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Leper Residue posted:To be fair, Hickman has just been killing it lately. Bendis in his prime had as cool of ideas as this poo poo, he just takes way too long to do anything with them and has no idea what to do when he gets around to them. I'd be really surprised if Hickman let things drag out. Going by his Secret Warriors and FF runs, the guy clearly functions from the outset with a beginning and an ending in mind. To be fair, I wouldn't have thought Bendis had overstaid his welcome on Avengers if he had ended things with his first NA run, I still think it's a great run that got a bit long in the tooth in some of the latter arcs, but it worked and had a great ending. My biggest gripe is with his subsequent Avengers and New Avengers volumes.
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Jun 26, 2014 10:02
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I really like the approach to time travel / history / causality that says that everything that has to happen will happen, not because of Fate but because at the end of the day, there are trends, currents that will get a river where it's supposed to get, even if you deviate it a bit here and there. My understanding of Franklin's speech was that Fate isn't a mysterious force but the sum of an incredibly high number of deterministic processes, and that high complexity makes science look like magic. That's very Foundation. Mapmakers are actually a great example: whatever the reality, there will be adaptoids and they will evolve into Mapmakers somehow. It's a nice, yet believable, departure from the classic causal approach to time travel, because if you're not Kurt Busiek, you'll probably gently caress it up anyway. There's always the Bendis approach of "gently caress it, let me tell my story" which I don't mind as long as you have an engaging story to tell, ie not Ultron or Atom. The part that really messes with my head is how local time is. As you guys mentioned, there's this whole incursion mythos that makes it look like the incursions have been going on forever. The way Black Swan speaks of some things, they sound like ancient history. Does this mean parallel planes don't necessarily share a common time, or that when an incursion happens, one Earth can be further down its time line than the one it's facing? The ultimately confusing part is definitely when Franklin says the premature end of everything has happened / will happen. I'm on the fence about it's meaning as I see 3 explanations: 1. It has already almost happened and he's manipulating Cap to make sure it doesn't happen. 2. It has actually happened, I'm missing a subtlety, and the end of everything isn't the end of everything. 3. Time and space aren't exactly linear, there's no straight causality, and the future we saw was one where what's occurring right now in New Avengers hasn't really played out. This is confusing but what I mean is that the timeline where there's a future with Franklin, Groot, etc. is a timeline untouched yet by incursions, as there have only been a few so far and they've been repelled. But the moment the end of everything happens, every future disappears. Franklin seemed to imply this when he mentioned time being not linear, but at the same time, he does mention incursions as past history. gently caress it, these books make me feel dumb and I do have theoretical physics and engineering degrees.
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Jul 10, 2014 23:57
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After reading this week's Avengers World, I once again find myself thinking the book has weird pacing as a monthly read but it will probably be a pretty great trade. I mean, it still jumps from one place to the other every issue and you kind of lose sight of people when you haven't seen them in the book for 3 months, and there's this decompression going on where it does take its time to not get much poo poo done. Hell, it took one issue to have a Shang Chi / Gorgon fight. But it was an awesome fight. But at the same time, I like the Caselli issues and I love that it picks up all that poo poo that was left dangling: the Spear being an actual organization, all these Avengers that dropped off the other book after Infinity and plot points from Spencer's Secret Avengers. The bottom line is that it's basically a Hickmanverse companion.
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Jul 16, 2014 22:03
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Jiro posted:Any Avengers book that focuses on the adventures of Sunspot and Cannonball having bar fights in the future is a good book. Still, that Emmett Brown line was great.
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Jul 16, 2014 22:28
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I'm trying to make sense of these Avengers NOW announcements, namely how they will work with Hickman wrapping up his grand story. I don't care one way or the other about what was announced but I do hope it won't gently caress up Avengers / New Avengers. Hell, I hope these books interact like Remender's stuff does: stay out of current continuity while the various story arc unfolds and put the pieces together afterwards. Deadpool posted:Those are very much Nick Spencer problems. Or at least they were in Ultimate X-Men. The difference here is that some of these issues are really fun. Like this one for example. Loved this issue. And when there's followup on it in three months I'll probably love that too. Last page was fantastic. Yeah, I'm bitching about the pacing but each issue does work very well on its own, even though whatever plot lines it raises will take months to be addressed again. I guess it's just I'm not used to this format in a monthly book.
