Marvel's space faring races and their wars

[mr friendly guy]

Ok so I um found some back issues of Marvel to read, and it seems I missed a lot. But for now I want to focus on the space faring races and the cosmic races.

It seems the fought the Zerg Tyrannids the Flood er I mean The Annihilation Wave which was the typical swarm alien race.

Then they had to fight the Necrons The Borg The Cybermen The Phalanx who seem to be the Cyborg or Robotic race. Oh, like the Necrons the Phalanx are vulnerable to energy from souls.

They also got into scraps with Chaos The Cancerverse which was (until it was destroyed) a corrupted version of the Marvelverse where the Avatar of Death was killed. The chief villains also had very Lovecraftian theme going for them.

Now they gotten into fights with First Ones The Builders which seems to be the archetype of an ancient race. Their main fleet alone after a battle still had 17,000 light cruisers, 3000 carriers, 2000 heavy cruisers, 600 worldships, 12 World Killers. I don't think the Yuzhan Vong had that many equivalent of World ships. They didn't just rely on superior technology, they had better tactics until Captain America wank, super generalship, follows by Starbrand super dooper powers turns the day. The Builders made great use of cloaking devices and a sacrifice some ships into a trap for the sole purpose of turning the trap back against the space faring Marvel races and destroying one third of the enemy fleet in minutes.

Oh yeah Thanos took advantage of the Avenger's absence while they were preventing the Builders reaching earth. And he got his butt kicked by his son. Wait. Thanos has a son? Yeah and Thanos's frozen body is now used by the Illuminati for some scheme, which is a big fuck you to the Thanos wanking over the years. No I am not talking about Thanos becoming powerful with <insert plot device here>, its how when he gets beaten by say Thor, someone (IIRC Jim Starlin) retcons it to it was a Thanos clone even though it makes zero sense for Thanos to send his clone alone to gain ridiculous power. Rant off now.

Anybody caught these as well? I have been more interested in DC's cosmic heroes (namely centred around the Green Lantern corps and the other wielders of the emotional spectrum) but all in all, Marvel's efforts aren't bad. Marvel does seem to suffer from killing off these characters before their direction is established. Not just some protagonists, but they seemed to have destroyed the Cancerverse with a deus ex machina.

Personally I would love if Marvel brings out The Negation. A ginormous empire ruled by a God Emperor. Enforced by Lawbringers with planet busting capability, plus ships alone which can do that. What's not to love? We have discussed the Negation before http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 4&t=150177

Oh and before someone says, but who owns the rights to the old Crossgen characters. Well the answer is Disney. The same guys who now own the rights to Marvel. And they have allowed Marvel to try and reboot some of the old Crossgen titles, but they weren't popular (I personally prefer the old ones better). So its possible.

[Majin Gojira]

I found the builders to be extremely underwhelming. All buildup, no real substance.

Maybe I just play too much Super Robot Wars, but they were just not that impressive. That and they were stepping on the toes of Jack Kirby's Celestials in their overall 'world creating' concept.

I did like the other arcs, though. The Annihilation and Phalanx were good arcs for the overall cosmic-Marvel to deal with. Haven't gotten to "War of Kings" in any great detail however, so I can't speak on it or the Cancerverse's overall effects.

[Tsyroc]

The Annihilation Wave had some other elements outside of the swarm that I think helped it a lot. Annihilus, taking control of some of the heralds of Galactus. Capturing Galactus, Ravenous, super powered beings from the Negative Zone forced to work for Annihilus etc... I agree that the swarm itself wasn't all that great.

I've usually really disliked the Phalanx. In Annihilation: Conquest it was actually okay. I particularly liked that the Phalanx had been Spoiler

highjacked by Ultron

. The Phalanx are still one of those things that I think gets overpowered. It shouldn't be able to infect and take over a lot of the beings that it does. It isn't as bad as the zombie "virus" that's in the Marvel Zombies books but at least that started out intentionally as crazy "zombie wank" alternate non-canon universe. Unfortunately they were entertaining and popular enough that it bled over into both the Ultimate Universe (the Frightful Four) and 616 Universe (zombie Deadpool's head).

