S.W.O.R.D. #7 - "Full Spectrum Diplomacy"

[laughing_tree]

I understand if readers feel burned, though — dark deeds have been committed in the field of crossover tie-ins over the years, for which we must atone. Ask not for whom the Beyonder poops, Spider-Man. He poops for thee. All I can really do is give you my word that you can read this issue entirely on its own and have a good time, that any part of “The Last Annihilation” can be enjoyed entirely by itself, and that I designed this story specifically with that in mind. Or I could go all in and tell you that this issue ALSO connects with my Hulk run. -- Al Ewing

Comments

[akodo_rokku]

Ooooh, I read this when it came out and it didn't click that he connected the White Hot Room to the One Above All. But that makes sense.

[shadur]

That does seem like the kind of "tough decision" Henry is always so very eager to make because of how important it makes him feel.

[numeronone]

"It might have ended with a bang, but still...I don't think I'll ever forget the lessons I learned during My Dinner With Ororo."

[iamrman]

The Doom who came for tea. :D

[tinygaylaura]

I love Ororo here having absolutely none of Victor's bullshit and making it clear that his help is neither needed nor wanted

It's always satisfying to me when people respond to this arrogant ass like this

[zachbeacon]

I don't know, when Doctor "I'm not even going to look at Richards' notes" Victor "I'm sure the molten mask is safe to wear" von "those demons seem to be on the level" Doom thinks you're being careless then maybe it's time for reflection.

[sabertoothlotus]

"I have my mother's eyes... in a jar on my desk."

[tinygaylaura]

Well where ELSE do you keep them

[doctor_spanky]

I love everything about this, I love how Doom is on his best behavior with Ororo, and probably sincerely offering help, but doing so in a way that's unacceptably arrogant and patronizing, and can't keep himself from manipulating and vying for leverage. I love how effortlessly Storm handles him and sees through him and how completely unintimidated she is. I love that Doom seems to have a little crush on her, and tries to save face when she calls him out for flirting and tries to leave with his dignity when he's called out on his bad behavior ("at least I acted with decorum" oh brother). I love that Abigail Brand isn't outright lying but will take advantage of a useful misconception. I love how Al Ewing writes every character with so much dignity even when they're doing the wrong thing

[donnblake]

This helped me put my finger on what's so great about Ewing's writing for me- the vast majority of the time, people feel like they're doing things for reasons of their own rather than just to advance the plot. Not necessarily *good* reasons, mind you- his Leader feels like the kind of guy who would vivisect the world just to see how at it works and go "Hmm, that's interesting," as it bled out on the table- but reasons that arise from their experiences and worldviews, rather than just the author's need to line them up in certain ways for the story to work.

Obviously, he still *does* need the story to work, and fortunately most of these characters have enough options to pull from in terms of previously represented experiences and worldviews that it's possible to pick some that point them in the right direction, but not every writer does so as well as Ewing, especially once you move past a book's headline characters.

And yes, "Cute trick, maybe you're almost ready for the adult's table," is exactly how Doom would respond to someone condensing Kirby Crackle into a new inter(?)galactic currency, and "Go screw off, you patronizing git," is exactly the right response from Storm.

If Richard's isn't careful, Doom's going to wind up with a new archcrushenemy.

[scorntx]

-"There was every chance Gyrich would have passed it along to the Avengers"-

The major flaw in Brand's argument there is that Gyrich would inform the Avengers at all.
As far as chances go, it's a very slim one.
Knowing Gyrich, he'd just hang up and never tell anyone.
And then when the universe burns to the ground would just go "this isn't MY fault!"

I mean, intercepting his calls is entirely sensible. Just her reasoning for doing so is wrong.
Also manipulating everyone for her own agenda. That's not right either.

[tinygaylaura]

I approve of Brand's thinking here

Anything that takes power away from people like Gyrich gets a ten out of ten for me and an A+ for "Because fuck you that's why"

[scorntx]

I'm not against Gyrich having less power.
In an ideal world, Gyrich would be in jail forever. Because seriously, the stuff he's done, he should be in jail.

