people on the planet OR you're a king'
|
|
#
¿
Sep 18, 2014 03:46
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2014 22:45
|
|
|
PaybackJack posted:Actually I think the worst Marvel events in the past decade were pretty good in the middle. It's always the inital premise and the endings that leave a lot to be desired. AVX for example was pretty good in the middle with the Phoenix 5 running around, Spider-Man and Iron Fist training Hope in Kun'Lun. Secret Invasion with the ship landing and a few issues of people not knowing what the gently caress was going on and who was who while Fury "activated" the butterflies. Bendis couldn't write a decent conclusion and most of the events seem to be inspired more by the Marketing department than anything else. I still have no idea how Infinity got the green light except that I guess since Guardians of the Galaxy was coming out Marvel decided they needed to give Thanos something to do and as a result Hickman got to send everyone out into space. Thankfully it did, though - Infinity was really good.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 6, 2014 17:27
|
|
|
Wanderer posted:AVENGERS & X-MEN: COFFEEKLATSCH This is actually the ultimate Crisis, because it sounds like an epilogue - the show's over, wrap it up, everyone gets a happy ending and a bagel and walks off into the sunset, The End.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 11, 2014 05:17
|
|
|
Skwirl posted:He would have tried to find a goddamned solution instead of mopping like a child. I did love Young Beast's ice burn on old beast. You act like Cap's power of positive thinking is capable of pulling a solution out of his rear end with minutes left on the clock. Still, yeah, at that point they were fully committed and backing out was just as bad as continuing forward. Once they started taking it upon themselves to destroy worlds to save theirs while simultaneously keeping it secret, refusing to continue while simultaneously still keeping it secret is the most idiotic thing you could do. Either keep blowing worlds up or stop keeping it secret.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2014 00:05
|
|
|
Skwirl posted:Maybe, maybe not. I don't know exactly how much time it takes to turn the Sun into a dyson sphere you affectionately refer to as "Sol's Hammer," but that's a lot of time Tony Stark didn't spend trying to figure out a way to save 616 without committing genocide. Etc. etc. for Richards, McCoy and Dr. Strange. Part of the issue here is that incursions are an.. out of context problem. When the universe itself is unravelling, you can't just go into your lab and whip up a solution in the 15 minutes before an incursion. Nobody has any idea where to even slightly begin at the possibility of a solution at the time. Bombs are extremely simple for all of them to make compared to rewriting the fabric of the multiverse, and stall for time for some one in a million miracle to occur and someone being able to find a solution. Presumably, the whole time they're doing all this they're also researching the origin of incursions and all that as well, just unsuccessfully. It's like if the sun started to go supernova tommorow - where do you even start?
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2014 01:56
|
|
|
Deadpool posted:Well if you're cut off how are you going to help stop it? Basically if you destroy Earth you're saying "Well I hope someone else fixes it before we all die!" and then giving up. I think he's trying to say that A. You dont' blow up your own world, you just evacuate off of it and B. you keep blowing up other worlds. With your world still existing, you're still in the incursion game, but if you LOSE - which is definitely a big possibility considering how nasty the people they've seen fighting so far are, you don't lose the entire population of earth and get knocked out of the game instead. Of course, at this point you're commiting genocide for the entire purpose of trying to stay in the genocide game instead of to protect your universe/planet, so I can't really see it happening. Still, I can't help but think that the solution where earth gets destroyed and that universe lives is considerably healthier for the fabric of the multiverse than the two universes colliding and utterly annihilating each other. Here's one solution that requires near absolute omniscient power over all universes : copy all earths, move all earth populations to new planet, destroy all original earths. Problem solved. 
Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Oct 18, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2014 04:12
|
|
|
The Question IRL posted:
Yeah, I bet the Illuminati are going to end up having missed something fundamental that could have nipped this all in the bud if they hadn't been so arrogant and secretive, or something along those lines, but I wouldn't say they're villains like some people have said - it's an impossible situation and they did what they could to save as many lives as possible within the rules of the game they knew, and I can see their logic in why a global announcement leading to worldwide panic isn't something they'd want to do, or leaving it to Cap if they thought it would lead to the inevitable death of everything. Lurdiak posted:Any time I try to get into the premise at all I just end up realizing how stupid it is to give superheroes a no win scenario that can't be solved without huge moral compromises. Like you know in the first Spider-man movie when the Green Goblin drops that busload of orphans and MJ and tells Spider-man he can only save one? And then Spider-man saves both because he's a superhero? This entire premise is like that on a grander scale, but instead of manning up and doing the impossible, the heroes are just whining at each other about what sacrifices need to be made. Overcoming the impossible is great and all, but having all situations be 100% solvable without any difficult decisions or serious loss every single time isn't very interesting. Saving the universe from multiversal collapse is pretty drat fantastic feat by itself. The whole point of this story is setting up a situation where there isn't a magic third option that can wave away the problem without having to make a painful decision, to see how the characters tick when forced to do something awful. Pushing the characters so far is what makes this an interesting story. If it was a story where they magically whipped up a solution in a lab without a single innocent life being hurt it would be honestly a spectacularly boring story. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Oct 18, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2014 13:41
|
|
|
TNG posted:I kinda hated it, and it sort of encapsulates a lot of what I hate about Hickman's version of Tony Stark. I really like his run, and I feel that it's had a lot of strong and interesting characterizations, but Iron Man is not one of them. His Iron Man is either 1)Getting verbally destroyed, 2)Getting beaten up by someone, 3)Both. He's sorta been this big stupid straw man that Hickman keeps wanting to take down a peg every time he's on page. It's made the character really one note. Blah blah Tony you suck, blah blah I'm going to beat you up to show you how much you suck, blah blah Please dumb it down for a dummie like me, Reed. As someone who is a newish reader, who hasn't had time to get sick of Tony, I actually liked his character in that - I think the problem with Tony Stark is people keep writing these 'redemption' stories, and then immediately after some other author writes him doing something super evil, so he has to be sorry all over again so people can forgive him enough to still be a hero. It's gunna happen after this too, when he has to make amends for Superior Tony's actions. If they want him to stay a hero, let him actually have development that sticks, or just make him go full bad for real - however cheap that would feel after his countless apparently sincere regrets.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2014 00:16
|
|
|
Even though the stories with his weird city weren't the best, I do like the whole idea of Tony deciding to aggressively do good and improve the world in ways unrelated to superheroics that don't end up backfiring in some world-shattering way as some demonstration of the hubris of trying to use superscience on anything but blowing up supervillains. I like the Iron Man character (though i'm unfairly biased by having my real first experiences being the movies and RDJ) and it always seems to me like a lot of his stupidest moments are just a writer making him do something evil/stupid for cheap shocks to try and grab people's attention enough to sell a few more comics, which is stepping on an otherwise entertaining character. Some people could argue that Tony IS an irredeemable unlikeable rear end in a top hat due to stuff he's done in the past, but since it's a comic book and they can just aggressively pretend things didn't happen, it'd be better of they keep taking cues from the movie Iron Man everyone likes instead, honestly. It's okay if he does stupid things occasionally but he shouldn't just be the default guy they turn to to cause some inter-avenger squabble in every single story, and to pretty much always end up being proven in the wrong. I'm hoping the whole Incursion storyline doesn't end with the Illuminati and Tony being outright proven as completely and utterly wrong, and that there was some magic fix that would have fallen into their laps if they fawned sufficiently enough upon perfect and saintly Steve Rogers who is always in the right about everything. As someone who the major part of his experience with Cap is through the Hickman comics, he's beginning to seriously get on my nerves. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Nov 21, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2014 03:12
|
|
|
Nevvy Z posted:The problem is short of inventing imaginary problems the Marvel U simply can't let the super genius heroes fix everything. It's a theme that gets explored a bunch in indie comics and self contained books but it'll just never happen in the main universes because they want them to stay identifiable with the real world. They don't have to turn it into Star Trek, but giving the world some small sci-fi touches that don't completely change the general look and feel of the world would be a good thing, I think, considering how much ridiculously amazing tech is practically standard issue for SHIELD and AIM and whatnot. It's easy enough to handwave cure-alls or flying cars as too expensive or too dangerous to mass produce, but the smaller things would be nice. They should cure goddamn cancer by now though, considering how often it's overused as a tragic disease for the friend/love interest/family to die from or to cause drama. I'm sure they can come up with some other disease, real or not, that would be harder to cure with nanotechnology and sorcery and genetic modification and microscopic surgeons. Gatts posted:Wasn't Stan Lee's vision of Tony Stark and Iron Man to create an extremely unlikable hero in the first place? I thought I read that. I read that not so much that he was supposed to be an unlikeable hero, but to create a likeable hero despite representing a whole lot of stuff that his readers very much did not like. I think Punisher fits more in the mold of the deliberately extremely unlikeable 'hero' than Iron Man. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Nov 21, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2014 04:21
