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DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Happy Noodle Boy posted:

For all his smugness and arrogance, even he struggled over the decision to be what the illuminati needed him to be.

Deadpool posted:

Yeah, I don't think there's any struggle at all. Except the struggle to stop biting his tongue and get this poo poo going.

I think there's definitely some struggle there, but it's a struggle that's mostly already ended; we've seen it happening for several issues now.

Namor is pretty sure that in order to save the Earth, the Illuminati are going to have to become mass murderers. He hates that. But if it has to be done, he'll damned well suck it up and do it - because he's a king, not a man, and he can't afford to put 'being who and what I want to be' above the well-being of his realm (and, by extension, his dimension).

This is why he and T'challa have been talking about being a King for the last, like, year and a half now. Everyone else is trying to be a hero; Namor is the one saying that this isn't a time for heroes. That's why he's so dismissive of the Not-JLA; by being a hero, by having "hope," you permit yourself to avoid making the difficult choices that a King has to make every day.

The look on Namor's face in those panels isn't 'Namor struggling to come to terms with doing what he has to do.' It's 'Namor realizing that that struggle is already over, and it sucks, and dwelling on it isn't helping so let's just get this poo poo done so we can all go home and try to find a way to look at ourselves in the mirror.'

That sequence is Namor giving up. Which makes it, to my mind, all the more emotional.

EDIT:

Hakkesshu posted:

Was he always like this, or is that a more recent development?

There's always been a degree of Namor being the "I'm not a superhero, I'm a loving King" type to some degree or another, but it's only comparatively recently that that's become a major facet of his character rather than just an added wrinkle.

DivineCoffeeBinge fucked around with this message at 09:31 on Jun 14, 2014

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DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Dammit Who? posted:

This may be a caaa-raaaazay opinion, but I'm going to say gathering your richest friends together to rule the world in secret because no one else, certainly not the people being ruled, can be trusted to do it is actually evil.

I'm... not entirely certain where any incarnation of the Illuminati, much less the current set-up, has done anything one might call "rule the world in secret." Have they done poo poo in secret that maybe other people might have wanted to have an opinion about? Absolutely! But "rule the world?" Seriously?

At what point did we start confusing the Marvel Comics Illuminati with the Bavarian Illuminati?

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Buddington posted:

Yeah, if we already are reading comic books where we accept that vigilantes acting autonomously is alright, then the Illuminati are just a little further down the road from that. They just aren't letting the rest of the vigilantes know about their vigilantism.

Well, I mean, I don't want to whitewash what the Illuminati is doing here. There's a very real, very valid argument to be made that that poo poo ain't okay.

It's just a far cry from ruling the loving world.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Happy Noodle Boy posted:

I actually don't know much about their initial efforts but aside from trying to get rid of the Hulk (which kinda backfired), being guards of the Infinity Gauntlet (a good thing), and now saving Earth and the universe itself from incursions, what else have they done? Like I can kinda get why Cap would be pissed but given the incursions, even if the Avengers were aware of it what could they have done different? At the very best, you'd have Clint applying for Illuminati membership. Widow agreeing 100% with what's going on. Thor may have some issues with it (as shown), but Hyperion loving survived an incursion so he knows what's t stake.

I don't think the rest of the Avengers would sign right on - I think many of them, honestly, would start sounding a lot more like Sun God up there. They have hope.

Remember that almost every member of the current Illuminati has been driven to cynicism by recent events:
--Tony Stark had to erase his own brain and then while he was still coming to grips with what a dick he'd been, he had basically his whole life torn down by Ezekiel Stane and oh yeah he recently found out his own backstory is bullshit.
--Beast watched the man he idolized, Charles Xavier, get murdered by a Phoenix-possessed Cyclops, then he tried to make things better by loving with the timeline of the original five X-Men and only made things worse and more dangerous.
--Black Panther had to abdicate his throne to become King of the Dead, and from that position has watched Wakanda's vibranium reserves - the thing that has allowed them to remain a viable world power - go away.
--Namor was possessed by the Phoenix and sort of murdered a lot of Wakandans, and before he could really manage to come to grips with what he'd done as one of the Phoenix Five, Wakandan strike teams massacred basically every Atlantean they could find.
--Doctor Strange's recent history has (tragically, and often as a result of poor writing) been an endless cavalcade of fuckups, things he should have stopped but didn't, things he should have done but couldn't. He lost the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme for a long while and only regained it after being willing to use black magic.
--Black Bolt has never been a hero, only a King - and he's laying low after deliberately loving up the entire Inhuman social structure and causing a worldwide eruption of new superhumans, and his place has basically been taken by Maximus the loving Mad.

