Crimes Of The Illuminati: The Great Society and their Earth

[Abe]

Yes, but Earths were blowing up in alternative realities. Thousands of them, right when a Molecule Man was stabbed.

Not 'right when'. The effect of the killings took a lot of time. And it involved always more than one Earth : two for each incursions - and two whole universes to be exact : their mutual destruction was the result of many incursions.

That's why I think that it affected in fact the whole structure of the multiverse - its global coherency - and not even specifically the universes where Owen was killed. Several incursions happened involving Earth-616 while our Owen was still there.

The global collapse seemed also to have an effect even on 'safe' universes : the fundamentals of physics seem to changed as shown with the dying stars (the Ex Nihili couldn't save one despite their power ; possibly that's also what didn't allow T'challa to create a new world with a cosmic cube when the Illuminati were trying to 'shade the apocalypse')

[jackolover]

Not 'right when'. The effect of the killings took a lot of time. And it involved always more than one Earth : two for each incursions - and two whole universes to be exact : their mutual destruction was the result of many incursions.

That's why I think that it affected in fact the whole structure of the multiverse - its global coherency - and not even specifically the universes where Owen was killed. Several incursions happened involving Earth-616 while our Owen was still there.

The global collapse seemed also to have an effect even on 'safe' universes : the fundamentals of physics seem to changed as shown with the dying stars (the Ex Nihili couldn't save one despite their power ; possibly that's also what didn't allow T'challa to create a new world with a cosmic cube when the Illuminati were trying to 'shade the apocalypse')

I think you are mixing up Incursions and when Earths started blowing up. Incursions didn't happen for 11 years while Earths were blowing up the whole time from killing Molecule Men from FF #20 till the Incursions started. Molecule Man was telling Doom to hurry up blowing up Earths so the first Incursions would start.

[Abe]

From what I remember Reed could do statistical searches and find all instances of a specific search, no time limit, or the searches become false.

For the past the time limit is not as short as I remember, but it depends on how distant is the universe observed. They can't see every moment in every universe. For the future, it's quite short! They also need to now what they are searching.





In fact they see a MM killed by Swans in a ceremony... but couldn't recognize him... or his 'symbol'... Me neither! I was quite obsessed by this image :



(all images from NA #15 I think)

[Abe]

I think you are mixing up Incursions and when Earths started blowing up. Incursions didn't happen for 11 years while Earths were blowing up the whole time from killing Molecule Men from FF #20 till the Incursions started. Molecule Man was telling Doom to hurry up blowing up Earths so the first Incursions would start.

But... Earths weren't blowing when a Molecule Man was killed ?!?

And I've just re-read NA 33, where all that is told...

[jackolover]

For the past the time limit is not as short as I remember, but it depends on how distant is the universe observed. They can't see every moment in every universe. For the future, it's quite short! They also need to now what they are searching.





In fact they see a MM killed by Swans in a ceremony... but couldn't recognize him... or his 'symbol'... Me neither! I was quite obsessed by this image :



(all images from NA #15 I think)

Thanks for the images Abe.

It looks to me like they could see into the past without trouble, but I don't know why when the Black Swan stabbed the Molecule Man on the table, the Illuminati didn't see that Earth blow up? It should have been a direct consequence of killing a MM and all those Black Swans died in the explosion?

[jackolover]

But... Earths weren't blowing when a Molecule Man was killed ?!?

And I've just re-read NA 33, where all that is told...

Okay. That's strange. Then how did the Incursions start if Earths weren't blowing up? The whole point of killing MM was to start blowing up Earths so when the Multiverse compresses because of the loss of Earths, the Incursions start?

In NA 33 it still has Molecule Man complaining to Doom he only killed Thousands, he needs to kill billions and killing a MM, Destroys his universe. Maybe there was some unannounced inference that all Doom was doing is killing Molecule Men and putting them in a barrel. Then the Black Swans inadvertently saw this barrel, and changed their operation, destroying Earths with bombs. But that is all very vague as to what killing Molecule Men and blowing up planets was achieving.

The inference is killing Molecule Men doesn't destroy their universe, it only kills a MM. The Incursions were caused by the Schism of the Black Swans who started blowing up Earths and causing the Multiverse to contract and start spontaneous Incursions. I'm not sure what to believe there because it's too vague, but certainly, at some point Black Swans were blowing up Earths and causing Incursions if Molecule Men dying didn't. The Illuminati could go back to see what caused the Black Swans to start blowing up planets, then find Doom and stop him.

[Abe]

I just added an image in my last post, but the size is quite small... With a direct link I hope it will be more readable :

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/...l_3_33_002.jpg

I agree with you, Hickman wasn't very clear! All I understood is what I wrote today in my third post... I wish we have had a full book of theoretical Marvel physics by Hickman... lol...

Edit : the size of the image is still very small when I click on the link, but if I refresh the page then it turns giant-size... (something with my cache?) I hope that it will work for you too, jackolover...

[AnonymousODG]

Okay. That's strange. Then how did the Incursions start if Earths weren't blowing up? The whole point of killing MM was to start blowing up Earths so when the Multiverse compresses because of the loss of Earths, the Incursions start?

