Marvel Mangaverse #2: “Eternity Twilight” (conclusion)

Cut away from Baron Von Memelord's victory speech, and to a...thing...driving across the water. Turns out that Namora has Banner aboard this high tech loveboat thing, and while she was grinding his memories back they were driving across the sea at high speed toward...somewhere? Maybe just away from the battle. Bruce and Namora come up on deck just in time to see Doctor Strange drop out of the sky and deposit the unconscious Starbie on deck. No explanation for why he brought her here, instead of to a hospital or to SHIELD headquarters or whatever.

Also, he tells Bruce that he created the monster that he just had to save Starbie from. Bruce is confused by this accusation; even after having his face full of mermaid cheeks, he has no recollection of causing Nick Fury's alcoholism. He asks Doctor Strange to please explain himself, and the Doc just tells him to stop being so scientific and stuff before flying off. Because clear communication during a global crisis doesn't take precedence over obtuse wizard cliches.

Maybe when he said he was sending Mordo to suffer in a netherworld for eternity, what he really meant was that he was going to have a conversation with him later. Same level of atrocity.

After Banner watches the doctor fly away, his forehead grows 300% and he tells Namora to set a course back toward Stark Island. Starbie comes to, and starts apologizing for kidnapping Bruce and wiping his memory, but just then we cut back to the island ahead of them.

Godzulka has the assorted assholes on the run. Even their combined firepower isn't putting a dent in the demon, which means they probably have less than no chances against his boss. Dormammu is just letting the Godzukla chase them around; he tells Strucker that it's been a while since his enforcer got any proper exercise, so he'll let him handle the X-Men, F4, and others on his own. Dormammu is not the worst boss that one could have. Then, suddenly a laser beam hits Strucker in the chest. It's Doctor Strange. Pretty gutsy of him to try to snipe Strucker right out from under Dormammu's nose.

Strucker's own magical shields tanked the blast pretty well, and he starts casting his own spells back at Dr. Strange. However, the Doctor has magical defenses too.

Gygax magic shell.

Gygax.

Why am I alive? This panel should have killed me. That was clearly a lethal dose of cringe. Why am I still here? Why does the suffering continue?

They toss spells back and forth for a while, until finally Doctor Strange gets fed up with this and just punches Strucker in the face.

Nice Indiana Jones moment, I guess. And, while Strucker is a lot bigger and stronger than Strange, apparently sympathetic magic can get through his shields. Strange uses his blood sample to immolate a blood-infused effigy, killing Strucker instantly.

That's the primary antagonist of this whole story who just went down in three panels because of some magical rules that had never been established or even remotely hinted at until now. This is like, the most perfect example of what NOT to do in a fantasy story that I've ever seen. Has Brandon Sanderson seen this comic, I wonder? He could get rid of all that text on his blog and replace it with a scan of this page with a giant red X over it, and it would communicate his point just as clearly.

Also, I guess Strange was just lucky that Dormammu stopped being attention in the two seconds between him having that conversation with Strucker, and Strucker being attacked. Because that fight probably would have gone a little differently otherwise.

Before anyone can react to the fucking villain just up and anticlimactically dying, a barrage of missiles lands on Godzulka and Dormammu, mildly annoying them. It's Starbie. She's in the sky, with a brand new gunship, and a whole brand new air force of flying mechs. Somehow.

Yes, Earth has enough problems with the one god it already has. The one, singular god. That the population of Earth holds in common.

A page ago, she was fading in and out of consciousness on the deck of Namora's loveboat with her suit torn apart and her vehicle and forces devastated. Now she's attacking again, and all of her shit is back and in perfect repair. I guess she had backups of everything stored somewhere other than Stark Island. And got to them within literal seconds. And also has a healing factor or some shit.

And, despite this second chance at making a difference, she just tries ANOTHER frontal assault against the demons using conventional weaponry.

Despite having learned through both second AND first hand experience that that doesn't work.

I thought that maybe the author forgot this, and was about to change the rules of the universe so that her weapons are suddenly effective now. But no, that's not what happened! Her attacks are just as ineffective as last time, and once again Godzulka shoots her down with a single attack. So, yes, she actually is just that stupid.