Hell, the only one of the group you could plausibly claim hasn't had reason to be cynical lately is Reed Richards - and Richards has always been the guy who will let his intellectual conclusions get in the way of what he knows to be right.


In essence, all of the Illuminati (with the potential exception of Banner, who only just now showed up) are trying the "hard men making hard choices" act because they've lost faith in traditional superheroics. They no longer believe, as Sun God does, that hope is enough, that doing the right thing no matter the cost is the way to go. Cap believed that, so they had to mindwipe him and kick him out of the group - not because he would have stopped them, but because he would have shown them all what they had forgotten - namely faith.

The Illuminati aren't 'evil' - they're broken. And I would bet, from what I've seen of Hickman's work thus far, that he wouldn't be doing such a damned fine job of showing us how broken they are if he didn't intend for a redemption arc down the line. The payoff is going to be that the Illuminati stop being such dicks, I'm betting, and knowing Hickman it'll be told so well that it may even stick for a bit.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

d00gZ posted:

Not for nothing, but there are a few issues here

1. Doc Strange became Sorcerer Supreme again during the last arc of Bendis's New Avengers, not in this one; it had nothing to do with him selling his soul for the Words of Power.
2. Beast joined the Illuminati _before_ his time travel gambit, since he was pre-new-form in the first arc of NA.
3. Panther stated in Hickman's F4 arc that they'd actually quickly recovered from the loss of vibranium. He said this to Reed Richards pre-Incursions; he has no reason to lie.
4. Maximus hasn't taken control of Inhuman society; he's presumed dead as much as Black Bolt is. Medusa's running that show.
5. Saying Tony's "backstory is bullshit" is pretty disingenuous; he found out he was adopted. He's still Tony Stark, raised the same way with the same parents etc. Saying otherwise is some weird nature>nurture poo poo I can't get down with, and can't imagine Gillen or Hickman would be down with either.

Namor and T'Challa, sure, they are hosed UP, but everyone else was actually in a pretty healthy place at the beginning of New Avengers.

Doc became SS again in Bendis' final run, yes - after he utilized black magic while unafraid and accepting of the consequences. The Ancient One's shade/vision/avatar/whatever explicitly said that he was not ready to regain the mantle of the Sorcerer Supreme until he was ready to overcome this final hurdle within himself (or something along those lines; I don't have the issue in front of me). Maximus hasn't taken Bolt's place in Inhuman society, but he's taken it in the Illuminati. Tony's finding out he was adopted doesn't change who he is, no - but if you don't think "found out he was adopted" is the kind of thing that has severe psychological repercussions, questioning of one's self-identity, et cetera... well, suffice it to say that that's the sort of thing that most of the people I know who discovered their adoption later in life (as opposed to having parents who were open about it from day one) have had to deal with.

But yeah, you're right - a lot of the Illuminati were in a healthy place at the beginning of NA's current volume. None of them - some as a result of things happening in their own books, some as a result of things happening in NA itself - have stayed there, which is sort of my point; being in the Illuminati is slowly but surely breaking these people, it's grinding them down. This, I suspect, is a part of what Hickman means when he says that the theme of Avengers is Life and the theme of New Avengers is Death - there are metaphorical deaths, too, and the Illuminati are experiencing several of them as we watch.