In NA 33 it still has Molecule Man complaining to Doom he only killed Thousands, he needs to kill billions and killing a MM, Destroys his universe. Maybe there was some unannounced inference that all Doom was doing is killing Molecule Men and putting them in a barrel. Then the Black Swans inadvertently saw this barrel, and changed their operation, destroying Earths with bombs. But that is all very vague as to what killing Molecule Men and blowing up planets was achieving.

The inference is killing Molecule Men doesn't destroy their universe, it only kills a MM. The Incursions were caused by the Schism of the Black Swans who started blowing up Earths and causing the Multiverse to contract and start spontaneous Incursions. I'm not sure what to believe there because it's too vague, but certainly, at some point Black Swans were blowing up Earths and causing Incursions if Molecule Men dying didn't. The Illuminati could go back to see what caused the Black Swans to start blowing up planets, then find Doom and stop him.

The Incursions were a side-effect of the mass murder of Molecule Men being prematurely killed before they were properly primed for simultaneous detonation as the Beyonders intended. It was how Doom frustrated the Beyonders' plan to blow up the Multiverse all at once.

[Iron Maiden]

The Incursions were a side-effect of the mass murder of Molecule Men being prematurely killed before they were properly primed for simultaneous detonation as the Beyonders intended. It was how Doom frustrated the Beyonders' plan to blow up the Multiverse all at once.

Agreed. By setting things off prematurely, it gave everyone throughout the multiverse the alert that something was amiss. Otherwise when the zero hour hit (in 20 MU years IIRC)everything would have been obliterated just because the Beyonders wanted to run this experiment.

Abe, I've added a larger copy of that panel with the Molecule Man from issue #33

[TakoM]

There is a perfectly logical reason.

The "heroes" would stop them from doing what is necessary. The Caps, Blue Marvels, Janet's of the world would not let them pull the trigger to blow up an inhabited world. Hell, Remender in Uncanny Avengers showed how strong Janet's conviction one... she doomed the earth because she wouldn't kill ONE person lol.

That was 100% the reason to mind wipe Cap and it was spelled out over and over in those first issues. He would not entertain the thought of blowing up a world. He was 100% against it.

The Illuminati saw themselves above "heroes." They thought that, push comes to shove, they would do what "heroes" could not.

But, when push came to shove, only half Strange and then Namor could actually do it. (so you could say the Illuminati actually worked as intended I suppose).

At that point, when they decided to essentially give up... THAT is when not telling anyone kinda fails. They realized they couldn't do it and they should have gotten more people involved.

Of course, by that point, Cap went full retard so *shrug*

Since I did write about this a lot about this in the past I try to keep it short.(which is not easy)

The point of Cap being against it was if they built it they will use it with the annotation that they will stop seeking other solutions.

If I would be a judge me reasons for the judgment would be:" Guilty because they built those bombs with the intention to use them and it was impossible not to foresee the consequences of it" That Narmor did it and they rebelled against it is honorable but don't give them a free pass with no guilt.

(So Narmor was the author's scapegoat indeed but doesn't help against all guilt of the rest of the team)

This does only factor in "guilt" as a term of society but not the whole situation mostly there was no way out. This is what they convinced, themselves to be true and the authors the readers to some degree. Maybe if you factor Molecule Man in because nobody knew about him but we saw some solutions without bombs, a huge phase generator as satellite which phase the other earth and a shield generator which create a shield between worlds. The last thing wasn't completed but a miniature prototype showed it is working.

A interdimensional empire like Khan's may have even better stuff.(Like getting lose from the multiverse) The point is with the right idea and resources at least the destruction of this world could have been avoided.

Which lead to the question of the arrogance of the Illuminati. Depending on their position I would clearly say yes they are because even including those countries they speak only for a small part of the world and on the other hand they aren't gods I mean we have so many super powerful human characters with godly positions but none of them was a member of the Illuminati instead we had kings and scientist.(if you insist to have such a group)

In short with the help of others things would gone much better.


The last point is Hickman's story is full of contradictions on many layers which include even the time after the event with the question did it happened or not?

[CentralPower]

1. They blew up an inhabited world

2. They knowingly let another entity destroy another earth. Could have been a Galactus type situation, Cabal type situation.

3. A rogue member of the team destroyed an earth and suicide at the same time. Where is the Wonder Woman analogue for instance?

Option three is a possibility. Are there any interviews or notation from Hickman that address this?

Yes. It would have been better than the abomination that was Battleworld or ANAD. Just restart the MU again in another form, but, and here is the important part, the Illuminati would keep their integrity.

That would have defeated the purpose of the "no-win" scenario. If the Avengers had simply died with uniform nobility, "Time Runs Out" would have been a pointless cliffhanger, the worst sort of Bronze Age comics that we all should have moved beyond. By showing major characters fail, operationally and morally, Hickman made it more significant that some characters held to principle.

And the Illuminati (well most of them) did keep their integrity. They couldn't do it in the end.

Except Namor. Luckily for everyone.

All of them, aside from maybe the Hulk, share some blame.