|
|
|
Codependent Poster posted:Maybe you want to watch how many communion wafers you're eating! I admit that one actually made me laugh out loud.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2015 01:14
|
|
|
I couldn't resist, I had to google it and see who it was. But.. what? how? when? who? where? huh?  The single panel he leaked just makes you ask a billion more questions, it's not worth it! Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Mar 11, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2015 02:32
|
|
|
DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Yes. Yes you should. I can only imagine the massive amount of making GBS threads on Tony is going to get after all this inversion stuff blows over, when everyone already hated him because of the Illuminati. He can't even go 'but i was mind controlled!' because everyone already wanted him in prison BEFORE then.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2015 05:44
|
|
|
Vitamin P posted:My local library only had the first volume of Infinity, the big war between the Avengers and the Builders. Is it worth picking the rest of the story up, or does the story just meander to an end? Infinity is the first part of the story that directly leads to the to the big apocalypse that destroys the Marvel Universe for the Secret Wars event his summer (which also looks like it'll be incredibly fun) - it's a big deal and is really fun. the Infinity event has technically ended, but Infinity was really three comics, 'Infinity' 'Avengers' and 'New Avengers' - and Avengers and New Avengers have continued on, following the ramifications of Infinity, even though Infinity is over. If you get Infinity, though, you'll need to get New Avengers and Avengers, it won't make any sense without them. All the books involved have a little chart that shows the reading order. I don't know if the Infinity volumes include the Avengers/New Avengers stuff, but they're literally required if you want the plot to make any sense at all. 
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2015 01:05
|
|
|
Skwirl posted:He's talking about a trade paperback, which I'm pretty sure sure includes the relevant issues of Avengers and New Avengers. I remember reading somewhere that someone bought an Infinity TPB that just had the Infinity books in it and nothing else. If I'm wrong, then all the better I guess.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2015 01:36
|
|
|
Tamizander Rey posted:Possible, but why would Dr. Strange be rather shocked at a lot of energy? If it was a container holding the kind of energy that could destroy a million universes that'd be pretty shocking.
|
|
#
¿
May 2, 2015 00:08
|
|
|
Yvonmukluk posted:Hey, he admits that it might have been no more successful than the Illuminati's own efforts. But it's preferably to the secret club of elitist pricks who ultimately failed miserably. You do realize that Doom had his own secret club of elitist pricks that saved the universe, right? The good guys will probably be responsible for putting it back together, but Doom and to a lesser degree the Illuminati and even Cabal are responsible for letting everyone have enough time to do that. (Doom wouldn't have had enough time to get Molecule Man if 616 died in the first couple incursions, alternatively doom wouldn't have gone back at all and there would never have been incursions, just all universes suddenly ending simultaneously with no forewarning). The illuminati did things wrong, but the people who would rather let the universes collide than destroy other earths weren't any more right. The whole thing is essentially an attempt to make a situation where there's no easy way out where everybody is saved without some sacrifice, which means there wasn't any solution everyone ~working together~ would have found. Superhero morality is good and all but this is just a situation where it just doesn't apply.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2015 01:33
|
|
|
SynthOrange posted:Ah yes, what classic literature describes as a Kobayashi Maru scenario. You mean where the super-amazing main character pulled a magical solution out of his rear end that solved all the problems without any consequences because he's the hero? At least what happened with the incursions was just a slightly less total defeat instead of a magical turnaround that fixed everything. (which would have felt like a cop out after all that buildup)
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2015 07:48
|
|
|
Yeah I got the whole classic literature thing being a joke, I was just comparing the two situations as I understood them for the hell of it, since in that case they just dodged the whole issue with a solution when the whole point was there not to be one.Lurdiak posted:You didn't actually see that movie, did you? No, I've just heard about it as a no-win situation where the main character just cheats so he avoids the whole dilemma altogether, and is the only person smart enough in the history of ever to do so. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 10:35 on May 14, 2015 |
|
#
¿
May 14, 2015 10:29
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 22, 2024 04:53 |
|
|
Lurdiak posted:This is to set up that the character has never faced a situation where there's no perfect solution, and then later in the movie he has to face that situation and lose his best friend even though he did everything "right". The no-win scenario is real and he never really had to face it before, because he thought he was too smart for that. Well, then that shows me - I'd only heard of it outside of the context of the whole movie.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2015 10:36
|
|