ILLUMINATI: T'Challa was right.

[starwolf_oakley]

Here are some pages from the 2006 Illuminati One-Shot.





At first glance, the Illuminati didn't seem like a bad idea. Members of the major teams get together and trade notes. Not a bad thing. Then we find out nobody else knows about this little group and what they do. And THEN we find out the Illuminati can't do anything right.



This annoys me. Now, Maria Hill doesn't *say* these people and dog are dead. But even injured, it is a big deal.
Maybe she's lying to see if Iron Man and Co. will do something to "get rid" of the Hulk. (A theory I think a fanfiction story once used, to be honest.)



Oh, well, Spider-Man won't kill Osborn because... reasons. I remember when only the Punisher and Wolverine would kill people. Then things got more morally flexible in the Marvel Universe. They are still strong with Spider-Man not killing anything. Whatculture.com has ten times Spider-Man killed someone, though. The only ones who came back were Gog and Morlun, IIRC.



Xavier (who is absent) said that if Bruce Banner could kill himself, he would have done so years ago.
Does Bendis hate the Hulk or something? Is the Hulk a part of the Marvel Universe no one really understands?

http://whatculture.com/comics/10-things-marvel-wants-you-to-forget-about-the-hulk.php/11

Aside from Namor, all the others vote yes on shooting the Hulk into space. Namor starts threatening, and Tony says they are all warriors and all willing to fight for what they believe in.

NAMOR: You're a warrior. I'm a king.
TONY: Not up here you're not.

Namor and Tony fight underwater, with Namor ripping off Tony's helmet.



Yes, this kept the Hulk out of CIVIL WAR and PLANET HULK was great. Still, it makes the Illuminati look like they can't do anything right. And then the ILLUMINATI miniseries made it *clear* they can't do anything right. Then Steve Rogers and Hank McCoy joined the ILLUMINATI and again, nothing right.

Comments

[lordultimus]

T'Challa tells the Illuminati that they are going about this in the worst way possible.

Oh ho, the irony.

[starwolf_oakley]

So... what *is* the right way to do this? Maybe not doing it at all, given how screwed up it became. But if they just wanted to trade notes about major things, I'm not seeing the problem. It was when they wanted to confront the Skrulls, Marvel Boy, etc, things went pear-shaped.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Yeah, that's gotta be Bendis, who's not much for logical thought when he wants to make a point.

Maria Hill, AKA LAW ENFORCEMENT: It's Spider-Man's fault that duly appointed and publicly funded law enforcement officials cannot contain Norman Osborn, as is their sworn duty. It's the fault of a private citizen, who should circumvent due process and kill the man.

[lilacsigil]

+1. If Norman Osborn is that much of a threat, the US seems to have no trouble with the occasional extra-judicial execution. Why put it on Spider-Man?

[glprime]

Eeeeeeeegggggg-xactly. And a federal SHIELD agent voices this to Maria Hill?

"And you didn't fire or demote that guy? Fury would've. You're terrible at your job, Maria."

Not Spidey's gig to do that. Anyone who knows Peter (especially folks that dirty their hands like Nick Fury or Wolverine) knows he doesn't act a vigilante to go the full mile, he does this work to step in when innocent people are threatened and 1) he can make a difference or 2) the police/authorities are overpowered by metahumans. But he's not in it to take justice into his own hands, "judge, jury and executioner" style.

So that kind of strawman argument should always be struck down as asinine, not "valid from a certain point of view." 'Cuz it's not, Bendis.

[captainbellman]

The otherwise mediocre "Startling Stories: BANNER" had a moment where Bruce tries to kill himself and the Hulk defiantly spits out the bullet. Made it into the Avengers movie, kind-of.

[deh_tommy]

I think that was a deleted scene from 'The Incredible Hulk (2008'.

[q99]

Huh, a funny thing: Norman actually died in combat with Spider-man once. It didn't take.

And does Spider-man really have that many opportunities to kill him...? And didn't he give Norman to the justice system, which could've decided to kill him but didn't?

[beyondthefringe]

In theory, the Illuminati is not just a good idea, it's an essential idea.
Of course the X-Men, Avengers, and Fantastic Four should trade notes. Someone needs to speak for the mutants, you need an expert on magic, you need an expert on science, and yeah, it doesn't hurt to have people like Namor, T'Challa, and Black Bolt to represent powerful nations/sub-sets of superhuman races.