...alternatively, I may be overthinking it a bit; Hickman's plotting and writing style is the kind of story I love, and I enjoy reading into the psychological ramifications perhaps a bit overmuch, it must be admitted. Still, I think it bears noting that 'being in the Illuminati is doing Bad Things to these characters' is a fairly significant plot point that's going to pay off in the end. At least, I hope so.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Lurdiak posted:

It's mostly surprising because of how Greg Pak made no bones about Hulk being the undisputed champion of punches during his long run with the character, to the point of just barely beating the loving Sentry in an all-out brawl.

To be fair, Hulk's power levels shift along with his rage; Pak was writing a much angrier Hulk.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Jiro posted:

I saw it more like this is one of those things where Steve can't punch his way out of it. Showing him how far the Avengers have gone into the future he just simply ignores it. Franklin telling him Tony fail and an early end happens BECAUSE STEVE STOPS THEM. And nothing not a frown nothing, just doesn't register in his brain that there isn't someone to punch in the face. And even saying flat out that whatever Future Clint said, to not do it. Doesn't matter because he's gonna do it anyway. Steve still trying to fight against the tide is all predestined or is meant to happen.

This is how I took it - that Steve's actions are 'locked in' not because you can't fight fate or whatever, but because of who he is. Telling Captain America that this is not a problem you can solve through Punching And Being Right And Just And Good And Moral While Also Still Punching is kind of like telling James T. Kirk that there is a problem that can't be solved by banging the alien chick. It doesn't matter if you're right; it simply will not compute for them, so why waste your breath?

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

hope and vaseline posted:

(But clearly it doesn't, or these future issues wouldn't exist in the first place. The Avengers would have nowhere to time skip forward to.)

The Illuminati can still fail without destroying their universe.

All it means is some other universe's Illuminati succeeds, and Earth-616 gets blown up before it can hit another Earth and cause a contraction/end both universes.




...gee, if only the Illuminati had some sort of backup planet that was, say, somehow comic-book-science-y 'merged' with their Earth that they could either sacrifice in Earth's place or possibly evacuate to or something... some kind of 'rogue planet,' say, possibly one sent backwards in time by someone cagey and near-omnipotent like, oh, Franklin Richards...

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Kaleidoscope posted:

Isn't destroying an earth a stop gap? Eventually the incursions lead to the death of the multiverse.

Destroying an Earth stops any future incursions from threatening that dimension; both dimensions are safe. It's the destruction of dimensions that hastens the eventual death of the multiverse - so, oddly enough, destroying every Earth in the multiverse actually saves the multiverse.

Just not, you know, any of the Earths.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company
Yeah, Black Swan blew up her old Earth because if she hadn't and it actually collided with 616-Earth, then they both would have been destroyed (along with their universes) and she would have had no place to travel to.

(E: good to see I'm not the only one still rocking the Hard Hat Spidey.)

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

The Question IRL posted:

Thirdly, unless this story isn't finished then Hawkeye was wrong. Tony Stark being present did not in any way change the outcome of the fight with Great Society. Then again, maybe that was the point that time travel doesn't allow you to make significant changes. Franklin Richards does talk about that a lot.

Sure it did. Tony being present meant his gauntlet could be used to stop Strange's Pet Nyarlahotep. Who's to say how much worse things would have been - how much more tragic things could have gotten - had that not happened? I don't know how significant that change will end up being, but I suspect it'll be significant enough.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Gavok posted:

With people bringing time travel up, all I can think of is the graphic novel Squadron Supreme: Death of a Universe, where there's a big Galactus-like threat (a giant, white silhouette of a man) coming to seemingly destroy the Squadron's Earth. Hyperion asks Mastermind, the Lex Luthor analogue, for help. Between getting the respect he feels he deserves and his intent to prove how awesome he is, Mastermind accepts and tells him he'll meet up with him in a few minutes. Mastermind teleports in front of the Squadron and removes his helmet to show that he's been working on a solution to the problem for decades and is now an old man.

His plan fails anyway and he high-tails it to another reality.

It's a cool subplot I wouldn't mind seeing revisited, but there aren't really any genius characters in Marvel who could be spared in that sense.

