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

[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.

[captainbellman]

Black Bolt signs something along the lines of "You'll all be first against the wall when the Skrullvolution© comes" while projecting a picture of a cute fluffy pony named Periwinkle into Xavier's mind.

[burkeonthesly]

I thought that was Doc Samson.

[locuatico]

probably. it was a while ago.

[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?"

[mrstatham]

That was the second incarnation of the Illuminati, and arguably way more of a clusterfuck than even this iteration.

And he wasn't kicked off. Tony and Co mind-raped him into forgetting he'd ever been part of the group.

[mrstatham]

The worst part is that Tony and Steve's pointless dick-swinging has proven to be largely inconsequential in Secret Wars because it's quickly become yet another 'Dr Doom gets supreme power, fucks up eventually' plot. That's just pretty insulting, that Hickman fucked those two and the other Illuminati members up so severely for what is basically a placeholder.

[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.

[philippos42]

But then they'd be accused of ripping off Star Trek!

[deh_tommy]

No, I mean I genuinely don't know why Steve was mind-wiped and exiled from the Illuminati since I didn't read any of their stories and didn't even know they existed until Original Sin. What was the in-story reason? Was Jonathan Hickman the person who wrote the former's mind-erasure?

Also, considering Steve was Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., who's to say he didn't have any people working on ways to stop or survive the Incursions while he brought the Illuminati to justice? What did MARVEL rip off from DC, may I ask?

[sanctaphrax]

Shoot him?

Why not just prevent him from getting gamma-bombed?

[bewareofgeek]

http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/floatingshpg.htm

[siliconshaman]

Historical inertia... if he's alive then somehow he'll end up being gamma bombed.

That said, remove Banner and someone else might get gamma bombed. [general Ross maybe] So perhaps disabling the gamma bomb might be a good idea, bonus points if it looks like Banner committed suicide after realising the gamma bomb would never work, thus dead-ending all research into it.

[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?

[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.

[starwolf_oakley]

And the 2008 Incredible Hulk video game.

[obsidianwolf]

Hickman had steve force his way into the Iluminati to force them to be held accountable.

AS soon as the incursion business started the Illuminati were willing to consider genocide as a solution Steve refused to even consider it so Tony and company violated his mind and made him forget all about the incursions and the Illuminati.

[starwolf_oakley]

Yes, it was a What must we do vs. What should we do vs. What can we do.

Steve seemed to say "We can't destroy another world" vs the others saying "This is the only thing we can do."

And the last New Avengers,Hickman issue said apparently Tony knew all along there was nothing stopping the incursio2nd.

[deh_tommy]

Right, thank you for explaining this to me. Was his mind-wipe from a story Jonathan Hickman penned, or did he expand upon the idea during Original Sin?

[deh_tommy]

I don't know why, but ever since AXIS, I've always wanted to see a poker game between Otto as Spider-Man, Inverted Tony, pre-marriage Yellowjacket, evil Ultimate Reed Richards, post-Black Vortex Gamora, Boomerang and possibly Sinister Silk.

[obsidianwolf]

All Hickman.

[obsidianwolf]

Yep salvaging any of the Illuminati is going to be damn hard now and it didn't amount to anything. In fact judging by the post secret wars solicitations this whole mess isn't going to really amount to anything except for an excuse for a few AU versions to suddenly be in 616 and a minor time skip. Everything else seems to be staying intact so we aren't even getting much of a reboot for all this shit.