Uncanny Avengers #17 question (*SPOILERS*)

TheOriginalGMan

Anyone reading Uncanny Avengers? If so, can you help me out here ... is this supposed to be some alternate timeline, like the Marvel Ultimates universe or something?

If not, can you explain to me what just happened in issue #17? One of the Celestials destroys the entire Earth ... Thor survives and transports himself to the Asgardian plane where he encounters Odin? Say what?

I'm sure there'll be some cheap time-travel fix to everything, but for now I don't get it. If it takes place in the mainstream continuity, why hasn't it impacted the other titles?

Brack

Why didn't it impact the other titles? Well, they'd have had to cancel almost all the other comics what with their main characters being dead and the planet they are set on blown up. :) Plus Hickman's sense of impending doom in his Avengers books would be kind of undone if he had to write the planet blowing up out of nowhere in them.

It has amused me seeing some of the reactions to this book only. It started when some fan favourites were killed off, which some people thought would somehow be permanent, despite the fact the villains were characters who had been raised from the dead in the first place.

This issue was just the outrageous icing on the cake. Obviously everything is going to be fixed, and given Remender's record on these things, may end up repairing more than it broke in the first place.

TheOriginalGMan

So, it actually is supposed to be taking place in the mainstream Marvel continuity though? And not some alternate type of deal like Ultimates?

Brack

My guess is it's mainstream continuity. Until it isn't. It's a Kang story after all.

Chuck_Melville

It's part of the mainstream continuity, but God alone knows where it fits. Nobody in editorial is giving any clues anymore, or seem to care.

TheOriginalGMan

Okay, so I'm not the only person confused by what's going on then. Granted, in my case, it doesn't take much ...

Brack

Chuck_Melville said:

It's part of the mainstream continuity, but God alone knows where it fits. Nobody in editorial is giving any clues anymore, or seem to care.

I'm pretty sure if they took the effort to make this story "fit" it would be nowhere near as fun. It's OTT superhero pop thrills that would derail every other Marvel book being published if they had to acknowledge it as it was happening. Plus, there's more than a good chance that most of the characters involved won't remember it happened anyway.

It's one thing to make sure everyone is writing Spider-Man as Otto, another to make sure everyone draws the Earth being destroyed by a space giant in their comics.

TheOriginalGMan

They seem to go to great lengths to have these huge impact storylines crossover throughout the Marvel Universe (Infinity, etc), that it seems kinda odd that the "rapture" of every mutant in the world, plus the sudden appearance of a Celestial trying to curbstomp good ol' Mother Earth, wouldn't, you know ... catch people's attention. But hey, life's busy. Even if you're a superhero. I get that. I mean, who has time to read the paper these days?

Brack

TheOriginalGMan said:

They seem to go to great lengths to have these huge impact storylines crossover throughout the Marvel Universe (Infinity, etc), that it seems kinda odd that the "rapture" of every mutant in the world, plus the sudden appearance of a Celestial trying to curbstomp good ol' Mother Earth, wouldn't, you know ... catch people's attention. But hey, life's busy. Even if you're a superhero. I get that. I mean, who has time to read the paper these days?

I think that's part of the point. You are so conditioned to expect anything monumental to happen in a crossover event, that having the world be destroyed in the seventeenth issue of the secondary (now tertiary) Avengers book, feels a little absurd.

TheOriginalGMan

Well, much like Lucy Riccardo, I thin' Marvel has some 'splainin' to do!

fredzilla

TheOriginalGMan said:

Well, much like Lucy Riccardo, I thin' Marvel has some 'splainin' to do!

It looks as though they've released an official statement:
"It doesn't need to be explained...
http://youtu.be/4iiryJwvDtc "
~ Courtesy Marvel Editorial Board

Chuck_Melville

Hey, all they really need to do is say "This storyline takes place between issue #'s such and such of the other Avengers titles". How hard is that?

It would certainly be a big help to me -- I file my copies in continuity order. Up until the last couple of years, that wasn't all that difficult.

playdohsrepublic

From the "Axel-In-Charge" column on CBR:

CBR: "Uncanny Avengers" #17 contained some major events -- "major" as in, Captain America dying and the Earth breaking apart -- but for a book that was billed as a flagship when it launched, readers haven't seen it touched upon elsewhere. Will the impact of "Uncanny Avengers" soon be seen in the rest of the Marvel books?

Alonso: Yes. The relevance of "Uncanny Avengers" to the Marvel Universe will become very apparent in 2014. Rick has lit the fuse for a big explosion.

Elsiebub

Brack said:

This issue was just the outrageous icing on the cake.

That's a good description of it, yes.

Reading the issue was a great experience. I went from "Oh look, now they killed Cap" to "Oh look, now they killed . . . EVERYONE and EXPLODED THE EARTH in the process!"

I'm digging the title, though, and am almost glad that the rest of the Marvel U has been ignoring it. I'm fine with Remender's saga here being allowed to proceed at its own rate, on its own terms, without a bunch of tie-ins.

On the one hand, sometimes asterisks would be nice, but I honestly find it very hard to believe that all of this continuity actually fits together anyway. How much time has passed between Rogue's death and Captain America's? Because over in Brian Wood's "X-Men" they have acknowledged that Rogue is dead... but the X-books have been pretty solid in terms of inter-title continuity, and yet Captain America has appeared in them... and yet I think only a matter of hours have passed between Uncanny Avengers #14 and #17. So, it doesn't make sense, I don't think.

But to sort of respond to the impetus of this thread: Uncanny Avengers has been playing with continuity in quite a dizzying/masterful way. We have seen quite a few alternate realities, flash-forwards into the future (When the heck is the Red Skull/Onslaught thing going to happen???), and flashbacks into medieval times (Thor vs. Apocalypse 500 years ago? So awesome), so much so that I feel like I need to rereread the whole run thus far.

For those who jumped ship early on because Cassaday's art wasn't up to snuff, you are missing out.