thebibliomancer - Tumblr blog

thebibliomancer · 12 hours

Text

Essential Avengers: Avengers #315: DOOMSDAY PLUS ONE!

March, 1990

Guest-starring the Amazing SPIDER-MAN! The enemy REVEALED -- WHILE A UNIVERSE TREMBLES!

Is Nebula auditioning for a Bond movie poster? What's with the ass shot?

Also, we're still really slapping SPIDER-MAN prominently on the cover. I wonder if this story arc got a sales boost. Because it really is trying for one.

And not to nitpick but "the enemy revealed" when we already know Nebula's flimsy grasp of science was behind the universe vanishing. And how can a universe trembles when the universe has vanished?

Dammit, cover text! Get your story straight!

So, last times in Avengers: the Avengers were cleaning up after Acts of Vengeance when bouts of photo-negativity kept hitting the universe. While Iron Man and Vision went to investigate a weird call from Starfox, Thor and Spider-Man came into the Avengers Subbasement just in time for a series of photo-negativity strikes. Sersi used her Eternal powers to shield the room from the effects. Then, the Avengers discovered that everything outside of that one room had ceased to exist.

Captain America: "The whole universe has... vanished!!" Thor: "Say it is not so, Avenger! The son of Odin in his time hath stood upon the very brink of Ragnarok but ne'er hath such dark words been said!" Captain America: "See for yourself, Thor! This long range scanner shows the area of deep space immediately beyond Earth's Moon... At least, that's what it usually shows. Now there's... nothing!"

I wonder what DOOMSDAY PLUS ONE means in this context. Plus one what? Plus another doomsday? Plus another day?

I also wonder how all the instruments of the room are working without being connected to the greater sub-basement. Were the scanners and cameras located just within this square chunk of room? There wasn't anything on the surface? That doesn't make sense for an underground base...

I wouldn't bother thinking about it except the fact that the heroes only have the oxygen in this very specific room and no more invites one to think about the logistics of this.

A neat little touch is that endless nothingness isn't actually a white void. That's just the best man-made mechanisms can do at showing nothing.

The Avengers are feeling pretty defeatist in the face of the entire universe being gone. Understandably enough.

Captain America: "I've spent all my life surviving, first as a boy growing up in New York's lower east side, then as America's first and only super-soldier battling the Nazis in World War Two... finally as a member of the Avengers. But this... I don't want to sound like a quitter, but I have no idea how to deal with this!" Thor: "Nor have I, brave Captain -- and Thor hath lived a thousand times beyond thy mortal lifetime..."

Then, very special guest star, Spider-Man, gets a brilliant idea. He's the very special guest star so obviously, he's got to be pulling his weight.

Spidey knows a thing or two about cameras and Cap said the long range scanners weren't showing anything. What if they were missing something closer?

So he adjusts the depth of focus and zooms out (how do the scanners do this?) to see if there was something they just couldn't see because of how close it was.

"The way dust doesn't register on a normal camera lens..."

And bingo bango Bob's your mother's brother, another chunk of something floating in the endless void. A building floating about where New Jersey was labelled PolyDyne Industries.

Cap goes to check PolyDyne in the computer banks but ruh roh the computers aren't in this floating cube of Avengers Subbasement.

Sersi recovers from the strain of protecting the cube and suggests she can telepathically scan the PolyDyne sphere and find out if anyone is over there.

She tries to warn Cap that there could be danger to doing this but Cap insists. At this point, they have no choice but to try anything!

Sersi scans and then yells NO-OHHH!! and curls into the fetal position.

So her psychic abilities are about as useful as Jean in the 90s X-Men show. Zing.

Thor points out that a similar thing happened when she scanned the Negative Zone in Avengers #304. So basically, how do we keep an overpowered Eternal character like Sersi balanced?

This, I guess.

She's so ruffled that she forgets English so can't even warn the Avengers that she sensed a great EVIL at the center of the emptiness.

I guess that Thor knowing Allspeak hasn't been established yet. Or has been forgotten.

Thor can speak and understand every language. He gets Cipher's entire mutant power as a racial bonus

Ain't it sad, Cipher?

Jarvis, the most humany person here, notes that the air is getting stale.

Cap apparently has a "super-efficient bio-system" so he's better at breathing than a normal person. But even he can tell that the air is getting heavy on carbon dioxide.

This room only has this room's amount of air in it. It doesn't have extra air tanks or a carbon dioxide scrubber installed. Why would it? Under what circumstances would just this one communications room of the Avengers Subbasement get launched into an airless void??

I mean, except these circumstances. These are a bit unprecedented though.

But now that there's Something the Avengers can do, Cap isn't giving up.

Captain America: "If I've learned nothing else in my years of battle, I've learned the absolute truth of one old saying: While there's life, there's hope!"