Hyperion was shown capable of moving a planet and Star Brand was said to be powerful enough to destroy a planet.

It's not until the Great Society incursion where they seemingly have no choice but to use the bomb.

Bringing in Starbrand would have been a bad idea because the kid had not discretion. (He would have made a FaceBook post to the effect of "saved the world from multiversal collapse today".) Hyperion was unable to stop the incursion that destroyed his world. He was able to slow the planets down, not change their direction.

No win.

We saw Steve's plan in action.

The Great Society was essentially Steve personified.

They all died.

Not quite. The Society was focused on stopping the incursions without killing a planet full of nice people, similar to DaCosta and his crew (Thor, Hyperion et al). As soon as Rogers got his memories back, he was focused on kicking Tony Stark in the nuts, rather than on stopping the incursions.

Steve Rogers failed because he ignored the main problem in favor of his grudge with Tony Stark.

[Biclopcicle]

Not 'right when'. The effect of the killings took a lot of time. And it involved always more than one Earth : two for each incursions - and two whole universes to be exact : their mutual destruction was the result of many incursions.

That's why I think that it affected in fact the whole structure of the multiverse - its global coherency - and not even specifically the universes where Owen was killed. Several incursions happened involving Earth-616 while our Owen was still there.

The global collapse seemed also to have an effect even on 'safe' universes : the fundamentals of physics seem to changed as shown with the dying stars (the Ex Nihili couldn't save one despite their power ; possibly that's also what didn't allow T'challa to create a new world with a cosmic cube when the Illuminati were trying to 'shade the apocalypse')

My understanding of what happened is the following:
-Killing a Molecule Man would prematurely end his native universe. It wasn't instantaneous. Note how Doom says in NA#33 after killing the first Molecule Man that "nothing happened"
-Referring back to Reed Richard's diagram in NA#2, the early death of a universe caused a contraction in spacetime of the multiverse.
-A slight correction to Reed's model: instead of the early death of a single universe causing the incursion phenomenon, it took 8 years of killing Molecule Men (and therefore at least great than 1000 universes) before the Incursion phenomenon began.


It is interesting that the model of mumtiversal collapse changed...Hickman has said that the original story involved the destruction of the Doomverse from FF#611 as being the etiology of the multiversal collapse. I believe that he still intended for this to happen when he scripted NA#2. At some point he ditched this and by NA#15, the Molecule Man was the "bomb" that set off the incursions. Not sure why it changed; I suppose Brevoort wanted to have a definite villain- the Molecule Man angle allowed for the Beyonders to come into play

[jackolover]

I just added an image in my last post, but the size is quite small... With a direct link I hope it will be more readable :

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/...l_3_33_002.jpg

I agree with you, Hickman wasn't very clear! All I understood is what I wrote today in my third post... I wish we have had a full book of theoretical Marvel physics by Hickman... lol...

Edit : the size of the image is still very small when I click on the link, but if I refresh the page then it turns giant-size... (something with my cache?) I hope that it will work for you too, jackolover...

Yes, I remember that image. It is confusing about what to make of a lot of the dialogue associated with Doom, Molecule Man, and why Doom never stopped the Black Swans from destroying planets if it was against Dooms plans?

[jackolover]

The Incursions were a side-effect of the mass murder of Molecule Men being prematurely killed before they were properly primed for simultaneous detonation as the Beyonders intended. It was how Doom frustrated the Beyonders' plan to blow up the Multiverse all at once.

That's certainly close to how I read it. Universes were destroyed, contracting the Multiverse to start Incursions.

[jackolover]

Option three is a possibility. Are there any interviews or notation from Hickman that address this?




That would have defeated the purpose of the "no-win" scenario. If the Avengers had simply died with uniform nobility, "Time Runs Out" would have been a pointless cliffhanger, the worst sort of Bronze Age comics that we all should have moved beyond. By showing major characters fail, operationally and morally, Hickman made it more significant that some characters held to principle.





All of them, aside from maybe the Hulk, share some blame.




Bringing in Starbrand would have been a bad idea because the kid had not discretion. (He would have made a FaceBook post to the effect of "saved the world from multiversal collapse today".) Hyperion was unable to stop the incursion that destroyed his world. He was able to slow the planets down, not change their direction.

No win.




Not quite. The Society was focused on stopping the incursions without killing a planet full of nice people, similar to DaCosta and his crew (Thor, Hyperion et al). As soon as Rogers got his memories back, he was focused on kicking Tony Stark in the nuts, rather than on stopping the incursions.

Steve Rogers failed because he ignored the main problem in favor of his grudge with Tony Stark.

I thought the whole story was pointless. The Illuminati were told point blank by the Black Swan all actions would not stop the eventual destruction of Prime Earth. Steve Rogers was right. Why settle for ANAD, where super heroes panicked and got this horrible remnant Earth, when they could all have died honourably and Marvel return them to another MU and save their integrity? Yes we get some understanding of how human nature is displayed in unwinnable situations, but these are heroes, and we want our heroes to be admired. Look what heroes ANAD we have now. The classics are all unworthy of the name hero. Not a favorable outcome for Marvels prime products I would think.