But it should have been an above-board council, not a secretive cabal. There should have been some form of accountability and continuity--someone retires, dies, goes away, you get a replacement. And when there's a crisis, you don't set these schmucks, you get an appropriate team to handle it.

The problem is that you had too many kings, all jockeying for position, with clashing egos, and no one to rein them in diplomatically. And when things went sour, no one was able to stop it before it went pear-shaped and nations went to war.

The best way for this to work would have been to include Captain America for tactics, leadership, diplomacy, and mutual respect... and Spider-Man for moral compass and because he's one of the very few heroes who A) works with EVERYONE and B) Is friendly with but not beholden to any one team most of the time... Oh, and maybe actually have a female member like Sue Storm or Janet van Dyne to offset the testosterone. (I'd have suggested Carol, but she's been off-grid a lot during her career.) Maybe Jen Walters, for her legal expertise and common sense.

In fact, yes. Here's the set-up I see as being best for a saner version of this group:
Xavier to represent X-Men and mutants in general. Backup: Storm.
Reed for the FF and for Science! Backup: Sue.
Tony for the Avengers and again, Science! Backup: Janet.
Steve for the Avengers and general cat-herding. Backup: Sam Wilson?
Stephen Strange for magic. Backup: Shaman (or Brother Voodoo)
Black Bolt for the Inhumans. Backup: Medusa
Namor for the Atlanteans and oceanic expertise. Backup: Namora?
T'Challa for Wakanda, etc. Backup: Um... Shuri?
Peter Parker for unaligned heroes, moral compass, etc. Backup: Ben Grimm.
Jennifer Walters for legal expertise. Backup: Matt Murdock.

As needed:
Carol or Rhodey to act as military liaisons.
Thor or Hercules to act as mythological liaisons.
Natasha or Bobbi to act as SHIELD liaisons.

This would not be a Secret Avengers/Illuminati set-up. no. But I'd sure have fun reading it. :)

[lilacsigil]

Yeah, an above-board council would have been a great idea - people would still storm off every now and then, but if it's not a super-secret cabal, you can swap people around to keep your bases covered and vote someone out if they're being too obstructive (or add someone when there's been, say, a big X-Men schism again and you need more than one representative).

[beardedjellybean]

While I'm not saying that they are correct, in the original Illuminati meeting this sort of idea is argued against for a number of reasons.

(a) They can't really control the groups they are already in.
(b) Who would run it, who would decide who would be in it, who would it answer too?
(c) The sheer amount of bureaucracy would mean that not a lot would get done (Doctor Strange uses the U.N as an example.)
(d) This was in the aftermath of the Kree-Skrull war with hate now directed at the heroes like the Avengers. Prof Xavier notes that this is what mutants experience all the time, and when Iron Man suggests that a a unified group of heroes with mutants could break barriers Black Panther notes that the public would just lump them all together and hate them all (which through their sheer stupidity the Marvel public would almost certainly do).
(e) A good number of street level and solo heroes like Strange, Black Panther, Spidey and Daredevil while not anti-establishment are more counter-establishment and wouldn't necessarily mesh well with such a group.
(f) Namor lastly points out that the group would reveal some of the more unsavoury parts of Marvel's superheroes to the public light such as the former criminals and terrorists with the Avengers (Hawkeye, Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch), Black Bolt not really punishing Maximus even though he was the architect of the Kree Invasion of Earth, Professor Xavier and how exactly he screens students at his school and whether he would let people like Wolverine on the team.

And so they agree that the sharing of information between heroes was one good thing but only amongst the people in the room. Iron Man later states when the Illuminati assembles shortly before Civil War starts that if they had gone with the big hero group idea, none of what is about to happen would have occurred.

Both ideas have their merits but I would have to agree and say that the public approach is the far better option, and if they went that way the last few years of Marvel probably would have been very different especially in the face of the incursions in Hickman's New Avengers.

[norj]

You need a space based hero and an experts on time travel and alternate realities.

[deh_tommy]

I thought that Captain America WAS on the team, but was kicked off (I don't know why, though)?