Over at PolyDyne, everybody floats around in unconscious poses.

Nebula regains her wits first and marvels at the power contained in the compressor.

Nebula: "The power! Never in my wildest dreams have I anticipated such power! It crackles still about the compressor! It surges through my flesh like a thing alive! Even mighty gravity seems twisted by it!"

She tries to contact Gunthar the Rigellian on her mothership but he's not responding.

Then she looks outside the window and sees only the VOID.

Bit of a nitpick but after the explanation that the empty white void is the best human instruments could do to show absolute nothingness, I was hoping that seeing it with eyeballs would have a different effect.

Eyes lie to the brain, y'know.

Ah, well.

The story already settled on empty white void and its made for some striking splash pages.

Nebula floats over and starts yelling at Professor Harker to EXPLAIN.

Professor Harker: "It can only be a genesis pulse! There was always a danger of this, but it seemed so remote as to be beyond the need for considering! What my compressor does is concentrate the force of a one megaton nuclear explosion into an area smaller than the nucleus of an atom! In theory, this should release a vast quantity of usable energy. However, there was a small chance it might duplicate the effect of the Big Bang... create a new universe in the midst of the old..."

How small a chance is too big a risk that a science project might destroy the world? Just based on Mr. Destroy The Universe's project, I might say a non-zero chance but we've had a lot of particle acceleration since this was published and the universe seems fine.

Nebula slaps him and yells that obviously that thing he just described would destroy both the new universe and the original! Now she has PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER at her fingertips and no universe to become absolute ruler of!

ALSO, SOME AVENGERS JUST BUSTED IN SO SHE'S ALSO ANGRY ABOUT THAT NOW!

I have to say... The Avengers (and Spider-Man) had no idea they'd be busting into the PolyDyne building right where the baddie was so this isn't an "Ultron, we would have words with thee" badass entrance. They just kinda blow their way in, glue the Avengers communications room in place so it doesn't drift, and then go 'oh hey Nebula is here, now this makes sense.'

Although, Spider-Man hasn't run into Nebula so mistakes her for Andromeda. Do all blue ladies look alike to you, Spidey?

Thor asks how Nebula managed to escape that time vortex she fell into with Dr Druid, as seen in issue 297.

And Nebula's answer?

She has no fucking idea what he's talking about. She thinks he's making up nonsense just to distract her.

Ah, so, the retcon goes even this far back.

While Captain America and Thor are safe thanks to their shield and spinning Mjolnir respectively, Spider-Man has to dodge and jump around in zero gravity while Nebula shoots ray blasts at the Avengers and Spider-Man.

Captain America throws his mighty shield... which Nebula easily deflects. BUT IT WAS A FEINT. While she was doing that, Thor spins harder and kicks up a wind which blows Nebula into a bulkhead.

She manages to peel herself and blast Thor off-balance. Spider-Man gunks up her wrist-mounted ray blasters and tries to grapple her but she tosses him away.

And while Spider-Man is distracting Nebula by being his usual charming and/or irritating self, Captain America and Thor wander off to examine the compressor.

Cap is guessing that the big, glowing energy thing is what made the universe go away. But he doesn't have the science brain to know what to do about it.

He asks Thor to try to dissipate the energy in the compressor but it's just too much for the god of thunder.

Thor has to release the energies or else explode "as would a mighty oak struck low by lightning."

Meanwhile, Professor Harker crawls out from behind a chunk of dislodged lab equipment and tells Spider-Man the heroes have the wrong idea.

But before he can explain to the Avengers how to deactivate the compressor, Nebula blows him up.

Okay, but why?

Nebula, did you firmly clutch the villain ball in hand? Do you want the universe to not exist? Shouldn't you want this problem to be fixed too?

Idiot.

And weirdly a pointless death.

Captain America just switches to talking to the next nearest dude, a PolyDyne employee with red hair and a beard. And this random guy, who I don't think even has a name, is able to deliver the same exposition as Professor Harker.

It's not like it's played for tension. Professor Harker blows up and then on the same page Cap is like 'hey you' to the beard guy.

So I don't really get the point of killing Professor Harker. Nebula should want to restore the universe as much as anyone. And killing the guy didn't stop the relevant exposition from getting delivered immediately.

Weird. Weird writing choice.

Random Guy tells Cap that the compressor will be self-sustaining once it reaches 100% efficiency but until then, it's reliant on power from generators in the sub-basement.

But its crazy to try to unplug it! There's such an intense electromagnetic field around the compressor!

Guy: "There's no force on Earth that could break that connection!" Captain America: "Maybe not... but we're not on Earth any more!"

That's... That's a weird argument to make, Cap.

Granted, he also argues that they've got no other choice but to try.