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Jul 17, 2014 08:33
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Aaron would be a good choice and he would make sense considering he'll still be on Thor. Plus, his last team book, WatX was pretty good. I guess the other option would be to have someone who could go for that classic Avengers feel, Busiek or someone like him. Someone like Waid or Robinson could work.
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Jul 17, 2014 15:48
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Deadpool posted:I don't think Avengers Now is actually a team is it? There's a picture floating around with Angela, the new big three, a fire inhuman dude, Scarlet Witch and people I'm forgetting. It does look like the titular team. Edit: as for my earlier worries about this having an impact on Hickman's stuff, a previously solicited cover for Avengers did feature Falcon Cap and the god previously known as Thor. So Hickman will apparently take that into account. The timeline between Remender's Cap, Hickman's titles and Original Sin will be fun to work out. I guess Steve will turn old in Avengers after the current time travel shenanigans. PelvicNerve fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Jul 17, 2014 |
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Jul 17, 2014 17:13
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I'd read a book about C-list Avengers based in San Francisco, their presence would drive up prices in the area and they would end up having their Avengers bus blocked by protestors so they'd miss missions and stuff. Then again, that sounds more like Superior Foes. I guess I'd just like a lovely Avengers book, like Nextwave.
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Jul 17, 2014 17:39
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Whoa, I just realized we're getting 5 Avengers titles next week. This is mad. That almost makes up for no Original Sin for another 3 weeks.
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Jul 23, 2014 21:56
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That's great news, I haven't touched Mighty at all because Land's art is such a huge turn off for me. How is Ewing? I can't remember ever reading a book he wrote.
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Jul 25, 2014 23:35
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New Avengers was pretty incredible. I honestly had this stone on my stomach that grew heavier with each page. I like how Hickman has built that up. I mean, we knew that was coming but the execution is pretty perfect. There's so much weight to every panel, to every panel. And he fantastically conveys how any side of the argument is wrong. Or is it right? Poor everyone, honestly.
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Jul 31, 2014 07:39
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Doesn't Swan state very early on that there are like 19 methods to stop an incursion? I'm a bit surprised they focused so much on the WMD approach. As geniuses, I'd have thought finding and documenting all the possibilities would have been a challenge they'd rise to. If only to make sure they had exhausted all other options before resorting to world destroying. poo poo, Reed should have gotten Valeria to do it, she'd have shown them what's what. Or even Franklin and his powers, because yeah, getting kids involved is less immoral than getting in a situation where you have to choose between billions and trillions. Still, in that context , I believe Namor was right. In the sense that once you're there and the only option is the one they had, you've made your bed and you have to sleep in it. You can't make weapons and somehow believe you'll never have to use them. There's no possible deterrence in this scenario, any weapon is designed to be a very practical solution to a problem. So yeah, I'd kind of hate Reed or Tony to be somehow judgmental of Namor.
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Jul 31, 2014 23:41
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To be fair, if we account for bad characterization and writing, there was gently caress all to expect from Cap and the other Avengers in the first place as solution finders. These are the guys who 2 years ago thought: "hey, the Phoenix Force is headed to Earth and is coming for the mutant messiah. Let's show up on the X-Men's doorstep with as many people as we can and ask them to hand over the girl. That show of force will go smoothly. It's not like they've turned into a paranoid paramilitary force after seeing their numbers greatly reduced and us doing nothing to help them. Plus, we have Uncle Wolverine." So yeah, moral compass my rear end.
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Aug 1, 2014 08:19
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The real reason the dude never talks is because he's constantly eating, not some fancy voice power. But yeah, the art really didn't work for me, I hope that guy doesn't fill in on more issues. They're all acting like a bunch of pissy drama Kings for guys who just blew up a world. My favorite part was probably Strange as he seems to be the only one to have a sensible grasp of how and why they got there in the first place. Namor too I guess but his whole rear end in a top hat fish king schtick tends to get whatever he says buried under the smugness.
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Aug 6, 2014 20:58
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Also, T'Challa's argument makes no sense at all. He didn't choose for everyone to not use that bomb, he chose for himself to not do it. gently caress, that sociopathic series is turning us into monsters. As an aside, I'm rereading Hickman's FF and in retrospect, the difference between the Reeds and the Illuminati isn't very obvious.
