Avengers #7

[arbre_rieur]

Comments

[icon_uk]

So... no one is thinking to try and ask Quasar about the Starbrand, despite the fact he's one of two people in the 616 universe to actually have possessed one for a time? (The other person is his former PA, who is on the New Universe Earth, which has been in the 616 universe for about 20 years, ina distant part of space, locked behind a barrier by the Living Tribunal.

The Avengers not asking a former heroic possessor of a cosmic power about that cosmic power? Hmmm... what does that make me think of?

[akodo_rokku]

Why would anyone remember Quasar exists?

[icon_uk]

Unquenchable optimism on my part?

Is he still active with the Guardians of the Galaxy?

[akodo_rokku]

Since Bendis has taken over Guardians, no. It looks like that group is just Starlord, Rocket, Groot, Drax, Gamora, and Iron Man.

[alexanderlucard]

Starlord escaped the cancerverse but Ryder didn't?

[darkknightjrk]

Actually, I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Nova #1 has Richard Ryder as a sort-of dead-beat dad to the new Nova, Sam Alexander, but I could be wrong.

[spacebetween]

That sounds nothing like the Richard Rider post Annihilation. Also Rider is too young to be a father to someone Sam's age. If anything he would be a mentor figure or instructor.

[spacebetween]

They haven't explained how Thanos and Starlord escaped from the Cancerverse yet, or that I know of. But it has been hinted that Richard Rider has escaped as well since the Nova Force is back since he has the World Mind.

[skemono]

They haven't explained how Thanos and Starlord escaped from the Cancerverse yet

Thanos crossed over into Funky Winkerbean?

[spacebetween]

So far he hasn't been seen since the team reformed, but then again he wasn't a member of the team. He could be with the Annihilators because as best I know that team is still in place. That or he is flying solo in space, possibly looking for Richard Rider.

[stolisomancer]

Do they know that?

[icon_uk]

Quasar was a conscientious member of the Avengers, if something like that happened, (like meeting the Living Tribunal) he'd report it.

Besides, how else could they even know about the Starbrand, it's not just from the multiverse, it's from a universe in the Omniverse that's almost impossible to reach from 616 (only one instance ever known, and that, again, was Quasar)

[akodo_rokku]

Nightmask tells them about the Starbrand in this issue.

[icon_uk]

I just googled Nightmask to find out how Keith Remsen made it to 616, and now discover that this is a different, new, convenient plot device android with handy exposition powers created by the villains of the first arc... I think it's safer for me, as an old fart New Universe reader, to just stick my fingers in my ears and sing "La-la-la-la!" out loud at this point... either that or yell at the young'uns to get off my lawn.

[superboyprime]

This story isn't referencing Shooter's New Universe. It's referencing "newuniversal," Warren Ellis's re-imagining of the New Universe concepts from some years back.

As Ellis described his take: "What immediately struck me was that which I don't think the original creators and editors realized until it was too late -- it was all a single story. It shouldn't have been eight books (or whatever) that were eventually consolidated into ensemble miniseries. It was a single story that should've spun new series and serials off of it.

"The central concept isn't original to New Universe, of course -- some massive event sets off the emergence of superhumanity. [J. Michael Straczynski's] 'Rising Stars' is only one of the most recent iterations of the idea. George R. R. Martin and his collaborators got an interminable series of books out of the idea, the 'Wild Cards' sequence (though I have to say that the first one was very good, with sections written in the styles of Hunter Thompson and Tom Wolfe).

"So I sat down with this stuff, and re-read some of the other things that used the concept, and, in realizing I was remixing more than inventing, cast around for an interesting half-logical way to frame the central notion, that the White Event -- the sky going white all over the world -- somehow creates or triggers out a superhuman subspecies. Which is always tough because, you know, this stuff defies the laws of physics. Which reminded me of a cheat the author Vernor Vinge used to get past faster-than-light travel -- he simply had his universe contain zones in which our laws of physics do not apply. Vinge has written extensively about the Singularity, also known as 'the Rapture for nerds' -- and what is more Rapture-like than a handful of selected people ascending into superhumanity?"

[icon_uk]

So, if I remember it, they're not referencing their own multiple part series which ran for years, they're referencing a failed one-shot which didn't go any further partly due to poor sales and partly because the author's hard disk crashed and he could never be bothered going back to it? Weird...

Plus the whole point of the New Universe was that it was a perfectly ordinary world like ours until the moment of the White Event, there were no superbeings on it, none at all, no exposure to alien races, no hyper-tech until that time etc etc... Surely, a White Event on the Marvel Earth is just another bunch of powers emerging.

[wizardru]

Yeah, the writers 'didn't realize it' because the New Universe was never envisioned that way. It was meant to be a completely fresh continuity that everyone could into on the ground floor. Shooter may have had his share of flawed ideas, but the basic notion of the New Universe was a good one. And while Ellis is correct that it certainly wasn't the first iteration of that idea, it was certainly the first iteration in comics that I can remember (Wild Cards and Rising Stars both taking place well after New Universe had pretty much spun itself out). I happen to think both of those series are considerably superior to most of the NU stuff...but I can't think of any other execution on that scale.