Cap gets as close to the compressor as he can, even as the field makes him feel like he's got ants crawling around inside him. He can only hope that the super-soldier serum will protect him long enough to get the job done. But he's sure if he comes out of this alive, he'll be lucky if all this exposure to a powerful magnetic field doesn't permanently damage him.

He reeeeaches but he just can't get to the giant power cable.

Luckily, Spider-Man saw what he was doing and comes over to ask what the hell he's doing.

When Cap explains that they need to pull the plug ASAP, Spider-Man decides this looks like a guest starring role for Spider-Man.

His webbing is non-organic and non-conductive, thanks to tangling with Electro so often.

He thwipppts a webline on the giant cable and

PULLS

HARD

CAN

Like lift heavy thing except with pulling.

Spider-Man's specialty.

So thanks to Spider-Man pulling something really, really hard, the universe is back.

... I wonder if the Avengers Communications Room is still webbed to the side of the PolyDyne building. I honestly hope so.

So with everything restored to normal, Captain America does his best to put a logical explanation on this.

Captain America: "Apparently, the... ah... 'genesis pulse' had only thrown the universe into a state of complete neutrality. It needed to reach maximum power to completely annihilate everything."

How did you reach that conclusion, Cap?

Anyway, Sersi has recovered from holding the communications room together and then scanning the void. She's telepathically scanned the entire world and determined no time passed while they were in the white void.

The whole story happened between two ticks of the clock.

Spider-Man's take-away is that they just saved the world and nobody will ever know!

(Jarvis says, hey, we'll know! Jarvis is a good guy.)

Apparently, Nebula vanished while everyone was distracted by the universe and gravity being back.

But Captain America remembers that Iron Man and Vision went to investigate her ship and thinks she's going to be in for a nasty surprise when she gets there.

So, apparently this saga still continues. The next issue is teased as "SPIDERS and STARS" so I'll bet next time has "Guest-starring the Amazing Spider-Man" slapped prominently on the cover.

But before that, we switch back over to Avengers West Coast to continue the Wanda Is Evil And Crazy story.

yay.

Follow @essential-avengers because this issue was actually pretty fun. Like, reblog, comment, or dance like nobody is watching.

#avengers #essential avengers #Nebula #the complete lack of any universe #Captain America #Thor #Sersi #Edwin Jarvis #Spider Man #Professor Harker #not a lot of other people #because the universe ceased to be

1 note · View note

thebibliomancer · 14 hours

Text

I think a lot of folks in indie RPG spaces misunderstand what's going on when people who've only ever played Dungeons & Dragons claim that indie RPGs are categorically "too complicated". Yes, it's sometimes the case that they're making the unjustified assumption that all games are as complicated as Dungeons & Dragons and shying away from the possibility of having to brave a steep learning cure a second time, but that's not the whole picture.

A big part of it is that there's a substantial chunk of the D&D fandom – not a majority by any means, but certainly a very significant minority – who are into D&D because they like its vibes or they enjoy its default setting or whatever, but they have no interest in actually playing the kind of game that D&D is... so they don't.

Oh, they'll show up at your table, and if you're very lucky they might even provide their own character sheet (though whether it adheres to the character creation guidelines is anyone's guess!), but their actual engagement with the process of play consists of dicking around until the GM tells them to roll some dice, then reporting what number they rolled and letting the GM figure out what that means.

Basically, they're putting the GM in the position of acting as their personal assistant, onto whom they can offload any parts of the process of play that they're not interested in – and for some players, that's essentially everything except the physical act of rolling the dice, made possible by the fact most of D&D's mechanics are either GM-facing or amenable to being treated as such.*

Now, let's take this player and present them with a game whose design is informed by a culture of play where mechanics are strongly player facing, often to the extent that the GM doesn't need to familiarise themselves with the players' character sheets and never rolls any dice, and... well, you can see where the wires get crossed, right?

And the worst part is that it's not these players' fault – not really. Heck, it's not even a problem with D&D as a system. The problem is D&D's marketing-decreed position as a universal entry-level game means that neither the text nor the culture of play are ever allowed to admit that it might be a bad fit for any player, so total disengagement from the processes of play has to be framed as a personal preference and not a sign of basic incompatibility between the kind of game a player wants to be playing and the kind of game they're actually playing.

(Of course, from the GM's perspective, having even one player who expects you to do all the work represents a huge increase to the GM's workload, let alone a whole group full of them – but we can't admit that, either, so we're left with a culture of play whose received wisdom holds that it's just normal for GMs to be constantly riding the ragged edge of creative burnout. Fun!)

* Which, to be clear, is not a flaw in itself; a rules-heavy game ideally needs a mechanism for introducing its processes of play gradually.

#dnd

4K notes · View notes