Defenders #3 (2021) - "Fifth Cosmos: The High Priestess"

[laughing_tree]

You know, I don’t do this stuff with a plan. I really don’t. I didn’t write that speech for The One Above All — I just wanted to do a recap page. You were talking earlier about the numbers of the cosmos. The reason that it’s the Eighth Cosmos is that there is a video game token called Iso-8, and I was writing a Contest of Champions book at the time based on the video game. And I was writing The Ultimates at the same time, so I was like, “okay, Iso-8 is what Cosmic Cubes are made out of, because it’s eight points so it’s a cube, and also the reason it’s Iso-8 is because this is the eighth multiverse. So the one that we just had is the seventh, and then Galactus came from the sixth. So that’s fun, there must be five more.” And then that was what Ultimates ended up being about. So someone in Burbank, or Palo Alto, or wherever these games are made came up with Iso-8, and now Marvel’s entire cosmology is based on that. And the nice thing is, you can do all this stuff, and it’s so big that it doesn’t really affect anyone else. -- Al Ewing

Comments

[numeronone]

Al Ewing writes the way Grant Morrison writes, but it's like he remembers to toggle the "make accessible and relevant to the reader" switch on.

[erikred]

So, not the way Grant Morrison writes, then.

[super_fly]

It's the bits of dialogue that are like bold declarations of weird concepts with random quotation marks here and there that feel very Morrison-y to me, IDK

[numeronone]

That and the meta-text. I bring it up because Morrison also played with the CMYK elements as a motif in "Ultra Comics", but it didn't have any connection to wider themes like emotional spectra or tarot symbolism - it was just set dressing for funsies:

[super_fly]

So it's not just me then

[numeronone]

[wizardru]

Al Ewing writes as if he's not embarrassed by what comics are, but thrilled by what comics allow. Morrison says 'look, I read that issue forty-two years ago and I'm showing that to you now' while Ewing is like 'imagine if I took this wild character from this 80s comic and this fun character from 1958 and then mashed them together with this crazy idea and just went nuts!"

Things like 'THE FOCUSED TOTALITY!" and the one character using Kirby Quotes all the time is just...it makes me HAPPY.

[numeronone]

Are they Kirby quotes? I thought it was just highlighting anachronisms given she comea from a prior multiverse

[angry_marmot]

I, too, love Taaia's weird KIRBY ITALICS and "AIR QUOTES". Kirby's odd syntax seemed awkward in the Seventies, but I think it's aged better than Stan Lee's tin ear attempts at contemporary slang.

[numeronone]

Always happy to hear from a fellow Marmot fan :~)

[blues32]

Might as well have been with the finger on the pulse of the kids of the day to me. I can't tell the difference. It's all outdated to me.

[blues32]

So...do those four head represent emotions or Hulks?

[sadoeuphemist]

CMYK, probably, fundamental particles of the universe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMYK_color_model

[blues32]

Okay, that explains the speech bubbles, but what about the expressions?

[thezmage]

I ws thinking the four humors but you'd have to swap the yellow and the black in order for that to work

[numeronone]

It's kind of also a reference to deeper Hulk lore - having Hulks with multiple heads is a callback to Ewing's "ULTRON FOREVER", itself a callback to the time the Hulk persona that would later be called Joe Fixit accidentally manifested with Banner's face...

[blues32]

I believe they call that version "Gravage Hulk". Combination of the Gray and Savage Hulk. Rather than anger or the sun going down, the Hulk's transformations were caused by gamma blasts and he didn't get stronger the madder he got.

[super_fly]

I can see there's a lot of body horror going, but that first panel: "OH MY GODDD, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUR FAAACE?"

[iamrman]

Hee. I got a kick out of the 'Focused Totality' bit.

It is clear Al Ewing has great passion for even the most inconsequential bits of comics lore, and I love him for it!

[lordy_co]

This is just the best.

[cygnia]

Who is this Zota guy?

ETA: and what happened to Surfer?

[scorntx]

Carlos Zota, one of the Enclave, a cabal of mad scientists who created Adam Warlock in a plan to take over the world (for the Greater Good, honest!)
He's the last one left, the others having died over the last few decades.
His most recent plan was to recreate Michael Kovac, which went about as well as could be expected, and is what's left to his current predicament.

Surfer got send back to the present day, due to the way Strange's summoning spell worked.

[numeronone]

The What?

[numeronone]

Oh, also: nice to see a little nonbinary representation in Cloud in this issue. It's a little thing, but it matters :,~)

(Diversity win: the Living Nebula uses they/them pronouns and the Red Harpy promised to respect that!)

[bruinsfan]

I briefly thought that might be the Lurking Unknown confronting them, before realizing it was an earlier counterpart to the Hulk. It'll be interesting to find out what the Fourth Cosmos was like.

[scorntx]

If the Sixth Cosmos is the "Kirby" Multiverse, and the Fifth Cosmos is the Dark one... is the Fourth the Groovy one?

[lordultimus]

I thought the Fifth one was the Ditko one.

[erikred]

Perhaps the Fourth Cosmos is Steranko spreads all the time?

[cdamascus]

In Ewing's Ultimates, it is said that, "The Fourth is missing. He is the pilgrim, the true believer who journeys into mystery. One day, he will return."

However, I am thinking they might actually have landed in the Third Cosmos, which was described as "The continuation. Creator of Lifebringer One, the first hero."

[tinygaylaura]

This is just so fun :)

[cdamascus]

A magic magenta psychic blade described as "the focused totality" has some very interesting potential implications for Betsy Braddock / Psylocke.

[scorntx]

Until this issue, I had not considered the possibility Moridun spoke in an Evil English accent.
(Even though he is evil, and his introduction had him killing Space Merlin.)
Now, however...


Also, Doctor Strange using Betty to hit Mory with the Green Door seems... like a very Doctor Strange thing to do.
(the revelations in IH 50 about the One Below also make this an interesting reading...)


Additional: If anyone's interested, Ewing also established Iso-8 is another name for Neutronium, which Blue Marvel is weak against (don't tell no-one!)

[blues32]

Was that his intention? When did Strange learn about the Green Door?