New Avengers #30: "Beyonders"

[superboyprime]

'[Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Parallels"] came out 22 years ago and I still remember how blown away I was by it. Influence is obvious.' - Jonathan Hickman

Comments

[informationgeek]

Ah yes, this comic. I like to call this exposition the comic. This entire issue was exposition. Dry... dull... unending exposition. For as big as the reveal was in the issue, Hickman managed to make this sound so dull.

Also, murder! Lots and lots of murder! Most of the big celestial figures killed by Hickman's personal modified Beyonder and then all of the Captain Britain Corps. Hope you didn't feel attached to them, because they are all dead. Yay?

[ebailey140]

I'm reminded of the Casstoons where Cass, Tim, & Dick are buried by the Wall of Exposition.

[cainofdreaming]

So, no one told Hickman that the Beyonder wasn't actually one of the Beyonders, but rather an incomplete cosmic cube?

Not even going on how unimpressed I am about him turning them into yet another generic cosmic bad guy troop.

[akodo_rokku]

This is like the third or fourth time the Beyonder's origin has been retconned, so I'm not even fazed. The last time was Bendis making him an Inhuman with an active X-gene.

[skemono]

Huh? The Beyonder's first origin was that he was an entire separate universe where he was the only thing that existed. There was nothing else in his existence, much less an entire race of beings just like him. That's why he was fascinated by humans.

[chrys]

Not his first origin, but also not a new one. The Beyonders first showed up in 1980, years before the Beyonder, and in 1988 they were shown as the creators of the Beyonder.

[tigerkaya]

Huh, I just looked up their first appearance. I had no idea they appeared before Secret War. Thanks for the tip.

[tigerkaya]

Oops sorry about that been a while reading the original Secret War. Thanks for clarifying that. So I guess this Race of Beyonder's is another retcon origin shame.

[cainofdreaming]

No, no. Beyonders were there before the Secret Wars, like Chrys mentioned. Abducting the Counter-Earth and generally being unfathomable mysterious entities. Then came the Beyonder, who had no ties with them. Until the cosmic cube retcon came to place, which also made them the source of all cosmic cubes.

[sagrada]

Nooooooo! Not the "You cannot even comprehend these 'ere blokes, chums" line! Anything but those words! That just makes the infinite number of ways we CAN comprehend them all the more glaring! That's bad, don't DO that.

[q99]

Yes! I just feel we may be, y'know, *better* at comprehending than the author when they say that ^^

[crinos]

You know, that montage showed a pair of dinosaurs in pinstripe suits.

We could be reading a story about the Avengers meeting gangster dinosaurs. Instead we got this.

Fun game, see how long you can hold that thought in your head before you get so mad you put your head through your monitor.

[erikred]

Yup, dinos in pinstripes was my takeaway, too.

[shingi70]

I like this run, but can anyone tell me why Hickman's Avengers has been so praised. It seems like its so much more of what people complained about the Ultimate U, Civil War, and what DC gets accused of. Its lame Hero vs Heor distrust everyone while the end of the world is happening. Its just a bit smarter and people don't seem to care that alot f these characters are becoming damaged.

That said I feel like the three Hickman Avengers books and Infinty are better event comics than what Marvel actually pushes as events.

[thatnickguy]

I don't see too many people praising it on here. Quite the opposite, in fact.

[walkingthroughforest]

SD usually does not at all represent the comic book fan consensus.

[sagrada]

Do you? Are YOU the Living Consensus I have sought all these years, Walkingthroughtheforest?!

(Seriously, though, while that's something well worth remembering and perspective is important when it comes to our collective worthless opinion on meaningless comic books. a consensus is hardly holy writ. Comic fans, like me, will grasp at anything that makes their medium look worthy of respect and elevation. Anything at all.)

[laughing_tree]

Well, when one's opinion does not match the consensus, there's two approaches one can take:

A. They're all blinded by bad taste and bias! They wouldn't understand quality if it bit them!

B. What am I missing?

I know which I prefer to take.

[sagrada]

Most of the time I just put it down to differing taste. There's really no 'right' way to enjoy fiction. There are people who like horror, for reasons that are impossible for me to comprehend, but I don't think it's of no value or that they're blighted morons who like having regurgitated slops shoved into their mouths, just that they enjoy something and find value in something that I don't.

