as the secondtolast book in the runup to Secret Wars is building up excruciatingly to the moment when Shit Really Happens, and it's hard to keep straight all the threats to humanity that keep popping up with their Mohawks and helmets.
Grrrr. I want this to be over but I don't want to miss any of the great moments in store for me,
Nice little moment of poetry and dirty heroism in this book, what with Black Panther, at the behest of his sister.
I don't say I like what happened, I hate to see wellwritten antagonists go, Hell, as far as I know I'm someone else's antagonist and I'd hate to see this kind of outcome against me, What, you don't think I could be an asshole Try me after five hours of meetings, Just try me.
I was pretty damned excited when I saw that ,
Fuck yeah. Makes me drool a little which is stageof Marvel Zombification setting in, after the glassyeyed state but before the shambling hamfisted mashing at my tablet to keep turning pages in the Marvel Unlimited app.
This is when the event really starts to build as far as I'm concerned,
And where it gets unrealistically terrifying, When they start talking about beings that can kill Celestials, that are ultimately behind the incursions and collapse of the multiverse, this is a Marvelwide threat we can really get worried about.
And yet
How the hell deus ex machina are these mere human and superhuman Earthbound heroes and villains possibly going to defeat a power this far above their magnitude It'd be like an ant colony trying to, I dunno, beat down an army of drones A nuclear weapon Or maybe how's about trying to defeat the sun
Where can this possibly go that won't feel completely cheap and toocleverforitself
I mean, they killed Eternity:
That's one psychedelic "brain" spatter
THEY KILLED A BEING WE CALL ETERNITY.
WHAT. THE. FUCK. HICKMAN Collects Avengersissuesand New Avengersissues
Setmonths in the future of the current Marvel Universe, various factions of Avengers are attempting to stop the collapse of the Mutliverse.
Unfortunately, these factions are sometimes opposed, In the wake of a big confrontation between the superhero community, time is finally taken for the opposing sides to hear the other people out, This volume starts by letting us know more about what the Illuminati have been up to for the lastmonths,
As an added bonus, his volume features a look at how the Ultimate Universe characters are dealing with the Incursions,
I originally read these individual issues when they come out month after month,
I really appreciate that Marvel is collected both "Avengers" and "New Avengers" together for the "Time Runs Out" event, It doesn't seem like collecting these issues any other way would make sense, but I've seen some collections put together poorly in the past, This one works great. I would love to get a series of omnibuses combining all together the "Avengers" and "New Avengers" from Hickman's run as opposed to the two separate omnibusstyle collections that are coming out for each.
Here are my SPOILERFILLED reviews of each individual issue in this collection:
Avengers: This is the first issue that finally says, “InMonthsTime Runs Out! Secret Wars.
” This issue picks up right where New Avengersleft off, All of the different Avengers factions are on the battlefield, still stuck in the Invisible Womans invisible cells, She agrees to release them if they can all talk things out, Reed has a plan. Steve Rogers says that he will give them five minutes, and Invisible Woman releases everyone, Before he hears what Reeds plan is, Rogers demands that the Illuminati agree to surrender once the Earth is saved, Namor, Reed, and Beast agree, but Black Panther refuses, Reed moves into plan describing phase, and says the Cabal needs to be stopped, As a reminder, the Cabal is led by Namor and Thanos, so they are a very powerful team, Namor is going to help take them down from the inside, Later, there is another Incursion, and the Cabal goes to fight off the other Earth, Thanos is displaying a bit of caution after Maximus an Inhuman working with the Cabal warns the team that their timelines clock is running down, When the Cabal reaches the other Earth, they find the multiversehopping bad guys, the Mapmakers who we learned in a previous issue are evolved versions of A, I. M. s Adaptoids. One good thing about this Incursion is that Mapmakers Earths are already dead void of human life so blowing it up wont be a moral dilemma, We then find out Reeds full plan, and it is kind of surprising, Because the Cabal has become so evil, Reed plans to destroy them along with the Mapmakers and the dead Earth, Namor will make sure the whole Cabal is there, then he will arm the antimatter bomb, and transport back to our Earth, Beast will use a multiversal shield to trap the Cabal on the other Earth, and the Cabal will all be killed with the Earth, All of the different Avengers teams seem to be OK with this which is strange because superheroes dont typically kill their enemies, So, the plan is going fine when Invisible Woman realizes that Black Panther isnt with everyone anymore, Where is he Well, when Namor tried to transport to the place where the multiversal shield was going to trap the Cabal, Black Panther was waiting for him, Without much hesitation, Black Panther stabs Namor in the chest with a knife that is important to his family, In case you dont know, Black Panther hates Namor because Namor has caused the death of thousands of people in Wakanda, First during the events of “A vs, X,” and then again during the event, “Infinity, ” Black Panther has been waiting to get revenge, showing mercy for quite a while, but he finally took action, Immediately after Namor was stabbed, Black Bolt showed up to help Black Panther, I cant remember why Black Bolt would have anything against Namor, but Black Bolt uses his supersonic voice power to injure Namor further, and Namor is then sent back to the Mapmakers Earth.