Nitpick, but - Master Menace.

(Also, high-five for being one of the only other people I've encountered that loves the Squadron Supreme books enough to remember Death of a Universe)

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company
I like the notion that laws apply to a situation like this. Are people from other dimensions even considered to be protected by the laws of this dimension? Would killing an extradimensional 'invader' - or a whole planet of them - even be, legally speaking, illegal?

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Gavok posted:

I skimmed the final issue of Avengers Undercover out of curiosity and despite all of Hopeless' problems, I thought the dude had a pretty great handle on Baron Zemo. Even though he's still a supervillain and his logo is a Z done in the style of the swastika, he's got all the right tics. The personable dialogue, the fact that he thinks Arcade is a piece of poo poo and how his plot is ultimately a way of letting the world know how much of a hold SHIELD has on them.

As someone who loved Zemo in Thunderbolts, that's probably the best I could have asked for.

I've got to say, I can't argue with this. As irritated as I was by Zemo's reversion to outright villainy in Brubaker's Cap run (and then subsequently mollified once Zemo's motivations got explained), the end of Avengers Undercover really rang true for me vis a vis Zemo; he didn't try and take over the world or anything, he just tried to shake up the existing status quo through virtue of being correct. It was very, very Zemo.

Such a shame that all the material leading up to it was such steaming crap.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

The Goon posted:

With all of the major changes happening in the Marvel Universe - Thor Woman and Armless Odinson, Black Captain America and geriatric Steve, Super-Evil Iron Man, dead Wolverine, dead brainless Xavier, Brainiac Hulk, etc. etc. - anyone who thinks Marvel isn't moving towards a line-wide reboot in a year or so is delusional.

Number of times Marvel has done a line-wide reboot: 0
Number of times fans have said "Marvel is going to do a line-wide reboot, they have to" in the past thirty years: approx. Infinity


You sure you wanna toss around 'delusional' like that, Overreaction Lad?

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

The Goon posted:

Yeah I'm sure, Hyperbole Boy.

I guess we'll see who's right in future issues of the Legion of Comic Geeks.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company
Welp. I guess all the cries of "but where's Doom during all of this!" have been neatly laid to rest.

Holy poo poo that was an amazing issue of New Avengers.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

twistedmentat posted:

Was that the Great Thinker working for Doom? I haven't seen him since the 60s (issues of Avengers).

If you mean the Mad Thinker, then yes, that was him. He's been around here and there - I recall his appearances in v1 of the New Warriors pretty fondly - but he's never exactly been an A-lister. Still, he's pretty cool.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

redbackground posted:

He showed up a bunch just previously in Hickman's FF as well.

Speaking of the Thinker and FF, I think my favorite recent use of him was in the brief fill-in stint that Dwayne McDuffie (I think it was him...) had on FF around the time of Civil War, where he basically said 'Civil War has done a really lovely job making Reed relatable, let me fix that.'

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.

IIRC, whether or not Reed was correct was deliberately ambiguous - but by presenting him as a guy who was on the pro-Reg side because he felt he had to be, not because he woke up one morning and decided to be a Cape Nazi or whatever, he became significantly more relatable. Mind you, that might be my own Asimov fanboyishness at work... Anyways, I remember the Thinker being pretty cool in that brief run.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

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.

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.

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.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Goatmask posted:

Was that Wundajin/Thunderer getting killed by the Cabal? Cos that would be amazing.

What's the deal with Molecule Man? Just a very powerful supervillain?

Molecule Man basically can do anything with matter. Like, at all. He's not quite a walking Cosmic Cube, but he's close.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

SynthOrange posted:

What if there's a multiversal scale galactus being, eating entire universes? Wooaaaaaaaah. :catdrugs:

......and what if his name is Franklin Richards?

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

The Question IRL posted:

Last I heard Amadeus Cho was the head of the Olympus Corporation, a multi billion dollar company that represented the Greek God's on Earth.

So to hear him gloat about why he deliberately doesn't pay taxes because he is smart and he doesn't like the idea of where the money goes. Um....yeah.