She's got the right idea, just the wrong reason for doing it.

[tinygaylaura]

See, personally I think her reasoning is very smart here

[deh_tommy]

How so?

[tinygaylaura]

She knows that Gyrich is directly connected to a racist science cult directly involved in attempted genocide. She knows that Mutantkind needs allies who will be there to back them up both against human threats and against the other threats the Marvel universe holds of which there are many. And she knows the death of Wanda is a potential PR disaster

With this single move she

1) Makes the single most powerful space empire in the world distrust Gyrich and Alpha Flight. Plus if word gets back to the Avengers that the distress call never came through it will make them distrust Gyrich even more than they already do as well. Making people hate and distrust Gyrcih is a good move. The enemy of your enemy may not always be a friend but they can certainly be a useful tool

2) Has earned the gratitude of the king of the single most powerful empire in the universe. Having a friend in the king of the Kree/Skrull alliance will come in handy in MANY situations both on earth and in space

3) Also hopefully helped make it easier to smooth things over when they learn about what happened to Wanda

It's sound tactical thinking

[laughing_tree]

And also grossly immoral.

[tinygaylaura]

Personally I've never had much use for the M word

[laughing_tree]

...Mutants？

[tinygaylaura]

No, I meant morality

Never been all that bothered about it or had any use for it on the whole.

In my experience anyone who preaches about morality either wants your money or your obedience. Now the only things or people I give my money to are what I want to give it to for my own personal reasons. Either because they are a person or people I personally want to help or a person or people who will give me something I want.

And the only people I give my obedience to are six foot tall women in skintight latex and spiked high heels

I'm fine with Abigail Brand doing immoral things to benefit herself and the people she cares about. In fact I applaud it. It's exactly what I would do if I was in her position as well

[laughing_tree]

If you’re going to troll, you shouldn’t be so obvious about it.

[tinygaylaura]

I'm not "Trolling"?

I'm speaking the honest truth.

As a loud and proud hedonist I can tell you I have absolutely no interest in "morality"

And when it comes to fiction well

The kind of heroes I love best and root for most are the kind of people who do stuff like this. As a for instance a sampling of some of my favorite comic book characters are Puragtori, Harley Quinn and the Secret Six.

My favorite kind of heroes are ones who are criminals and who do what they want

And I especially root for Abigail Brand. She's working to protect her people in a world where there are literally fascists planning to murder her entire species. I am fine with her doing whatever she needs to do to win and if some of those things are "Immoral" I am more than fine with that

[laughing_tree]

“The kind of heroes I love best and root for most are the kind of people who do stuff like this. As a for instance a sampling of some of my favorite comic book characters are Puragtori, Harley Quinn and the Secret Six.”

That’s cool, but when someone then goes and says “and it’d be totally awesome if someone did that sort of thing in real life,” they’ve either completely lost perspective or are deliberately trolling.

[tinygaylaura]

At no point have we been talking about that

I said I liked Abigail Brand, a fictional character in a fictional story and I gave my reason why. You said her actions were immoral. I stated the fact that I don't at all care about the morality of her actions I just want to see her win and that I don't really much care about morality in general and I especially don't care about morality in fiction

[laughing_tree]

"It's exactly what I would do if I was in her position as well."

[tinygaylaura]

Yes

As in if I was a mutant living in the fictional world of the Marvel universe in the same situation as Abigail Brand is in here I would make the same call she did because it's the one that's best for mutantkind and worst for the racist douchebag that's working with people trying to kill all mutants

[laughing_tree]

It sure is good that Krakoa and Gyrich are the only two entities affected by her actions. It sure is good that it doesn't affect any planets under lethal attack, whose inability to get their distress call out ended god knows how many lives.

