Marvel Mangaverse #1: “New Dawn” (part one)

This review was commissioned by @Vinegrape.

For the past ten years, Marvel Comics has been one of the big movers and shakers of American pop culture, and a massive money-making machine for the sinister rodent overlords who acquired it at the start of the decade. In the ten years preceding the MCU + Disney era, though, Marvel's successes were much more mixed.

Their primary comic book medium wasn't selling too well (for Marvel or anyone else in the industry). The Spiderman, Blade, and X-Men movies were successful, but they were balanced out by the failures of Elektra, Daredevil, and F4, so it wasn't yet clear that movies would be the way forward. One of the company's attempts to get people buying comics again involved some rebooted and reimagined versions of the shared Marvel universe. There was Ultimate Marvel that tried to simplify things to draw in new readers, but with the exception of Ultimate Spiderman it didn't attract many. And there was the Marvel Mangaverse, which attempted and failed to draw in the coveted weeb demographic.

And, that's pretty much all that I know about the Marvel Mangaverse. It was one of the "throw things at the wall and see what sticks" attempts of the Marvel Aughts, and that it was discontinued after just a couple of years. The author of the first issue, "New Dawn," was one Ben Dunn, a Taiwanese-born American manga artist who I don't think I've heard of before.

Well, let's start this thing!

This story begins the way every tale should. With a city being destroyed by a giant superweapon.

But, on the next page it turns out that the blonde man in the last panel there was just playing a video game, of which the destruction of that city was a failure condition. He was playing with a little kid, and a woman named Amanda walks in wearing a superhero uniform that I don't recognize and thanks him for babysitting her son for her while boss Stark had her pull a double shift. She also names the babysitter guy who's bad at vidya as "Bruce," which I assume makes this Dr. Banner.

Also, a "President Rogers" is named. Either a different Rogers, or Cap'n Murka is really, really, really living up to his title in this version of the Marvelverse.

Amanda, who I'm sure is a preexisting Marvel character who I just don't recognize, takes her kid home. Bruce takes a walk in the flight hangar to get some fresh air, only for Janet Van Dyme to fall out of the sky literally ass-first and crush him.

Sadly, this version of the Wasp is still much more dignified than what Ultimates did with her.

She freaks out when she realized she might have just facesat Dr. Banner to death, and fusses over him in a panic until he wakes up enough to try to kiss her when she has her face near his. Which she promptly smacks him across the face for, all guilt and concern evaporated.

Yeah. Much better than Ultimate Wasp. Or even MCU Wasp, really.

Though on the other hand, I'm not really a fan of Bruce Banner being this handsy little creep stereotype. Ah well.

Well, they call this interaction a draw, and just start complaining about their boss some more. Tony's not been giving Janet the funds she requested to perfect her wingpack, so the navigational controls are still kinda fucked. This conversation is promptly interrupted by a pair of new arrivals. An "Irongirl" who wizzes by in a suit like Tony's nearly clipping Janet, and a helicopter that lands to disgorge...erm...these people:

Oh...that...okay. The big guy is supposed to be T'Challa, apparently. I don't recall the Black Panther actually having a literal pet black panther at his side, but sure, why not.

Also, the little blonde dude with the guitar is Hank Pym. For...some...reason?

Pym is a newly minted doctor of physics who's been a fan of Banner's work. Presumably not for that long, given that Bruce looks less than a decade older than Pym himself. He also has an insect themed music album that he just released. For...some...reason. Also also, Janet is just kind of looking at Pym skeptically and thinking to herself that he's shorter than expected, hardy har har.

Cut to Irongirl, who is Tony Stark's extremely uncanny valley looking sister. Okay, sure. She's considering laying off Janet and discarding her entire avenue of research to instead increase funding for some combat mech program. I hate to say this Janet, but if Stark Industries already has a perfectly good personal flight system then she kinda has a point in the Wasp-wings not really being worth pursuing.

She has a little back and forth with her robot assistant about the big meeting she has planned with the important guests, and then goes back to the internal musing. Since her brother Tony's disappearance after the "blackout wars," she's taken over Stark Industries (which is based on a privately owned island in this version). So the Stark the employees were all complaining about was her, not Tony. She always held Tony's anti-militarization ideals in contempt, and has been happily selling munitions tech to governments the world over. The only wish of his that she's still respecting is his request to keep the Ironman technology itself within the family.

Also, while she's having this evil inner monologue, there's a gratuitous nudity couple of panels of her showering that I think is supposed to be cheesecake, but fails utterly at titillation due to Stark lady's hideous character design.

She looks like someone just stuck the giant Alita eyes on a fucking Barbie. And this isn't even showing the eschergirl nightmare that is her torso.

Anyway, after she's done being evil and utterly unsexy, she dresses and meets up with her guests. In addition to King T'Challa of Wakanda, there's also President Steve Rogers of the United States (wearing his Captain America suit under his suitvest, lol), Baron Mordo (who is part of the leadership of a "Central Eurasian Alliance" it seems), and Director Nick Fury of SHIELD.

Speaking of questionable character design, here's Mangaverse Nick:

What part of this face could have possibly seemed like a good idea

Also, he's obsessed with getting drunk. To the point where most of his lines consist of complaining about Stark not providing any booze. In front of the world leaders he's supposed to be having an important meeting with.

Stark Barbie (Starbie? Starbie.) comes into the room and starts the meeting with that universal hallmark of good writing: "As you know..."