Head of a multibillion dollar corporation avoiding paying taxes THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN

Cho's just young enough and Internet-savvy enough to have been roped into lolbertarianism. Give him a few years, he'll grow out of it.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

IUG posted:

I'm pretty sure one of the characters said in one of the issues that this doesn't work, they've observed it through the portal, and this doesn't stop it from happening to your universe. I'll crawl through the digital comics to see if I can find it.

Destroying your own Earth stops the incursions - but it also cuts your universe off from the Multiverse, which means you no longer have any chance whatsoever at stopping whatever is destroying the multiverse. Your universe will be perfectly safe until the multiverse itself collapses, which will happen, and you can no longer do poo poo about it.

(e: which is to say, Happy Noodle Boy, your solution won't work because you're cut off from the incursion cycle the moment your Earth gets destroyed, it doesn't matter if you make a copy.)

It's kind of like... okay. Say you're a baseball pitcher. You really don't want to give up a home run. So you throw nothing but balls, giving up seventeen walks in an inning. You didn't give up any home runs! But you're still gonna lose the game. That's what destroying your universe's Earth accomplishes.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

GraPar posted:

Thought on Val's message at the end of the issue? My initial idea was that it was something like don't worry about destroying the other worlds, just make it so Earth will dodge all future incursions while the rest of the universes destroy each other.

"Dear Dad, stay the hell out of Uncle Doom's way and everything'll be just fine."

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Web Jew.0 posted:

They've pretty much made up and hanging out again at the end of Axis #3.

Considering that "people acting oddly out of character" is kind of a main plot point of SIXIS, I wouldn't put much stock in that.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Leper Residue posted:

What are you guys talking about when you say he's inverted?

The effects of the currently-ongoing AXIS (or SIXIS depending on how literally you take the logo) crossover center around 'inversions' - in short, good guys turn bad, bad guys turn good. It's outright stated in the intro page to the first issue of Superior Iron Man that when the crossover is done and everyone goes back to normal, Tony will avoid the 'back to normal' thingy so he can continue to be a douche.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Leper Residue posted:

Ah, so that's why he went off on that rant about how they'll have to beg for his help? I thought that seemed rather petty even for him.

Well, that's the thing - we don't really know. As has been mentioned, the whole 'invade the Cabal to shut them down single-handedly' bit seems like it may or may not be wholly appropriate for Inverted Tony; I can see it, but I'm not sold on it, if you take my meaning. If Tony's still inverted in his own book in 6 months, then yes, that's definitely the case, but until then I'm not sure I want to commit beyond saying 'yeah, that seems pretty likely.'

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

E the Shaggy posted:

Inverted Tony is actually one of the only things I'm actually enjoying about Axis.

Inverted Tony is actually awesome, and I say that as someone who has spent a lot more time thinking about Iron Man than is really healthy. I'm just hoping they resist the temptation to string it out for too long.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

TNG posted:

Well Marvel has played around with "Evil Tony" or more accurately "Tony Stark behaving badly" in various ways over the years.

The thing to remember about Iron Man, IMHO, is that Iron Man's arch-nemesis has never been the Mandarin or Justin Hammer or the Spymaster or Obadiah Stane or any of those dudes. Iron Man's arch-nemesis is Tony Stark.

Armor Wars is a perfect example. Justin Hammer has stolen Stark's technology and Stark is determined to hunt down every example of it. That includes the Guardsmen units in the Vault. Let me reiterate - the prison guards in the prison for supervillains. And he goes and shuts them all down. Sure, it'll make it nigh-impossible to shut down any prison riots by the, y'know, supervillains... but hey, that doesn't matter as much as making sure Tony Stark's technology remains in the hands of Tony Stark, the only man responsible enough to use it, right?

This pattern repeats again and again. Tony knows better, just ask him. And it's hard to say he shouldn't think that way, because ninety-nine times out of a hundred, he does know better. And when he fails, he fails big. That's his flaw, that's what makes him interesting; he's got a serious case of hubris. He becomes a hero by rising above that hubris, not by eliminating it; it's still a part of him, but when the chips are down he gets over it and does what he has to do.