[tinygaylaura]

I mean Abigail Brand and SWORD along with many other mutants did answer the distress signal. All she did was make sure that Gyrich and the Avengers didn't get it, she still answered it herself she didn't just leave everyone to die

And honestly I'd rather have the X-men and their fellow mutants coming to my rescue. If my planets being invaded by aliens and I had to choose who I wanted to come rescue me...a team made up of people who can warp reality, control the very ground they walk on, and bend nature itself to their will or an idiot in a tin suit and a big green creature who can hit things really hard I'd go for option A

[laughing_tree]

Brand specifically chose to DELAY her rescue until Hulkling’s lowest point, so he’d be maximally grateful. She very much did leave people to die for a time, intentionally. All the lives lost and injured by that delay are partially on her hands.

> ..a team made up of people who can warp reality, control the very ground they walk on, and bend nature itself to their will

I mean, Brand didn’t send any of those mutants, though.

And if she hadn’t blocked the signal or kept quiet about it, -both- SWORD and Earth’s heroes could have come to the rescue. Why are you treating it as a choice between the two? It was never a choice until Brand made it one. Which was good for Krakoa’s PR, terrible for all the folks who are cowering for their lives and could use all the help they could get.

[zachbeacon]

I think she should have let the call go through, personally. Now Brand has set herself up to be caught in a lie (especially if next time the Kree/Skrulls follow Manifold's advice and contact the Avengers directly but she intercepts it again. Superheroes talk* and it's likely to come up later.)

*Well, not the X-Men. Jay and Miles firmly established most mutants can't use phones.

[gnarll]

Gyrich is such a perfect fall guy though. Everyone will believe he set her up. They just know him too well.

[tinygaylaura]

Exactly

Gyrich is the Spy who Cried Wolf. No one will believe him even if he's telling the truth

While Brand is more like Elim Garak in that she learned the TRUE moral of that story. Which is to never tell the same lie twice

[gnarll]

I must admit I miss the days when the X-Men had good relations with Doom.
That they had Magneto on the team and go along with Doom went a long way in my head canon to explain why the other hero teams like the Avengers and FF kept them at arms length back when the books were separated more.

I always thought after he saved Kitty life, they should have brought Masque around for a visit.

[arilou_skiff]

I mean, i think this *is* Doom being on good terms with someone.

[donnblake]

Yeah- if Doom could turn off the overbearing arrogance just because it was in his interests to do so, he'd be a very different character.

[tinygaylaura]

With all Doom has done to mutantkind and in general it might be hard for them to get back to that footing

[bruinsfan]

So who else is with me that it totally was the real Victor in X-Men #145-147? (As I recall, Ororo picked that fight by zapping Doom first at dinner, and giving her a chrome finish was his counterattack.)

[donnblake]

I believe that at one point it was suggested that, as part of some mystical entanglement between himself and the Doombots, at least one appearance of Doom in X-men was the actual Doctor Doom pretending to be a Doombot pretending to be Doom, but I don't recall if it was his dinner with Storm.

I do seem to recall that that dinner ended with Storm remarking that it was still too early to tell whether Doom would be an ally or enemy of the X-men, which seemed awfully generous given that he had chromed her and trapped the other X-men in a series of deathtraps.

Then again "Genius with a dubious academic title drops us in death traps," is literally a light morning workout for the X-men, so...

[starwolf_oakley]

https://www.cbr.com/the-abandoned-an-forsaked-did-arcade-light-a-match-on-doctor-dooms-armor-or-what/

UNCANNY X-MEN #145-7: Arcade strikes a match off Dr. Doom's armor to light a cigar.
FANTASTIC FOUR #258. Doom destroys a Doombot for not killing Arcade for striking a match on his armor. "Affronting the personage of Doom."
LOKI: AGENT OF ASGARD: #6: Dr. Doom says how important it is for people to wonder when it is a Doombot. "I once let Arcade strike a match off me. Just to maintain that confusion."

[tinygaylaura]

I have a theory that the real Doom actually died before his first appearance in Fantastic Four and every "Doom" we've seen has been some sophisticated copy he created to carry on his work and his hatred of Accursed Richards

[jlbarnett]

it's possible, but not likely. Doombots are frequently shown being purely mechanical, and we've seen versions of him who are definitely flesh and blood

[tinygaylaura]

He could have cloned himself tho

Or developed more lifelife forms of synthetic copies