[Adrian McNair]

Generally I've found Cosmic Marvel to be my favourite aspect of the 616 universe. Well, to be more precise, it became my favourite aspect after working my way through the most recent run of events dealing with that subject (that began with Annihilation). Why is it my favourite aspect? Aside from being a major fan of space opera in general, it's the fact that it doesn't suffer from the issues that plague the Earthbound stories - namely that there's no need for things to tie into the real-world. Marvel as a company has this dogged insistence on adhering to current events in a bid to keep it "relevant." I think that this harms the credibility of the world-building. Does anyone here honestly believe that Earth-616 would even be remotely similar to our own if it didn't have to obey this asinine rule? I'd expect it to be radically different on a cultural and geo-political level at least. With all of the super-humans, super-geniuses and super-science that are around it should be a post-scarcity galactic superpower. The rise of Earth-616 would make for a pretty kickarse What If? tale if done right. I'd read that story. Since I appear to be going off on a tangent here, I digress.

To get back on track, I think that Cosmic Marvel is superior to Earth-616/Mainstream Marvel because there aren't any bullshit contrivances such as stupidly ungrateful civilians or the aforementioned improbable tech level. They can go all-out with the scope and scale without having to worry about maintaining the status-quo. Empires fall and worlds are shattered. I particularly liked the works from the Andy Lanning/Dan Abnett creative partnership. It's a shame that those two had a falling-out. Guardians of the Galaxy, for instance, just isn't the same anymore without them.

Going from War of Kings/Realm of Kings and the Thanos Imperative to Infinity was somewhat jarring though. Why did the Inhumans abandon the Kree Empire and make their way back to the interstellar backwater that is Earth? Black Bolt was even forced to destroy Attilan during Infinity so it doesn't strike me as the best call on their part (though it did result in a whole bunch of new Inhumans coming out of the woodwork so there is that). There was a great deal of development that went into that storyline. To just discard it seems like a waste. I tried scouring wikipedia, ComicVine and the Marvel Wiki for the details but I couldn't really find anything. Does it have something to do with that resurrection of the Supreme Intelligence I've heard about?

[mr friendly guy]

I'd expect it to be radically different on a cultural and geo-political level at least. With all of the super-humans, super-geniuses and super-science that are around it should be a post-scarcity galactic superpower. The rise of Earth-616 would make for a pretty kickarse What If? tale if done right. I'd read that story. Since I appear to be going off on a tangent here, I digress.

That's actually been a thought of mine as well. Marvel Earth could do similar things that Stargate Earth did. We have the technology, and the soldiers. Imagine more Iron Man armours for marines. Imagine reverse engineering Quantumn Bands for interstellar travel. Pym particles could theoretically increase our energy supplies by increasing the mass of the source then consuming that energy source before it shrinks back down.

[Adrian McNair]

That's actually been a thought of mine as well. Marvel Earth could do similar things that Stargate Earth did. We have the technology, and the soldiers. Imagine more Iron Man armours for marines. Imagine reverse engineering Quantumn Bands for interstellar travel. Pym particles could theoretically increase our energy supplies by increasing the mass of the source then consuming that energy source before it shrinks back down.

Precisely. One example of just how much of a game changer this kind of technology can be is shown with the Stark of Earth-691. They went from the primitive tribal stage to a race of space-faring conquerors when some Stark-tech came into the equation. And that was unintentional. One can only imagine what wonders Stark, Pym and Richards could come up with if they acted in concert.

[Elheru Aran]

I can't really comment on War of Kings as I didn't get around to reading that. I also only got about halfway through Annihilation.

That said, Thanos Imperative was fairly fun reading.

Infinity, however, was slightly absurd. Here's this race of highly evolved dudes who we've never seen before... oh hey, they're kicking our asses... let's kick *their* ass for a change... etc. It was frankly underwhelming. If they'd spent longer (and I mean longer, like a couple years or something) setting up the Builders that'd have been something. As it was? Meh.

And the ending, where they reveal these cosmic-horror types that are coming... yeah, thanks for stringing it out a little more? Because come on. We know they're gonna win. These guys are going to pop up, take a few special issues to wreak havoc, and then their asses are going to get kicked. Earth/the galaxy wins, yay.

Annihilation had the edge, at least, in that it was built up for some time, and it stretched out a good while until the climax.

Infinity, though? No. Not really.

And the Thanos subplot. They at least had the "Thanos Rising" series where they introduced the idea that he had children, but apart from that... he frankly went out like a punk.

Overall, while it was a fun read (once), Infinity simply left me cold.

[CyrilsScribe]

The Cancerverse, that isn't "Lovecraftian feel" that is straight up copying. Yot-Soter is Yog-Sototh, the Many Angled Ones reference a Cthulu mythos book by Grant Morrison, and the tons of mouths, feelers, tentacles, and teeth are Azatoth. Good to see his work in the comic world I guess...