That's why I don't think I can agree with saying "Jonathan Hickman sucks at writing Iron Man," because we haven't gotten to the part where Tony rises above his hubris yet (if, admittedly, he ever does). Hickman's clearly got a grand story in mind, and we're still in act two, maybe the beginnings of act three.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

E the Shaggy posted:

I love this run, it's god drat amazing.

The biggest problem I have, and this is more with Marvel in general, is that eventually, everything has to go back to "status quo" but how the gently caress do you have everything go back to normal when the Illuminati were killing worlds? Strange is still doing it! You can't have them all be buddy buddy with the Avengers ever again which of course leads back to the idea that Secret Wars ends with a reboot.

How the gently caress do you have everything go back to normal when Tony Stark is running SHIELD and Captain America is dead?

Think of the "return to status quo" as an ongoing story instead of a flipped switch. Civil War brought us Secret Invasion brought us Dark Reign brought us Siege brought us The Heroic Age. The fallout from Hickman's opus will probably take some time to settle as well, and that's a good thing, because it means that instead of one good story we could get multiple good stories.

Marvel is not gonna have a reboot.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

The Question IRL posted:

That's what happened when Mark Gruenwald had Cap lose the Super Soldier Serum due to Crack Cocaine use*.
After they removed the Serum he was still bulky and strong, but he could get tired and had to improvise a little more.



*= Granted this was called ICE, but it was totally supposed to be Crack.

Meth, actually. http://www.druginfo.adf.org.au/drug-facts/ice

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

TwoPair posted:

Here's your answer. I guarantee you that if Hickman wanted Wolverine to be in a scene way back when he plotted this thing, Sabretooth is gonna fly in and take his place. Or maybe they'll just strap some claws onto one of the Shang-Chis

I actually think it's kind of downplaying what Hickman's been able to do by saying "he doesn't give a poo poo about keeping up with other books." He has paid attention to the things that happen in other books, and adjusted his story to fit - and often done so better than the stories he's having to accommodate. Hickman wrote a vastly better SpOck than Dan Slott did, in my opinion, for instance. He's not just keeping up with what's happening in other books, he's using them to make his own story better while still not straying from his original gameplan, which is a really, really hard thing to pull off.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Lurdiak posted:

That's true of almost everyone who wrote Spock. It would have been a great time for Spider-man if it wasn't for the main book.

Granted!

I still think, though, that there's a difference between Hickman's "I'm going to incorporate other books' events into my book without losing track of my original vision" and, for instance, Bendis' "Wolverine is still in my book even though he died two months ago I give zero fucks."

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company
Oh man I hope Jean gets to stay dead. But those've gotta be placeholder characters, since Spider-Gwen is there and we already know that her ongoing will be in a separate continuity.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

squidgee posted:

Finally looped back around to the dead Living Tribunal!

Is it wrong that when we hit that point in the book my first thought was "wow, all those people who were bitching that that plot point was dropped are gonna feel silly now, huh?"

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

SalTheBard posted:

What if Rabum Alal is Grills from Hawkeye? Maybe being killed by the Tracksuits is what set this all in motion :(

...I would root for Rabum Alal to win and the universe to be destroyed.

:(

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Cheap Trick posted:

Also I choose to believe that everything Squizzle posted is true (even if it's not).

It's not, but it should be.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Nevvy Z posted:

Honestly, I assumed it was true and that all that's just been gradually retconned/forgotten. LIke, Living Tribunal created the way he described, forgotten for 10 years, is now a cosmic entity with no reference to his origin.

Believe me, I wish that was so. If anyone deserves to be a superhero it's Earl Warren, you know? But no.

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DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Boogaleeboo posted:

I find it nearly impossible to believe Doom would make a religion that doesn't involve people explicitly saying "VICTOR VON DOOM IS THE GREATEST!" on a regular basis.

Rabum Alal is Latverian for "Hail Doom." If only someone had used Google Translate!

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