Everything about the Incursion plot that's been posted looks and feels like an attempt to forcibly create a new epic, which has all the ingredients and material it needs but just falls apart into a morass whenever Mr. Hickman tries to switch things to higher gears. I don't dislike it because it's a common note on the site and as a New Folk I want to fit in, it just doesn't appeal to me except as a weirdly fascinating example of how hard it is to make something on such a grand scale actually work as a story in and of itself, rather than a series of illustrated plot points. Crisis on Infinite Earths had that problem, too, but it has the excuse of novelty and being something untried and extraordinary for its day and that it works as well as it does.

I certainly don't think finding value and interest in the Incursion event is wrong, but it doesn't make much sense to me. It's like all the people who enjoy Über or Black Summer or Habibi, that's THEIR thing, not mine.

[rfmcdonald]

Speaking as someone who reads the comics and appreciates them, Hickman's storyline reminds me of the cosmic horror of Lovecraft. (In a good way.) Hank Pym's exposition is akin to that of any of Lovecraft's first-person narrators.

[burkeonthesly]

Okay, yeah, I can see that. There's been this slow-growing horrible situation, the stresses of it breaking friendships and the occasional mind, people doing terrible things for what seemed to them like good reasons at the time, and cap it off with cosmic monsters the likes of which the author assures us we can't comprehend (and wouldn't want to), I'll agree, it's very Lovecraft.

[q99]

-I like this run, but can anyone tell me why Hickman's Avengers has been so praised. It seems like its so much more of what people complained about the Ultimate U, Civil War, and what DC gets accused of. Its lame Hero vs Heor distrust everyone while the end of the world is happening. -

Well, it's huge-scale, epic, and the conflict between the heroes makes more sense than the CW one even if it still has a bunch of problems.

While I dislike it I'm also not surprised it does well.

[sun_man]

Marvel 616 has been so dull for a while now.

I think Hickman's a good writer but his arcs just drag on. This run has had its moments, but its just one boring never ending story arc.

Makes the crap DC's putting out look like gold.

[violetclm.livejournal.com]

I find myself automatically reading the last couple pages in Rucks' voice from Bastion.

[matrix_dragon]

"It's so mysterious! You can't understand it! It's so amazingly mysterious and impossible to understand, and it blew up everything that hundreds of other writers have spent decades writing, all during a time skip and only referenced here for a few panels. But you'll never understand why, because they're SO MYSTERIOUS!"

I hate the 'impossible to understand' cliché at the best of times. This is far from the best of times. It's a weak justification for not bothering to make the threat plausible or even interesting.

[doctor_spanky]

I like the way Hickman turns a phrase, but that really doesn't sound like Hank Pym at all. All Hickman's pessimistic exposition kinda gets delivered in the same tone, which doesn't really work for a static issue like this. Still looking forward to seeing how he resolves all this.

Also, calling right now that Rabum Alal is really Dr. Doom because Hickman hearts him, and that Dr. Doom will be the big bad of Secret Wars just like last time (pretty sure that issue comes out this month). Looking forward to it because Hickman writes a good Doom.

I still think Hickman's run lacks a little empathy, which not only makes it punishing to read but negates some of it's effectiveness as a horror story (his stated intention). You have to make us care about something first so it matters when you destroy it.

[leoboiko]

TOTAL Spoilers for #31 (highlight to see):

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Congratulations! You win a cookie!

[doctor_spanky]

Things are picking up!

Very spoilery image that I think is legal to link to (plus I can't figure out the spoiler html):
http://i.imgur.com/vny5p5I.jpg

[leoboiko]

The trick is to use a <span style=""> tag, then you can manipulate the color of the font and background using CSS inside the quotation marks (e.g. <span style="color: white; background-color: white;">Your spoiler here!</span> results in: Your spoiler here!). However, I'm not too sure that this markup will survive in email notifications and such, so I also added some space.

[doctor_spanky]

Thanks a hot bundle! Pretty creative solution there

[nyadnar17]

I adore this run. I can't believe I am getting to see actual H.P. Lovecraft style Cosmic Horror at the center piece of a Marvel event.

Also I love the meta reference to the first Secret Wars being all about creating toys.

