Defenders #1 (2021) - "Eighth Cosmos: The Magician"

[laughing_tree]

I feel like most Defenders just couldn't make it in the Avengers, not because they're any less powerful or heroic, but because they just can't fit into that buttoned-down world of charters, chairpersons and wearing shoes to the meetings. And that's why we all love them - because sometimes, saving the universe involves being guided by the Tarot through deep time travel into unknown psychedelic realities and you need a non-team that can handle those vibrations... and look good doing it. -- Al Ewing

Comments

[icon_uk]

Leave it to Al Ewing to pull disparate threads together, I mean, Red Harpy? .. Freaking CLOUD?

But he's more than earned my trust about such things, so let's see where it goes. Certainly Cloud could now be used as a better example of gender fluidity than they were before.

And I instantly like the idea that just as Galactus became Galactus when he survived the last Universe's Big Crunch, and made it through to our current Universe, that there was a Galactus analog in that universe too.

[donnblake]

It does line up nicely with the occasional implications that Franklin Richards is in line to be the Galactus of the next universe.

[mistersandman]

I'm totally unfamiliar with Cloud. What happened with them before?

[icon_uk]

Oooh, you ask the easy one's don'thcha? (And I suspect I'm going to make a hash of pronouns on this one, so apologies in advance)

Okay, well, Cloud started out as a mystery character, a young woman who could turn into a cloud of mist (and so could asphyxiate an opponent) which could also shoot lightning bolts, and was telepathic.

She was an innocently naive amnesiac (who was also effectively naked all the time though anything inappopriate was always obscured by clouds of her mist) who had been convinced to fight for the bad guys through memory manipulation, but ended up on the side of the heroes, though still unaware of her true origins.

She started to develop feelings for Moondragon and, in what can only be described as "hindsight laden irony" (given what we found out about Moondragon's orientation years later), found that her female body could change into a near-identical human male body (with similar privacy ensuring clouds of mist), which she (now he) felt would be more likely to attract Moondragon.

This was interesting idea, Cloud was still Cloud, just with a different gender, and it weirded out their team-mates more than it did themselves. (In another ironic twist, IIRC Iceman had an attraction to Cloud's female form, but not the male one). They sometimes switched forms without realising it.

Eventually, under a new writer, Cloud's true origin was revealed.. deep breath... Cloud was actually a sentient, telepathic, nebula from deep space, who has worried that somethng was destroying stars and nebulae in their part of space. Having met and spoken with Kubik, the sentient core of a Cosmic Cube, Nebula decided to seek help from Earth, a planet Kubik had often spoken of as having many heroes.

So Cloud came to Earth, but along the way their curiosity about humans caused a car to crash. The car contained a couple of young lovebirds who coincidentally, and slightly creepily IMHO, looked almost identical to each other.

The nebula's telepathy meant that they shared in the pain the car crash victims were feeling which shocked them (not being used to pain, what with being a giant cloud of gas and all).

So basically rather than dealing with a genderfluid human, they had Cloud be a traumatised, now amnesiac astral phenomenon, who had taken the form of one of the car crash victims and sometimes switched to the other form for convenience.

Ultimately, when all this was revealed and the Defenders went into space to help them, Cloud adopted a new form which were modelled after Captain America because why the heck not I guess.

Though, before leaving, Cloud did admit that they had actually loved Iceman best.

They are also the only character I can think of whose height is listed on marvel database as: "5'6" / 5'8" / 100 light years at widest axis."

[mistersandman]

Thank you for such a detailed, fascinating response and analysis. Old comics traded in body dysmorphia in ways that read especially uncomfortably nowadays. (I’m currently reading Bill Mantlo’s Alpha Flight and it comes across as really transphobic) I have utmost faith in Ewing to explore everyone’s favorite 100-light year-wide hero in ways previous writers were unable or simply uninterested.

[wizardru]

Well, then. I see that in the previous universe, "Kirby Quotes" are very much in conversation. :)

[scorntx]

Well, naturally. It is the "Kirby-tech" multiverse.
Would you "expect" anything less?

[nyadnar17]

I honestly wish I had the cash to buy everything he writes. This is gold.

It...it even seems a simple solution to the multiverse problem in comics. Its allows for multiple stories and universe but having them happen in a linear sequence makes it much easier to keep track of in your head.

[iamrman]

I am loving this series so far. Then again, I love anything by Al Ewing. The second issue is even better. Galactus' mom has it going on, indeed.

[tinygaylaura]

Galactus's mom is canonically a MILF

[iamrman]

I didn't want to put it quite that bluntly, but yes.

[remial]

anyone else disappointed that the masked rider doesn't look like a grasshopper and have a motorcycle?

[icon_uk]

Well, you could hide a lot of belt under that waistcoat, and we don't know what he looks like UNDER the mask, do we? :)

[bruinsfan]

Wait, doesn't scientific time travel also alter the past in the rebooted multiverse? My understanding from Ewing's run on The Ultimates was that time is much more fluid than it was previously, with the past and future constantly changing. (Also that the multiverse is now composed of parallel universes rather than a bunch of divergent timelines of a single universe).

[scorntx]

That was just after the big universal reboot, when everything was in flux and none of the cosmic higher-ups were certain what the rules were anymore. Now it's a few years later, everything's calmed down a bit and they're slightly more certain.

(Also the multiverse is both parallel universes and divergent timelines, old universes from the previous multiverse presumably remade by the Future Foundation, and some universes Franklin created because he was bored.)

[cainofdreaming]

So, past is still unmutable. Unless you have four or more time travelers.

Yeah, bit miffed about that retcon still.

[mistersandman]

So happy to see Al Ewing doing big cosmic stories again. The Kirby pastiche is a ton of fun.