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Aug 6, 2014 22:07
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I try to tell myself it's more a general endless war archetype than specifically a dumb middle-east analogy. It doesn't always work though.
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Aug 7, 2014 07:55
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I'd put 4 bucks in a Kickstarter to do that.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:22
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PaybackJack posted:I'd pledge at least $250 if we could get the whole NA run, redraw by Epting. That guy does such a nice job of shadowing. The darkness of the panels was so good for the theme of this book. I miss that. I'd love to have Epting redraw the non-Deodato issues though. After his Cap and Secret Avengers issues, I feel Butch Guice could be a great contender as well. Tangentially, I think Sorrentino isn't DC exclusive after his last Green Arrow issue and he could definitely fit the bill too. He's pretty much my favorite DC artist right now.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:56
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When Doom finds out even the other rear end in a top hat team didn't ring him, he'll be all  Great issue.
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Aug 20, 2014 18:57
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bobkatt013 posted:This is why he was not invited by Namor. This is also why having Doom on your team to go gently caress some other earth's poo poo would make sense. Back to this issue, I like that Hickman spent a moment to make the Illuminati contemplate the possibility that they had been utterly wrong about the incursions and had helped commit mass murder for no reason at all. With something like a dozen issues left, I do wonder how they're going to resolve the whole thing. IIRC, they (probably Reed or Tony) do state early on that something must have triggered that cascade of universal destruction and that the only solution would involve stopping that. As an aside, I started rereading Crisis yesterday and it opens with the destruction of Earth 3 in a way that is reminiscent of incursions. The overall stakes of Crisis are pretty much the same so I wonder if the solution wouldn't be multiversal. Hell, the Reeds would have probably figured something.
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Aug 20, 2014 21:21
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This will probably be obvious to everyone but I started wondering today why the incursions were cascading, instead of having on single Earth going on a collision course with other Earths until it was destroyed. Rereading New Avengers 2, Reed explicitly states that the reason for having several parallel threads is that when an incursion runs its full course and both universes are destroyed, it ripples to other universes which start their own incursion cycles. That's probably how we got to multiple cycles occurring at roughly the same time instead of sequentially. So basically, doing nothing not only destroys both universes but accelerates the general phenomenon. Conversely, I guess an overall solution would be to get every "infected" Earth out of the game one way or another. I'm pointing this out because this means that Reed and friends were willing to let things deteriorate further for the multiverse, while Thanos and his murderous friends are actually saving universes. That's hosed up.
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Aug 21, 2014 23:57
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Somewhere in a parallel universe, a badoon is naming his kid Namor. He's like a multiversal hero of Canton.
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Aug 22, 2014 00:27
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I wouldn't call letting 2 universes did without telling anyone "making up for their actions". These guys were willing to let everyone die because they couldn't stomach the situation they had put themselves in. I'm not cheering for world killers but in this context everyone is a world killer, no matter what they do. And inaction is a choice in itself, with very clearly outlined consequences. The only ones with a semblance of moral are those who don't know.
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Aug 23, 2014 01:22
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Yeah, there's a large number of pieces that have yet to fall into place. I'm trying to piece together things I had missed or forgotten and there's way more lore at the beginning of this run than I remembered. Reed mentions at one point that a possible explanation is that something is actively working towards the death of everything. I guess these are the Black Priests and Ebony Kings, considering they're offering worlds as sacrifices to Rabum Alal. And Rabum Alal's birth was what started it all according to Swan. I hope Rabum Alal doesn't turn out to be a giant dude they have to punch in the nose. Other things that have yet to come into play include Tony's version of Sol's Hammer and that World Killer he kept after Infinity. I wouldn't be surprised if all their galactic pals from Infinity helped too. WickedHate posted:Captain America and the Great Society. I think Hickman will take that choice out of the regular Avengers' hands anyway by having the Cabal on the loose, buying them time to figure a solution and keeping their hand cleans. If the Cabal keep killing worlds during the timeskip, they'll have destroyed an assload of Earths.