[doctor_spanky]

The only flaw with that plan is that it would work and they'd cooperate and then we wouldn't have a story

[bewareofgeek]

Me, I liked it better when they simply had poker night....

[icon_uk]

They shouldn't have back up, they should have more than one member, so Xavier AND Storm in attendance rather than an either/or. Each of these people is different enough that they have a valid POV to consider. Given the sort of situations they deal with, one voice is barely adequate.

[philippos42]

The more I look at it, the more I realize the Marvel Illuminati is basically the secret council Loki put together in "Acts of Vengeance":

I think it was Wilson Fisk, Victor von Doom, Magneto, the Mandarin, the Wizard...and the Red Skull, whom at least two of the others decide to turn on because he's the Red Skull.

[locuatico]

Spider-man doesn't kill Osborn because then JJJ would have a feast with the event.
i hate the "when it becomes their fault?" thinking process. when it becomes spidey's fault? a better question would be when it becomes THE GOVERNMENT'S FAULT to be unable to contain/kill him? when it becomes Shield's fault for not doing anything?

nah, it's the fault of the guy who already has a hard time trying to keep the city on his side for more than one day, which turn against him the second he looks like he did something anti-heroic.

[siliconshaman]

True, when does it become the fault of whomever's designing crappy easy-to-esacpe prisons?

[siliconshaman]

Geeze, it's not often I think T'Challa and Namour are right...

Fine, you want to take out the Hulk? Well, this is the Marvel universe, where time travel happens all the time. Go back to the day before the gamma bomb incident, and shoot Bruce Banner, before he becomes the Hulk.

and then probably watch while someone else ret-conns the whole thing, but hey..

[sanctaphrax]

Shoot him?

Why not just prevent him from getting gamma-bombed?

[deh_tommy]

...except that would probably cause more problems than it would solve due to the butterfly effect and chaos theory.

Have you ever read Age of Ultron? In the story, the titular character destroys and isolates New York from everywhere else, and slowly spreads to the rest of the United States of Ameria. As such, Wilverine uses a Time Platform to go back in time and kill Hank Pym before he could create Ultron... only to discover that his actions caused the Kree-Skrull War to reach Earth, Tony Stark is suprememruler over most of the world and fights a losing battle against the combined forces of a married Morgan le Fay and Doctor Doom. Also in this time, many people died (including Susan Storm), Tony's suit has become an Iron Lung/life-support system and the Helicarrier crashes into New York, killing (including Tony). Can you see the point I'm trying to make?

[mr_cyn1cal]

Ah, the Illuminati. So great, and their marvelous track record of success after success!

The guys who ended the threat of the Hulk by tossing him off planet!
The team that prevented the Skrulls from invading with a pre-emptive strike!
The heroes who championed the Registration Act and the Utopia it created!
The stalwart guardians of the Infinity Gems and later, the jailors of Thanos!
The group that reformed Noh-Varr and the Beyonder!
And of course, there is all their stellar work dealing with the Incursions...

At this point I wouldn't trust this crew to take care of an abandoned mall parking lot. For a group of geniuses, they seem not to understand the concepts of things like "Blowback", or "Unintended consequnces", despite the fact that those very concepts are BAKED INTO THEIR ORIGIN STORIES (Reed, Tony, I'm looking at you).

At this point, here's my picks for the new Illumaniti - D-Man, Molly Hayes, Deadpool, Beak, and three six year old children selected at random - and they would STILL have better results than these chuckleheads.

Yeah, a secret group of the world's elite trying to control the world - that can only end well.

MORONS.

[burkeonthesly]

Beak would be a great addition to the Illuminati. His greatest skill has nothing to do with his power, he's just a decent guy who's good at making friends and that was instrumental in beating an evil Hyperion. Hell, his greatest skill is in spite of his mutation, since he looks like the embodiment all of Colonel Sanders' sins come to life and seeking vengeance. During the incursions, he'd be the guy going to other-Earth's superteams like, "hey, we've got some ideas about how not to die, let's put 'em together with your ideas how not to die, and maybe we can all not die together. Cool?"

[deh_tommy]

The sad thing (in my opinion) is that many people do believe they are superior to the common folk, and that they know or at least feel what is and should be right. It just so happened that a group of these people had the power and resources to do so.