She thuds to the ground near Bruce Banner, who's just arrived himself. Doctor Strange is either too busy watching Strucker's burning corpse to heal her again, or (more likely) he's just not willing to waste the effort on her anymore. And then this happens:

She loved him?

Wuh?

When was this established? Or hinted at? Or even framed as a possibility in the context of these two's (very minimal) onscreen interactions?

Well. If she defines "only wanting to do what is best for you" as "secreting you away to my private island-fortress so that you can toil away making me even richer than I already am," then I suppose "I love you" could just be Starbese for "you're my cash cow."

So, Banner does his big animu "noooooo" and a big flash of white animu light goes off around him. Doctor Strange realizes that since Banner has a psychic connection with the Negative Zone/spirit world due to his HYDRA related mishap a few years back, he might be able to pull other things through the unstable energy tap besides Godzulka. So, he uses Banner as a conduit to summon Thor.

O...kay. That almost makes sense. Contrived as hell, and Bruce Banner is embodying every one of the obnoxious Designated Anime Protagonist cliches that exist in order to make it happen, but still, you can at least see something like an underlying logic to this. But:

1. If Banner didn't know about this ability of his until now, what was he planning to do when he got to Stark Island? He told Namora to turn the boat around really determinedly, like Doctor Strange's riddles had helped him come up with a plan that he now wanted to try, but what could that have been?

2. If Doctor Strange himself didn't figure this out until now, what was his reason for telling Banner those stupid riddles back on the boat?

Anyway.

Godzulka is impervious to mortal weapons, but Thor's hammer is made of the same stuff that his own demonic flesh is, so it's able to hurt him. Thor takes Godzulka out pretty quickly, but Dormammu is unamused by this, and while Thor might be technically capable of injuring Dormammu he unfortunately isn't strong enough to win a 1v1. Dormammu starts blasting Thor, slowly wearing down his defenses, while monologueing about how he's powered by all the fear and superstition of Earth's noosphere, making him one of - if not the - most powerful gods in the neighborhood.

Dr. Strange realizes that to beat that, he's going to need to use his magical doohicky to feed Thor some extra psychic energy to increase his power. And, he decides that religious faith is the antidote to superstitious fear. He raises the doohicky, and calls out through the astral plane for all the heroes of the world to grant him their hope and faith. Across the world, people respond, and he channels the power into Thor.

Actual scan from Eternity Twilight.

Erm.

...

This kind of work thematically in isolation, as the optimistic verses pessimistic sides of magical thinking. But in the context of the story as a whole, it's just a disaster.

But if I had to try to divine a coherent theme out of this comic, it wouldn't be optimism verses pessimism, or even something as broad as hope verses fear. It's more like knowledge verses ignorance. The wizard bad guys resent how scientific understanding of the world puts too much power in the hands of the people at large, and thus want to rob the world of that understanding so they can seize power again under Dormammu's flag. The big mistakes that Starbie made were trying to use a resource without understanding what it was, and suppressing Banner's memories (thereby making him ignorant of threats that he'd have otherwise known about). Doctor Strange babbled some nonsense at Banner earlier about how facts and logic and scientific thinking wouldn't help here, but...that's EXACTLY what he's using himself now! He pieced together the nature of Banner's connection to the spiritworld based on the available evidence, and then used his preexisting knowledge about the setting's metaphysics to use it in a mechanistic way!

I think there's two things going on here. One of them just hacky and lazy, the other kind of insidious.

First: in anime and manga, the good guys win by using the power of hope and friendship to kill god. That's just a thing that happens in the media that weebs like, and we're reinventing the Marvel universe for weebs, so it needs to happen here. Regardless of how it has or hasn't been built up to, or how it fits the story. That's the hacky and lazy part.

Second, and more disconcertingly: I'm pretty sure that the author doesn't know what science actually is, which is why he's having Strange trashtalk "facts" and "scientific thinking" while clearly using both himself (just without calling them that). The story does not understand that Strange is, in fact, using science, or that what he's doing is the diametric opposite of having faith. This is a trend in mass media that's bothered me for a long time, and looking at where American society has been going...well, I'm not sure if stories like this are more cause or more symptom, but either way it's not something I can just laugh off as harmlessly stupid.