Moments later, that Earth is blown up, and the text at the bottom of the page says, “So ends the Cabal, ” If this sticks, that means that this issue featured the deaths of the following Marvel characters: Namor, Thanos, Maximus, Black Swan, Proxima Midnight, Corvus Glaive, and Terrax but not theversion.
When I was reading the Namor/Black Panther stuff, and I realized what was about to happen, I gasped out loud, and maybe said some sort of phrase of shock.
For that reason, this individual issue gets astar rating,
New Avengers: InMonthsTime Runs Out! Secret Wars! Everyone is working together to stop the threat now when Reed drops a bomb, He tells them that he has been observing the multiverse, and there are less than two dozen universes left he thinksin total, “We are all out of time, ” Reed explains that theyve used the lastmonths while being on the run to try and solve this problem, They tried to use a Cosmic Cube, they tried to get the help of Galactus and the Celestials the Celestials mysteriously disappeared, they tried to get help from the Captain Britain Corps, and they tried using Franklin Richards powers.
Nothing worked. In the process, it appears something bad happened to Franklin, As he is explaining all this Hank Pym reappears after having been missing formonths, His mission was to find Rabum Alal, the Great Destroyer, but he didnt find him, Hank says that he found the Ivory Kings, “the white lords from wild space, From out therefrom beyond. I found the Beyonders. ” Strangely, they dont look like the Beyonder that we have seen in the past, so I dont really know what the deal is, In a quick side story, Molecule Man took Dr, Doom someplace. It is a white void, but it is familiar to both of them, Im not positive, but my guess is because of the tiein to the old Secret Wars story that this place is the original Battleworld that the Beyonder used in that storyline from thes.
This issue is really ramping up for the upcoming
Secret Wars, It feels like Reed is ready to give up and face the consequences of Armageddon,
Avengers: The issue opens on Earth, This is the Ultimate Universe, We are told that it takes placemonths ago, and we see Ultimate Nick Fury talking to Ultimate Reed Richards, In the Ultimate Universe, Reed started out as a hero on the Fantastic Four, but eventually became a villain, After doing a lot of bad things, Reed recently helped do a good thing, so Fury wants to get Reeds help in preparing for doomsday scenarios, Fury is rebuilding S. H. I. E. L. D. , and he wants Reeds help, But not so fast. In a later scene, we see Reed talking to his Artificial Intelligence assistant, and they are talking about the Incursions, The AI says that there is another Incursion projected to occur in the nextdays, Reed says, “How many worlds have I killed now” “,” is the reply, And Reed responds, “Im getting too good at this, ” OMG. Reeds AI, who he calls City, adds more details, “I witnessed something through the Bridge today, Maker, Something beyond our current understanding has occurred, Yesterday there were hundreds of thousands of universes remaining in the Multiverse, Today there are less than two dozen, ” After this scene, we flash back to Earth, and see the Shiar Empires Gladiator being told about the Incursions, His people have just figured out what is happening, With little time to brainstorm about how to stop the Incursion, Gladiator realizes that the only option they have to save the Universe is to destroy the Earth, He notifies the Intergalactic Council, Then, back on the Ultimate Universe, we see Reed talking to City in the present day for what weve been seeing in “Time Runs Out, ” He is creating an Incursion point to go observe a dying Earth, It turns out that he is observing the Earth that the Illuminati left the Cabal to die on, We see that Namor has survived his encounter with Black Panther and Black Bolt, and the Cabal realize that theyve been trapped, Just then, they are made aware that a second Incursion is happening at the same time, Weve never seen this before as readers, Three Earths intersecting instead of only two, Black Swan calls this a gift from Rabum Alal, and I am left wondering for the first time if Rabum Alal is actually Ultimate Reed Richards, The Cabal decide to try to escape the antimatter bombs by going to this third Earth, and they come face to face with Ultimate Reed Richards as the issue comes to a close.
