Marvel Mangaverse #1: “New Dawn” (continued)

Continuing into the confusing and poorly drawn world of Marvel Mangaverse.

Strucker gives a piece of jewelry as a present to the little mermaid girl who excitedly swims out to meet him, but her mother follows quickly and sends her away with a bitter, wary look at Strucker. Perhaps the nazi/fish alliance isn't quite as sturdy as it once was. The older mermaid is referred to as Lady Namora, sister of the warmongering Prince Namor. Mermen are not very creative with names. It seems that Namor has managed to retain at least some of his political power after his humiliating defeat by the Avengers, and remains at least outwardly friendly toward Strucker on a personal level.

Also, his battle with Ironman left him with chronic pains, and for all their advanced technology the mermen are apparently reliant on HYDRA for painkillers.

Strucker tells him that HYDRA is, as always, a loyal fifth column for Atlantis on the surface world, and that he brings grave news about what the other humans are up to. In direct violation of the treaty signed after the war, Stark Industries is making its own attempt at recreating the Negative Zone Tap. In all likelihood, he says, Tony Stark is planning to use NZT powered weaponry to initiate another war against Namor's people, and this one will be more disastrous still.

The way this is written seems to be trying to suggest that HYDRA has been causing this conflict by reporting misinformation to Namor. Namor is written as the evil-but-honorable type, while Strucker is hitting every note on the manipulative prime minister keyboard. But the thing is that, aside from the detail about Tony being personally responsible for this treaty violation, he's really just telling the truth. If there's a treaty preventing the humans (or even just Stark Industries particularly) from pursuing NZT technology, then Starbie is flagrantly violating it, and at least two major world leaders are now complicit.

However, rather than start with diplomatic options, Namor decides that he should launch a preemptive strike. Despite having had his ass kicked last time even with the deck stacked in his favor. Also, he physically tears the room apart as he declares this, in a way that makes me suspect that the painkillers Strucker gave him might have some mood effecting properties.

Namora doesn't like this, and swims away with her pet orca (either she's supposed to have already moved through a hallway or grotto out into the ocean, or this underground complex is huge...) to go do something about it. Something that her brother would consider treasonous, but that she believes is necessary. Presumably she's off to warn the humans or something.

The next chapter begins with easily the best artwork of this entire issue. 

It's not GOOD. "The best in this issue" is a low bar to clear. The shading could use some work (the more distant satellite islands really shouldn't be as bright as the closest one. The perspective with the water line is all over the place, as is the facility's basic geometry. Okay...now that I'm looking closely, this picture is actually pretty much terrible. But the concept itself is communicated clearly enough to be an effective bit of scifi scenery porn regardless. I'll take what I can get from this comic.

In his quarters, Baron Mordo has put on some extremely silly looking makeup and dyed his hair emo black, and he's performing a magical rite. He appeals to his patron spirits to aid in their shared goal of ending humanity's technological era and returning the Earth to the preindustrial status quo (interesting ideological motive. I suppose it's fitting for a sorcerer to pine for the era when his own kind had less competition for power over the forces of nature), and with their power he summons two entities into his quarters. 

Weeb!BlackWidow and weeb!Executioner step out of the circle. I guess this was less "summoning" in the traditional sense, and more teleportation. 

Cut to Doctor Strange's office. The Doctor has detected Mordo's illegal spellcasting, and prepares to intervene. He's assisted by Tigra in this version, who looks like...erm...this:

Is anyone surprised? Like, even remotely? Yeah, I didn't think so.

So, Dr. Strange and Nyangra fly off to deal with whoever is using demonic magic. It'll take them a minute to get there, though, and in the meantime Black Widow catches Banner at a vending machine, stabs him with a tranquilizer needle, and then does this:

Probably makes this the best day in mangaverse Bruce Banner's life thus far, from how he's been characterized. Also, Black Widow has apparently never kissed a scientist before, which surprises me since all she'd have to do is go to any random bar in any random college town, assuming she was curious. To be fair to Black Widow though, she might be stupid.

Mordo tells Widow and Executioner that he's cast some other spell to cover their escape; get out now while it's still active, and bring Dr. Banner to the drop off point. Meanwhile, he turns himself into a computer virus (um...okay, sure, magic, whatever) and starts trying to wipe Stark Industries' entire IT system. 

TIL that without the Stark's intranet, there'd be no modern civilization.

The cyberintrusion activates some alarms, and Starbie, T'Challa (why was he even here, again?), T'Challa's pet kitty, and Pym all wake up in a panic. Starbie (or is that Janet? These faces make it so hard to tell) is afraid of Kitty, even though it's behaving in a completely unthreatening manner, which amuses me. Also, what the fuck is going on with Pym's bangs? 

Is he literally an ant-man in this version? Are those actual antennae?

Cut back to Mordo in informorph form wrecking Starbie's shit. Suddenly, he feels a mystical force pulling him away. He identifies it as someone targeting him with an invocation of "the spirit of Icarus" and then he's forced back into physical form and transported into earth orbit. 

You're a great narrator, Mordo. I'd never have realized that that was what happened if you hadn't said so.

He's surprised to be confronted by his old nemesis, Dr. Strange, who he thought he'd arranged the death of through a set of circumstances that involved a yeti. Um. Sure. Okay. Mordo's patrons, the Keepers, were as convinced of the Sorcerer Supreme's death as Mordo himself was. Anyway, Doctor Strange pulled him into orbit so that they can fight without risk of collateral damage, which...okay, that's actually a legitimately clever bit of characterization for this hero, and a sound application of his powers for a reasonable goal. A nice detail amid this otherwise pretty awful comic.