Now, I'm not going to /r/atheism up this review by claiming that celebrating irrational faith and hope is always a bad thing. If the story up until now had been about hope and despair, or about optimism and pessimism, this would have been fine. Hackneyed and cliched, sure, but functional. But after building up this whole science verses magic conflict, and explicitly calling attention in as many words to how scientific understanding empowers humanity at large and thus threatens the villains' ability to lord over everyone else...well, basically, Strucker and Mordo have won the moral victory. The only way to beat the forces of ignorance that want to rob us of our understanding of the world was with other forces of ignorance that rob us of our understanding of the world. Yay?

...

So. Dormammu zaps Thor. He's unable to comprehend the nature of the attack, but it does an arbitrarily high number's worth of damage. Across the world, everyone prays, and then Thor's counterattack does an even higher arbitrary number's worth of damage, and Dormammu dies or is banished back to the warp or whatever. Thor lingers a moment to make sure the battle is won before Doctor Strange dismisses him back home as well.

Banner kneels down over the dying Starbie. Doctor Strange still isn't bothering to heal her again, and I still can't bring myself to blame him. As Banner kneels over her, one of them says the following speech, but I'm not sure which of them is actually supposed to be talking.

The composition of the panel and the characters' expressions make it look like Banner is talking, but that speech doesn't make any sense at all coming from him, whereas it would make plenty coming from her. Banner's behavior wasn't particularly selfish throughout this story; hell, he was passive to the point of barely HAVING any discernible behavior at all. The only things he actively did (aside from sexually harassing the Wasp and using a vending machine, which definitely were selfish acts, but also pretty minor details within the scope of the story) were 1) building the Negative Zone Tap, and 2) telling Namora to turn the boat around and return to the battlefield. His motives for 1 are unclear. It could have been a selfish desire for money and recognition, but it could just as easily have been an idealistic desire to bring a clean sustainable energy source into the world. 2 was...stupid, given his lack of any sort of plan or relevant abilities that he knew of, but definitely not selfish. Starbie, on the other hand, was motivated by greed and lust for power throughout the first half or so of the story, and displayed a nonchalance bordering on contempt for the wellbeing of others (her establishing character moment was almost slicing Wasp and Banner in half when she whizzed by them in her Ironman suit in the hangar). And, it was these acts of hers that let HYDRA infiltrate her base and set the disaster in motion. If Banner is supposed to have learned any sort of lesson from recent events, it certainly wasn't selflessness, whereas if Starbie is then it very well could be.

So, I'm just going to assume that this is an art fail, and Starbie is meant to be the one talking.

Then they get rapture'd away to Valhalla.

And, um. Apparently they were both totally in love with each other this whole time. So I guess the final message of this story is "eat shit, fishgirl."

The end.

So, well. Marvel Mangaverse is bad, in case you couldn't tell. It is a very, very bad comic, on pretty much every level that a piece of media can be judged on. It's sort of a perfect time-capsule of all of Marvel Comics' worst tendencies from that era. The War on Terror vintage xenophobia and militarism, the desperate clawing at new audiences without any insight or understanding of them, the decline in art quality, the cringey dad-joke attempts at millennial humor and pop culture references, etc. The only elements of Japanese manga that it managed to successfully imitate, meanwhile, were the giant transforming robots whose overuse only ended up homogenizing the more interesting Marvel characters' powersets, the bad habit of introducing more characters than you could ever actually use and then just forgetting about them, and the infuriating harem fuckboy shenanigans with its passive, milquetoast, self-pitying, mary sue excuse of a "Bruce Banner." It's the worst of 2000's Marvel, and the worst of 2000's manga.

It does make for good hatereading though. Things like the Iron-Eva, the Avenger-Voltron, and every other sentence out of Memelord Strucker's mouth are just perfect so-bad-it's-good material. If you want something to make fun of with your friends, this hits the sweet spot of being both eminently mockable, and also juuuust cynical, meanspirited, and jingoistic enough for you to feel morally justified in roasting it without things getting too heavy.