Sigh.

Well. As everyone in the room already knows, but that she's repeating anyway for no reason, three years ago Dr. Banner discovered the Negative Zone, a dimension that can be tapped for virtually infinite energy generation. However, after being ignored and scorned by the rest of the scientific community (as scientists are wont to do to people who make groundbreaking new discoveries, in stories written by hacks who have never met an actual scientist in their lives), he desperately turned to a little known research company that turned out to be a front for HYDRA.

"We all know" what happened to New York City as a result.

...

Starting this meeting with "as you know" was bad enough. Reminding us of that gaffe by renewing it every other panel makes it so much worse. It's like the author realized he was doing something wrong, and thought that repeating it over and over again would constitute an apology.

...

So, HYDRA used the negative zone tap to power a big satellite-mounted laser gun that they tried to threaten the world into submission with. They also used said laser to take out New York as...either a warning shot, or in retaliation for some attempt at resistance that the Americans made, it isn't clear from how she's telling the story. HYDRA didn't test their new tech very well though, and as soon as the satellite opened fire it released an EMP that shut down power all over the world. Including the satellite itself. The global death toll was immense, even ignoring the people who got vaporized in New York, but on the bright side HYDRA was exposed and defenseless. As the world came back online, a team of heroes raided their base, destroyed all the prototypes, and killed or captured much of the organization's leadership. Starbie was one of the participants in that raid, and she rescued Dr. Banner from where they'd been holding him. He was traumatized by being forced to work for HYDRA, and suffering from radiation poisoning after the EMP caused a meltdown at the base (it isn't stated, but I imagine a lot of the HYDRA people were in the same boat).

Speaking of boats, the mermen of Atlantis saw that the surface world was in chaos, and their prince Namor decided to use this opportunity to launch an invasion of their own.

Wait, I thought New York got blown up? An earlier panel showed the superlaser hitting right next to Lady Liberty, too. I'm confused now...

The mermen were using the negative zone to power their own doomsday weapon too, also. I guess they had a tech sharing treaty with HYDRA or some shit.

...although, wait. Why didn't the EMP fuck up their own reactors as well? Water is good at shielding you from magnetic pulses, sure, but if this one was able to penetrate the entire damned planet...

Also, if they were using a doomsday device of their own to melt the ice caps, why would they even BE in New York - regardless of how much of New York was or wasn't destroyed by the orbital weapon - until it was already underwater?

Tony Stark apparently fought off Namor while his sister was rescuing Bruce Banner, and he disappeared right after. So, those are the "blackout wars."

So. Starbie brought Dr. Banner to Stark Island, seemingly unilaterally, cured his radiation poisoning, and used some other gadget to wipe his memories of his time with HYDRA in order to restore his sanity. Without telling anyone. Okay. He's now living here fulltime, rebuilding the negative zone tap for Stark Industries. Presumably, she also wiped his memory of ever wanting to live anywhere else or do anything else. Or to receive attention from the world at large for his work, given the secrecy.

Baron Mordo is outraged at hearing this. Not for moral reasons (obviously, given Mordo), but because he has no reason to think Starbie will do a better job of not accidentally-ing modern society just like HYDRA did when they played around with the negative zone. President Rogers is willing to think it over, especially if him saying "no" just means she'll sell it to someone else instead of the USA.

What happened to T'Challa? I assumed he was here for the same pitch as the other two, but maybe not, because there's no sign of him now.

Also, check out this top quality artwork right here:

Starbie looks like some shitty DeviantArt hentai character, yes, obviously. That's nothing special. What is special is...what the fuck is wrong with Steve?

I've seen this particular kind of fucked up attempt at a human face before, and it's ALWAYS been by western artists trying to imitate manga and just getting something wrong. I don't know why a corruption of manga-style gets you this, in particular, but it's definitely a pattern.

For comparison.

Starbie invites the two heads of state to stay overnight. Rogers is about to accept, but then gets an urgent message telling him he needs to go do Avengers bullshit. That's...got to make it hard to be President, come to think of it, but okay. Despite not liking anything about this, Mordo agrees to stay, which makes sene; with the Americans seeming interested, I suppose he can't really afford to not get in on this even if he hates it.

We then have a solid page of Starbie and Nick Fury recounting stuff we were already told within the last few pages about how Starbie took over the company and what she's been doing differently. Fury claims to approve, but he's probably just hoping to get some booze out of her. The only new information - communicated in a single panel out of this overwritten page - involves Mordo. He's an exiled middle eastern prince who moved to one of the united central Asian countries and somehow insinuated himself into power in the wake of the HYDRA crisis. They talk about how creepy he is and how they don't trust him; as we've seen onscreen he comes across as a pretty decent statesman, but presumably the details of his sordid past are hard for them to ignore. I mean, the reader knows he's a bad guy just because of the name, but you know what I mean.

Cut to somewhere in upstate New York, where HYDRA bigwig Baron Strucker is paying a visit to someone. Presumably, that someone is Dr. Frank N Furter, because they live in a giant European castle in the middle of the US.

“It’s one of the master’s affairs.”

Strucker apologizes for keeping "his highness" waiting, and is promptly escorted to a hole in the floor filled with water. He steps into it and sinks into a...thing.

I guess either weeb!Strucker can breathe underwater, or there's merman magic involved here. Well, I guess HYDRA and the Atlanteans really were working together after all! 

I'll split this here. I'm still feeling a little under the weather, and this is not a fast read.