New Avengers: This issue features the explanation to who the Beyonders are, There is a great quote from Hank Pym in regards to the Beyonder that was featured in thes Secret Wars storyline, Hank explains that he was a child from a race of beings known as the Beyonders, and that he just made himself look human because that is who he was playing with.
Heres the quote: “These things cannot be fully comprehended in a human fashion, I could talk about scale, perhapsthe size of itI could tell you about the child unit from the Secret Wars, Visually modified to mimic what it perceived, It crunched a universe to make a toybut these things crunch universes and are most certainly not playing games,
At this point, Im going to summarize, because the entire issue is expositionheavy, with Hank describing how things got worse and worse in his multiversal travels, Heres the quick summary. They Beyonders are not good guys, They are more powerful than any other being in the Marvel Universe, For example, the Celestials are often viewed as the cosmic gods of the Marvel Universe, and they are near impossible to battle, In each universe that they travelled to, one Beyonder was able to take out every Celestial in that universe, The next thing Im about to say, I think is correct, The issue got a little trippy, so Im not positive what happened, but I think this is right, As the Multiverse felt itself being destroyed by the Beyonders, it took on a form for itself to do battle, It appeared in the form of the Living Tribunal, the nearly omnipotent entity that oversees and maintains balance in the realities that constitute the Marvel Mutliverse, He serves as a judge of these realities, So, there was a great battle, taking place in every universe at the same time, featuring the Living Tribunal vs, the Beyonders. The Living Tribunal was defeated, with one shred of his dead body being left in each universe in the Multiverse, As Hank is telling the story, Captain Britain appears and confirms that things are really bad, and that his entire team of multiversal defenders has been destroyed, He is the only one left, Hanks monologue and the issue ends with this quote: “Its over, my friend, Done. The gods spent billions of years to build somethingall of the Multiverseand these things destroyed it on a whim, What hope does man have now”
Avengers: The “previously in Avengers” section of this comic made it sound like the Beyonders are behind the collapse of the Multiverse, when I was starting to think that it was the Ultimate Reed Richards doing.
Hank Pym clarifies that the Beyonders had to kill all of the Celestials and the Living Tribunal in the whole Multiverse before starting the fullscale attack because the Celestials could have stopped them.
FOUR DAYS AGO: The Illuminati have decided to use the skin of the dead Living Tribunal as a shield of sorts, since it is made of a material that can withstand the rigors of collapsing multiversal space.
THREE DAYS AGO: Sunspot and Cannonball invite Cyclops to join them to save the world, but he refuses, saying that he sees things more clearly now, The new game, he says, is resurrection, and it is well underway, TWO DAYS AGO: Black Panther, Reed Richards, and Valeria Richards discuss their plan to “not lose, ” They have created some sort of multiversal lifeboat that will be able to house a limited number of people, They are trying to figure out who gets to be saved on this lifeboat, ONE DAY AGO: Smasher is called back by the leader of the ShiAr Empire, and she is instructed to bring her family with, She doesnt know it, but it is because the ShiAr Empire is planning to destroy the Earth in order to save the Universe, In the Ultimate Universe, Black Swan and Namor are talking about moving forward from his betrayal, and he is fully committed back to the side of the Cabal, In space, the Guardians of the Galaxy become aware of the impending attack on Earth, but when they try to warn the Avengers, they are told that they wont stop the attack.
Im thinking it is because they have Black Panthers lifeboat, but Im not sure, .
Unlock The Secrets Of Avengers: Time Runs Out, Vol. 3 Penned By Jonathan Hickman Accessible Through Physical Edition
Jonathan Hickman