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Aug 23, 2014 01:55
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Once Strange has healed from that sick burn, he'll probably become a Black Priest or something. How far from it can he really be now that he's Cthulhued the gently caress out of the Justice League? I like the idea that the whole process, the "Wheel" is a transformative, self-sustaining system, that the ones exposed to it eventually die or become its agents. I wouldn't be too surprised if the Ebony Kings were Cabals / Illuminati who took its logic all the way. Iggles posted:Has anyone seen Franklin and Rabum Alal in the same room together? It turns out it's just Franklin Franklin and Valeria playing "the world ends" to prove their dad is kind of poo poo.
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Aug 24, 2014 19:52
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Seldom Posts posted:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem I'd say it's closer to the fat man than the vanilla experiment, as the fat man introduces the notion of a directly harmful "useful" action. But Hickman's experiment is even more elaborate than that as the "useful victim" is part of the potential victims whatever happens, they're not a third party like in the fat man. Still the fat man essentially illustrates both approaches on the matter : utilitarian vs aquinian, with the isolated action itself being morally bad, with a good outcome.
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Aug 26, 2014 16:08
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jsoh posted:theirs actually provisions in law that allow someone to do something that would otherwise be illegal if it will save some lifes. trillions of lives is probably enough lives to make that thing not murder. Still a dick move. Self defense is actually the original example of the Doctrine of Double Effect I kind of mentioned earlier. Where it gets muddy is that it relies entirely on one's intentions: the intent has to be to save a life, not take one. I guess an obvious point here is that Bruce, Strange, Reed and Tony are scientifically minded while BB, T'Challa and Namor are kings. Well, T'Challa is both. To various extents, these guys will judge the morality of an action by its outcome, they'll have a utilitarian view. That is not to say they're immoral or amoral but that superficially, the first thing they'll look at to evaluate morality are actual results. They'll still be going after a moral (in their view) resolution. On the other hand, Steve is a soldier and a very principled person so he'll focus more on the intent than the outcome (see his speech about expediency). This is of course very simplistic and only describes their "natural" approach to things as when push comes to shove, most of them can't accept having to do a bad action for a (very relatively) good outcome.
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Aug 26, 2014 21:42
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I guess that's when the Cabal becomes very convenient, it helps Cap avoid the situation where they'll be too busy beating the poo poo out of their friends to notice an incursion is occurring, killing everyone as a result. Again, I see the moral point of not allowing the end to justify the means, but Cap doesn't address for one second what he plans to do to stop incursions from playing out. And that's very annoying as there's no morality in voluntarily ignoring the dire consequences of one's (in)actions. At the very least, he should tell everyone what the hell is going on and gather their opinions. Figuring a solution to incursions is more important than taking his friends out (not in a nice way). Then again, he's left with 50 Avengers who probably didn't finish high school, so it's not like they're going to figure poo poo. (Yeah, there's still Peter and Hank I guess)
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Aug 27, 2014 18:00
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Boogaleeboo posted:One of the Avengers is the living personification of the universe itself. The Illuminati are such a loving joke compared to what the Avengers have to work with it is insane. Isn't she still batshit insane? But yeah, the current expanded Avengers lineup is the biggest collection of powerhouses I've seen in a Marvel team, even more so during Infinity. I guess I'm a bit frustrated with specific parts of Hickman's writing on Avengers: while I absolutely love the scope and the direction it's taking, the delivery itself is a bit sloppy in the sense that Cap isn't very convincing and reminds me way too much of the Cap that started AvX: throw a punch first because it's right. I'd love to be sold on Cap's point of view, I even want to, because I certainly don't want to root for brainwashing and planet destroying. But "lol gently caress you, Kang strawman, I may be old but I'm righteous" and "okay guys, no discussion, let's go gently caress their poo poo up" are not very convincing stances, they read more like the kind of contagious stupidity that justifies dumb event books.