Anyway, they start letting the spells fly, and Doctor Strange is almost immediately victorious, using a telekinetic grasp spell to break both of Mordo's arms. Brutal, but effective; Mordo can no longer perform the hand motions necessary for most of his own spells, and is mission killed at the very least.

Back on Stark Island, Black Widow and Executioner are carrying Banner into the experimental sub pens, where they plan to steal one of Starbie's fancy new submarines to use for their getaway. On the way there, they're surprise attacked by Doctor Strange's catgirl assistant, who he apparently beamed over to here. And who knew where to go and which people to intercept. Whatever. She makes some absolutely terrible attempts at puns while attacking them, and to Executioner's disgrace she manages to subdue him while making said awful puns before Widow manages to hit her with another poisoned needle. 

That's what we call optimism, Natalya!

As this is going on, HYDRA's air force that they apparently have is starting to pummel Stark Island (what), and Prince Namor is sending a bunch of kaiju-type things swimming toward it from the deep. Black Widow drags the unconscious Bruce Banner into the sub, which she knows how to pilot despite it being a random Starktech prototype, and blasts her way out of the pen. She drives past the approaching kaiju, and lets Namor and Strucker's forces continue their assault behind her.

Back to Starbie and Co. The joint Nazi-Fish Alliance forces are tearing through the outer defenses, and thanks to Mordo's sabotage none of their automated defenses are shooting back. So, it's time for Starbie to use the non-automated defenses, so she...

...

......

.............

Oh my god. 

Iron-Eva.

She actually called it an "eva." Despite there being absolutely no in-universe reason for it to be called that. "Eva" is not just a generic term for "giant robot."

Did they actually think this would make NGE fans like this comic?

Did they, like...get sued?

I can't say that I've never been this embarrassed for Marvel Comics before. But I can say that I've never been more embarrassed for them. This is on par with One More Day and X3 for as cringey as it gets. I read through Ultimate Red Skull's backstory, and I only cringed as hard as I did at Iron-Eva, no harder. I've had a curated tour of Kirby Without Words, and at the lowest point I felt exactly the way that I do right now.

I don't even especially like superheroes, and I'm still embarrassed on their behalf right now.

To make things even better, there's no indication of Iron-Eva having a pilot, so lol at it not being part of the automated defenses. And, to make them even more betterer, the lead kaiju that it charges has the exact same profile as Gojira. Like, it's literally just Godzilla with a few extra eyes and spikes stuck on randomly. 

Back to the getaway sub. Bruce Banner screams like a little girl. Black Widow tells him to shut up, she doesn't want to waste more knockout poison on him, and also she tells him he shouldn't eat so much fried food. I'm sure that was a hilarious jab, but it sailed right above my head. He freaks out harder and harder, until hulking out. I guess being captured somehow made that gamma radiation poisoning he suffered years ago start doing it's thing now. Because this is weeb version, the Hulk grows large enough to destroy the submarine from inside, and then lumbers out of the water as yet another kaiju. Because the Atlantean ones weren't enough, I guess. 

New York AGAIN? How many times has that city been destroyed in just this one issue, now? Well, it's over, so I guess this is the last time at least for now.

It's hard to list everything that's wrong with this comic. There's almost nothing right with it. The art has all the hallmarks of a creator who couldn't cut it in mainstream comics and had to exploit a gimmick to get himself hired. The characters are forgettable and generic at best, and irritating at worst. The plot is almost incoherent, both in terms of inconsistency and in badly explaining itself. It has all the dumbest aspects of American superhero comics and Japanese manga combined, and very few of their better traits.

I think what gets me the most about "New Dawn," aside from Starbie's hideous fucking face, is that the Ultimate Marvel comics released at the same time had a mission statement of trimming things down and rebooting from the foundations to make themselves accessible. Marvel comics suffered from decades worth of overcomplicated history and accumulated contradictions, catches, and hanging plot threads, which made them almost impossible for new readers to get into. And yet, Marvel Mangaverse decided to retroactively establish a brand new overcomplicated history of its very own, offscreen. All this "as you know" shit with HYDRA capturing Bruce Banner, Baron Mordo siccing a yeti on Doctor Strange, the war against the fish people, Captain America becoming President? Just saying "all that shit happened already" recreates the very problem that the Marvel reboots were trying to solve in the first place! And then "New Dawn" starts us off in media res with a story that leans on MULTIPLE unwritten prequel adventures and follows half a dozen major heroes and half a dozen major villains all with their own moving parts.

More so than being a "manga" version, this just seems like some guy's very mediocre Marvel Universe fan fiction that he didn't even have the sense to start at the beginning of. And hell, the Avengers' war against the NFA and Dr. Strange's history with Baron Mordo both sound like more interesting stories than this one, in addition to being less complicated and opaque starting points!

Another thing that jumps out at me - and this is flaw that Mangaverse and Ultimates are equally tainted with - is the barely concealed xenophobia. Just like the bizarre second Ultimates arc in which an alliance of Everyone Besides The USA tries to invade the USA with the help of Loki, we have a foreign head of state who mixes the post-911 Islamophobia with his Middle Eastern origins with the older Yellow Peril undertones that Marvel has long been burdened with, allied with secret societies and scary dogmatic fishpeople whose leader rants about "infidels" against the heroic American...industrial military complex.

Still, the self-sabatoging complexity and questionable politics are overshadowed by it just being bad on a purely technical level. Bad writing, bad art, bad almost everything. It's almost too pathetic to make fun of.