I thought the idea of newuniversal was a nice homage...but really, the different series in the New Universe were very different in tone and style. I mean, Gruenwald's DP7 was nothing like Starbrand or Kickers, Inc. I'm not sure that merging them in any real way actually works that well, without completely changing some of them to match what you're doing.

[icon_uk]

Arguably, Marvel Comics in 1964 might count, with the FF, and X-Men and so on all being "new on the market" as it were.

[silicondream]

Wouldn't Charlton's superhero line and 2000 AD count as well?

[wizardru]

I could see you making the argument, but New Universe was planned that way, while Marvel 1964 wasn't. The NU kicked off with the White Event, a very clearly defined origin and starting point.

Marvel 1962-1964 was already a universe with legacy characters, such as the FF having the second iteration of the Human Torch and resurrecting Namor by issue 4. They all sort of existed in a vacuum and then sort of collided in a world where the rules were already kind of assumed (i.e. superhero comics in general).

X-men, FF, Spidey, Ant-man, Hulk and all the rest were in completely isolated stories until Stan decided to mix them together. You could easily say that there was nothing stopping them from being considered that way, but I'd argue that had a lot more to do with there being primarily one editor/writer on the entire line than a planned story or shared universe per se.

NU was, regardless of execution, envisioned as a 'and then one day their world took a sharp left from ours' that to me at least felt like a good attempt. I loved DP7, at least when it first came out.

[akodo_rokku]

This is clearly drawing from Warren Ellis' "Newuniversal" far more than the original New Universe so yeah, it might be.

[darkknightjrk]

I guess it's possible that Hickman will eventually use them, but I think he's going under the assumption that, "It's been decades since someone used this stuff, only a fraction of my audience is going to know what this stuff is, I can get away with creating a new Starbrand of my own design."

[silicondream]

...but he's always wanted to help people, and now he can finally make a mark for himself, win friends, and turn his life around! Right? Right?

[icon_uk]

With any luck he's penpals with Jaime Reyes who can give him some pointers.

[darkknightjrk]

Well, this book is supposed to be the optimistic side of Hickman's grand story, so I'm thinking that even if the power does kinda go to his head at first, he'll shape up by the end.

[kd_the_movie]

WTF Hickman has picked my brain...(should I have ever written for Marvel) I too wanted to bring the Starbrand back into mainstream 616...

[icon_uk]

Technically it's already here, Kayla Ballantyne has it on the "locked away behind a force bubble New Universe Earth" somewhere in a corner of 616.

[khaosworks]

Time to re-read Ellis's newuniversal. I did like the fake-out when we're supposed to think we're being introduced to the 616 Starbrand, Justice and Cipher though... Although isn't the Cipher supposed to be Spitfire? Hmm.

[icon_uk]

What/Who is Cipher in this context?

[superboyprime]

In Ellis' take on the concept, a White Event always creates four superhuman harbingers: a Starbrand, a Nightmask, a Justice, and a Cipher.

And to answer what you're probably wondering, icon...
"[Y]ou will see things from the Marvel Universe leak into the book. I'm also, in the early issues, using elements from a very old Barry Windsor-Smith job for Marvel called 'Starr the Slayer.' And long-time X-Men readers will know what a Cypher is." -- Ellis

[icon_uk]

Hmmmm.... I wonder... Though now Doug is back from the land of the dead himself (and that Ellis chose to include him in his X-calibre series, back in the day, with a somewhat expanded powerset) I wonder what that might mean. :)

[khaosworks]

And to expand on that - the White Event creates superhumans (each being gifted with a glyph) to guide the universe through its contact with the newuniversal superstructure in the superflow (the place that dreams and ideas originate). Things tend to go bad if the superhumans don't cooperate or the set isn't complete.

The Starbrand will have planetary leveling power, the Nightmask acts as the access between the superflow and the others, the Justice can see the crime of others and dispense justice, and the Cipher is the technological genius.

In Ellis's newuniversal (set on Earth-555), the Cipher was Jennifer "Spitfire" Swann (in a previous Earth-555 White Event it was Tony Stark), so the mention of the Spitfire being another superhuman apart from the Cipher confused me a bit.

[turtlefu]

A sad, ignored young man is given earth-shattering superpowers? HOW ORIGINAL OMG HICKMAN YOU ARE A GENIUS.

[benuben]

It shouldn't mater if the concept is original, but what is done with it.

[jlbarnett]

hopefully, despite what they expect he becomes a respected, respectable, mostly qualified superhero, who just wants to do what's right

[silverhammerman]

Credit where credit is due, I think that was a pretty neat way to introduce someone while hammering home the idea of him being an outsider. Perhaps a teeny bit hamfisted, but neat.
Can't say I'm jazzed about the look of this though, it's not bad, but it still comes off as weirdly full of itself and doesn't interest me at all.
Pretty ambivalent about this in general, but on first glance at these scans I totally thought the Avengers had been zapped into some alternate reality/simulation where they were all in high school/university together. The two dudes in the hallway were Sunspot and Cannonball, the dude on the cellphone was either Bruce Banner or Ock-Spidey, and I didn't immediately place the couple on the bench or the kid in the lecture. I think my story was better.
Who's the shirtless dude with the moon on his forehead in the Quinjet though? Is that Nightmask or someone I just don't know?

[icon_uk]

That'd be Nightmask. the crescent moon on the forehead was his symbol back in the day.