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

[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.

[locuatico]

Xavier...

[deh_tommy]

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

[obsidianwolf]

Hickman needed a morally uncompromising hero for his dc rip off so Cap was included for the start of things.

He started out in Character Objecting to even considering genocide.

Then got derailed into obsessed with bringing the illuminati to justice guy instead of staying in character and trying to find folks who could fix the actual problem (and then bringing the illuminati to justice) cause they needed secret wars to happen.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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?

[obsidianwolf]

All Hickman.

[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.

[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.

[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....

[philippos42]

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

[bewareofgeek]

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

[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.

[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.