[freezer]

So basically, Lovecraftian Anti-Monitors?

Just not feeling it.

[randyripoff]

I almost fell asleep just now reading this.

[reveen]

Those beards bother me, because you can't just be like "Oh man, I've been fighting so long against this implacable enemy that I haven't shaven in months so I have this silky luxurious beard." No. You have to groom regularily to get a beard looking like that.

And Ant-Man and Captain Britain wanted matching beards I guess, kind of weird.

[sagrada]

Clearly you have never heard of BARBASTION, the Celestial barber who dwells between worlds.

[silicondream]

"Harmonically transitional?" "Rotating particles disappear and reappear?" This is like reading Grant Morrison or Warren Ellis if they were sleep-writing and had their vocabularies cut in half.

[jekylls_salvation]

Between new writers and old writers today I feel like I don't like most comic book writers.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

The Beyonders killing all the established cosmic beings...

...didn't they do that already in Secret War 2?

[icon_uk]

IIRC the Beyonder only thought he'd managed it, the Celestials were more or less humouring him, and they still existed on the multiple dimensions the Beyonder couldn't conceive of, and that's all they needed to be able to continue existing,

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

"IIRC the Beyonder only thought he'd managed it, the Celestials were more or less humouring him, and they still existed on the multiple dimensions the Beyonder couldn't conceive of, and that's all they needed to be able to continue existing,"

Translation:

Writer: Yeah, we basically ignored that crap.

[philippos42]

The difference, of course, is that Secret Wars II (the core series) was only nine issues long, actually messed with the Marvel Universe very little, and was used as an opportunity to tell crazy stories with various Marvel characters.

And Jim Shooter was still hated at Marvel (for other reasons).

What are we going to hear about Hickman in five years, I wonder.

[icon_uk]

I confess I have a hard enough time caring about the Celestials since they are so far beyond human levels of perception, but at least have the decency to be suitably cryptic about their place in the top end of the scheme of things, and never (that I can think of) speak to humans as being worthy of noticing.

So introducing beings who seem to be so far beyond the Celestials and yet still talk to humans like we matter, just does nothing for me.

[alschroeder3]

AHA! The "Zom" trap.

When Steve Ditko left Dr. Strange, Lee and Bill Everett introduced Umar, Dormammu's sister, who was supposedly worse than he was...

To defeat her, they unleashed an even STRONGER mystic being, Zom, who defeated Umar with ease, but then threatened all creation even MORE...

So finally they summoned the Living Tribunal, who destroyed Zom...but threatened to make judgement on the entire universe. FINAL judgement.

Omnipotent succeeded by more-omnipotent succeeded by even-more-omnipotent.

It should have made it more exciting--but it left me yawning. To an ant, the difference between a man, a lion, and an elephant all blurs in the distance...

Hickman has fallen into the same trap. I'm left yawning.

Still.

[jlbarnett]

wish there was a like button

[wizardru]

Motto. That's the real problem, here.

I don't mind the exposition, per se. I don't mind that I've completely lost the thread since all these crises have bleed together. It's just so overdone that it's lost it's dramatic pull. I call this the Dragonball Z effect. The power curve become ludicrous and then boring.

I can punch fast!
I can punch faster than you can see!
I can throw a ball of energy!
I can throw a GIANT ball of energy!
I can throw a ball of energy to destroy a mountain!
I can throw a ball of energy to destroy a city!
I can summon the energy of the entire planet!
I can destroy an entire planet!

...and so on. I mean, summoning a legion of infinite and potentially evil Reed Richards as a threat? Interesting. Summoning a vast number of ill-defined aliens who are, for some reason, unstoppable and then saying 'pssht' they were nothing, THESE GUYS are really bad and then saying 'pssht', you should see the guys behind THEM. It gets tiring and the thrill is cheaply bought. When your big bad from two events ago becomes cheap hired muscle in service of the next event, it makes it hard to invest emotionally in the story, IMHO.

[alschroeder3]

The "Dragonball Z" effect. ANOTHER good name for it.

[jlbarnett]

so, they're not out to destroy Earths, they're going after Celestials then?

That does a WONDERFUL job of explaining why in all the universes it's Earth's colliding that's causing the problems

[jlbarnett]

what about the Infinites?