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Aug 27, 2014 20:53
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hope and vaseline posted:This whole arc is the constant repetition that Cap is one step further than any of the avengers archetypes that echo into the future; he is the living representation of hope and perseverance. He transcends his status as man out of time to being literally timeless. Hickman's telling us to trust in Cap, even though we don't have all the information yet. Yeah, my beef is with the last part because I'm impatient as hell. I'd probably gloss over that in a trade. Thematically, I agree Hickman has built something huge: the very idea of the Avengers is so powerful and archetypical that it isn't really bound by space (see the Avengers worlds) or time. What you described just illustrates how he is the enduring moral pillar the machine should be built around. I'm complaining about the lack of concrete solutions and answers but the very solution might lie with Cap's and the Avengers' greatest quality: they're ideas, concepts and as such are much more powerful than any device anyone will ever engineer. That would echo his FF run: 616 Reed is special not because he's a genius but because he has an awesome family. I'd argue Morrison went for a relatively similar angle in his Batman run with Bruce's time traveling return that anchored the idea of a Batman deeply in Gotham's mythos and actual history. And that was badass.
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Aug 27, 2014 21:37
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That's exactly what I understand next issue is. New Avengers 24 is also a time skip point so I guess we're just getting a huge ellipse after Cap assembles everyone to hunt the Illuminati and Namor creates his Cabal. If act I ended with Infinity, this was the end of act II.
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Aug 28, 2014 07:31
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Gatts posted:I would be pissed if Marvel had an event that hosed with Hickman's story and he had to accommodate but he would have to have been in the know from start and this is part of plan. I wouldn't be surprised if this ended with an Avengers multiverse. Again, I assume the solution can only be multiversal and it will stem from the very idea of Avengers. That would be the next logical step.
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Aug 28, 2014 17:19
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:Wordless preview here. I knew it! poo poo, Brevoort mentions a final incursion? I'm curious to see what Cap and the others have been doing for 8 months to prevent all these incursions and the destruction of our Earth. Patronizing alternate Earths to death.
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Aug 28, 2014 21:48
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Senor Candle posted:No one is arguing against that. I honestly think it's really dumb that Marvel put out a collection of NA with just 7-12 in it. http://www.amazon.com/New-Avengers-Volume-Infinity-Marvel/dp/0785168370 Honestly, Avengers / New Avengers omnibuses or OSHC shouldn't feature what is covered in the Infinity omni at all. I could see an omni with both series featured sequentially, then the next volume you're supposed to read is the Infinity omni.
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Sep 4, 2014 21:44
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Stuff like Uncanny X-Men or X-Force was collected as OSHCs and when there crossovers like Utopia X or Messiah War, the issues weren't in the series OSHCs, they were in dedicated crossover volumes. That's really my only point here: whether they go the omni or OSHC route, it would be weird to overlap with the existing Infinity omni. Particularly considering the core Infinity books have a sequence you need to follow, I don't see them splitting the issues over various OSHCs like they did with the trades. Given that New Avengers has 6 issues before Infinity, I really don't see it releasing in OSHC form anyway.
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Sep 4, 2014 22:13
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Point taken, that was a shortcut on my part calling it an omni because it's 600+ pages.
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Sep 4, 2014 23:18
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goldenoreos posted:Besides Avengers coming out first, I think the line "one was life, and one was death" is a perfect tie-in to the first arc of New Avengers. Also, as I like to consider Book I of Hickman's epic ends with Avengers 17, with Infinity going between Books I and II, I think the (awesome) narration works better if you start with Avengers 1 and end with Avengers 17 as they so perfectly echo each other. In that case, I figure narration trumps having a linear timeline.
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Sep 22, 2014 21:05
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Holy poo poo, I'm floored. I really want to know the story behind Wakanda because that was unexpected. My favorite part obviously is that all hope lies in .
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Sep 24, 2014 19:04
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Thinking about the politics of the incursion business, I realize that there's no country (or leader) that wouldn't support the Cabal or a similar effort to destroy other worlds to save ours. I can't imagine UN voting on "let's do the right thing and wait it out". Well, maybe Vatican or Costa Rica. Then again, I'm assuming world leaders were notified at some point in the past 8 months but the Doom/Namor thing implies otherwise as apparently, Doom isn't supposed to know that much about incursions. OTOH, I can't imagine Cap not telling world leaders as that would make the Avengers as bad as the Illuminati, taking choices out of the hands of elected representatives.
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Sep 24, 2014 22:17
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Kind of, yeah. As a way to reveal who the mysterious figure Reed and Tony were talking about. I guess this eliminates Doom from the list. My next guesses are Da Vinci or an alternate Reed.
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Sep 25, 2014 09:07
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