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.

[lordultimus]

The problem was them being elitists and hiding the fact that they were doing this from EVERYONE, even their closest friends and family for... actually was there ever a reason for them hiding this, other than "other people will screw it up" despite the fact that superheroes trade notes all the freaking time?

[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.

[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.

[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).

[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?

[tugrul]

And the group was designed for the events they got involved in to go pear-shaped. Maria Hill's speeches, here and in Civil War, are written to come off like she has a point, dismissing whether the Hulk was brainwashed and a behind-the-scenes villain is culpable. Hill's stance is a devil's advocate stance writers went with, to have the readers care about solutions like this or involve them in the "What side are you on?" debate in Civil War. Gah, I still remember the disgusting interviews whenever Tom Brevoort tried to sell this crap, but I don't think any writer involved, for one minute, believed they were writing the best solution to any scenario.

[pwiggins]

...and yet they had no problem making Osborn head of national security, even though he's a convicted felon and a proven mass murderer. Dude even blew up the cops who went to take him in for questioning over the disappearances of the employees (and one Bugle reporter) he'd been killing for jollies (it's worth noting that Bendis wrote that story). Even in the MarvelU, where it would be possible to make a plausible case and fabricate evidence that Osborn was possessed or brainwashed or swapped with a doppelganger, many people would still be reluctant to trust the guy, let alone see him put in ANY position of authority (look at the treatment Jessica Drew got when it came out the Skrull queen had been impersonating her for years - ANOTHER Bendis story). As it was, Osborn simply made a broadcast and was like "Yeah, that was me flying around on the mechanical bat in green and purple tights blowing shit up with exploding pumpkins and tossing the occasional blonde off a bridge, but now I'm on medication! It's all good," and yet people were STILL queuing up to hump his leg and give him absolute authority over the nation's security simply because he got in a lucky shot on the Skrull queen. Sigh... MU Americans, you disappoint me.

That SHIELD agent Hill mentioned? Is a fucking moron. As daningram and q99 pointed out, if anyone's to blame for Norman Osborn's continued existence, it's the justice system that fails to either contain him in an effective prison or kill him. It's the same bullshit argument as "Why doesn't Batman kill the Joker? Everything Joker does is Batman's fault for not killing him!"

And BTW, the "Hulk goes nuts in Las Vegas and kills 26 people thing"? That happened in an issue of JMS's FANTASTIC FOUR. What Hill conveniently DOESN'T mention is that SHIELD had HIRED Hulk to disarm a gamma bomb that had been hidden there by terrorists (can't remember who, AIM, maybe?), then the bomb went off in his face and amped him up whilst (somehow) causing him to suffer hallucinations of his loved ones dying, driving him berserk. That's a pretty good case for diminished responsibility right there, plus the Thing and the Human Torch, who were right there trying to contain him, would surely have mentioned it if anyone had been killed. However, Maria Hill, one of the primary enforcers of the Superhuman Registration Act on the basis that there needed to be "accountability", instead of holding up her hand and saying "Oh yeah, Hulk was there for us trying to take care of a terrorist threat, SHIELD should share part of the blame, along with whoever left the bomb there" throws Hulk under the bus and tries to put the blame on the supers community for not taking him down years ago. Also, she neglects to mention or put any blame on the US military, who had an entire organisation dedicated to exactly that purpose, for not stopping him (and a lot of the destruction Hulk has caused in populated areas was because of the Hulkbusters or else supervillains or even superHEROes showing up and provoking and attacking him as Hulk or as Banner). The hypocrisy is quite staggering.

[beardedjellybean]

In one of the World War Hulk preludes, Amadeus Cho calls up Reed and points out that a good number of The Hulk's rampages have been the result of something setting him off like in JMS's Fantastic Four the which no one seems to ever remember. And Hulk has done good deeds in his life even if people mostly remember the bad.

[starwolf_oakley]

Who is worse: the MU general public or the Westeros general public from Game of Thrones/Song of Fire and Ice? Of course, Westeros doesn't have newspapers and radio. They get their news through crows. Or bards passing through.

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

[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.

[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.

[locuatico]

"Which side are YOU on?"
"in the "you are all screwed when Hulk comes back" side, and you?"
"same"
"cool"

[locuatico]

not keeping it a secret from their friends.
the major flaw with the illuminati is that their secretism meant that their thinking tank was very small. they are a bunch of people who, despite covering wide different areas, mostly agree on most stuff. they don't have difference of opinion and, when someone disagrees, they either walk away or, like with Steve, are made to forget it's existence.

I think Al Ewing's Mighty Avengers showed how more succesfgul The Illuminati could have been if they had trusted other people and hadn't been so closed minded to other PoV

[locuatico]

I think it was Doctor Strange who gave the greatest solution to the Hulk Rampages.
"Hulk says he wants to be left alone. here is my advice: leave him alone. monitor him via satellite and anytime he comes near civilization, sound a Hulk alarm like you do with storm alert"
"But what if america's enemies manage to capture him?"
"Send your condolences to america's enemies"

[locuatico]

Xavier...

[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..

[siliconshaman]

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