Marvel Mangaverse #2: “Eternity Twilight” (part one)

More Marvel Mangaverse. The next issue, picking up right where we left off, with the Hulk manifesting his powers rather arbitrarily after getting his radiation exposure years ago and marching on the hastily rebuilt New York City. Meanwhile, the Nazi-Fish Alliance forces continue to pound Stark Island, despite Starbie's bargain bin eva unit fighting back.

Also, just from the cover art alone I'm already dreading this:

More characters. A bunch more characters. That is not even remotely what this story needs.

Okay, let's do this I guess.

The skyscraper-sized Incredible Hulk is...well, I was going to say "stomping" through New York City, but he's really just walking along one of the wider streets and not being particularly destructive, though I guess there are probably cars being stepped on. In terms of character design, it's just a bigger version of the prime Hulk, but with a more skull-like face, a random horn on its chin that looks like it doesn't belong, and this big godzilla-like tail that looks even less like it belongs.

The order for the surrounding helicopter gunships to not shoot until Nick Fury says so doesn't amount to much, because someone who doesn't APPEAR to be Nick Fury gives the order to open fire, and everyone does it anyway. Maybe he was too drunk to give the order himself, so someone else had to rise to the occasion. The Hulk shrugs it off painlessly, and...does not counterattack or fly into a rage.

Instead, he just stands there in the middle of the city, as if waiting for something.

The Incredible Hulk, in fully transformed state, not getting angry when being shot at. Can you think of anything more inimical to the core concept of the character than this? Why even call him the Hulk at that point?

So, the SHIELD gunships pull back when it's clear that they're not doing anything and that the situation doesn't seem to be escalating, and Fury calls in the Avengers to see if they can get this thing out of the city. Has anyone tried talking to him? You'd think that would be less trouble than assembling the team that includes the President of the United States. Won't it be embarrassing if Fury made him leave the White House when all he had to do was tell Banner to please get out of the way? So, the Avengers - including the president - head over. Crossing the ocean, for some reason, but that's the least illogical thing about this whole sequence.

Meanwhile, under the water's surface, Namora and her orca find Dr. Banner floating around and rescue him.

I guess this version of the Hulk is an astral projection thing, rather than a bodily transformation? I was sure we saw him actually transform at the end of the last issue though, so...no idea.

Back to New York, the Hulk now has a cloud of smoke rising from behind him, so either he's finally started destroying things or he just let out a truly ruinous fart. Spiderman has scampered over to a nearby rooftop, and is watching the beast in awe and terror.

As a mere, lowly ninja of the spider-clan, Peter Parker has not been prepared for this by his sensei.

I am ashamed of myself for even having typed those words.

I also love how we explicitly compares the Hulk to Godzilla. After we've already seen another giant monster in-universe during the Stark Island siege that was a blatant ripoff of Godzilla. Have we reminded you enough recently that Godzilla is a piece of Japanese media that we are drawing on for your weeb consumption? Well, it is, and we are, so give us your fucking money already you little shits!

Well, while Parker-Kun is being useless, the Avengers arrive in their quartet of futuristic aircraft. President Rogers says "Avengers, assemble!" and he, Vision, Hawkeye, and the Scarlet Witch all assemble their craft into a giant voltron.

why.

The Avengtron uses it's, ahem, "iron avenger mega-power punch," but succeeds only in breaking its stupid fist against Hulk's face. That explains why Bruce Banner is still floating in the ocean, despite us having seen him start to transform; he switched places with Jonathan Joestar between cuts.

Then Hulk then uses his radioactive breath to blast a hole in Avengertron.

No, seriously. He actually has radioactive breath. It's even the same color.

Having him do this right after Parker-Kun just explicitly compared him to Godzilla is just...what do you even fucking call that?

The Avengers bail out, and are left standing amid the rubble of their stupid robot at Godzulka's feet. t's explain that the Witch used a teleportation spell to help them clear their landing, but she doesn't use any more magic after this point, and in fact the Avengers seem to be totally useless from this point on. What are the Avengers without their Voltron, after all?

Parker-Kun decides it's time for himself to step up to the plate, and use the ninja skills passed down through the Parker line for generations. Just as soon as he finishes jizzing in his pants over the giant monster fight that's destroying his home city before his eyes.

Also, can somebody explain to me what the fuck is wrong with Peter's hands? His feet too, for that matter, but if those are four or five times the size they should be then his hands are like...seven or eight times. They're bigger than his goddamned head, and his head is ALSO too big! I thought Starbie was some body horror, but this shit? What is even the logic behind this? It doesn't make him look more like a spider, OR more like a ninja (since he's apparently one of those now too). Like, if you were going to redesign Spiderman as a hideous mutant, wouldn't the obvious approach be to give him extra limbs, or another set of elbows/knees, or bristles, or fucking...not this?

I'm trying to infer the thought process that could have led to this, and I've got nothing.

Back at Stark Island, the NFA's bombardment has destabilized the negative energy tap. If containment isn't restored soon, it could release another worldspanning EMP, if not something even more destructive. And, despite Stark Industries having rebuilt the tap in-house, nobody except Dr. Banner knows how to turn the damned thing off. I guess Starbie didn't give him any research assistants, or have him write down notes. T'Challa tells her she was stupid for tampering with forces this uncontrollable, when actually she was stupid for tampering with said forces without bothering to learn how to control them. He also ads that there's some indication that the energy they've been tapping into in the Negative Zone is actually a life form, which...I'm not sure why we're only hearing about this now, but whatever.

Wasp, meanwhile, volunteers that "it's always the people who say we shouldn't do things that end up doing nothing." What a profound statement there, Janet, you just made me think.

Hank Pym tries his best to get something done with the machinery he's never seen in person in his life, but predictably it doesn't amount to much.

We're in...deep...kimchi...?

I googled. And no, "kimshee" does not appear to be any sort of obscure slang term or random Japanese word. All I'm getting is that it's an alternate spelling of "kimchi."

This ostensibly anglo-American character just substituted a random Korean culinary term for "shit."

That's not something Japanese or Korean people do. That's not even what manga characters do!

We are officially at the "I am a dragon, you are now Asian" threshold. We have passed the singularity of wapanese cringe. We have ascended to the Logos of Weeb.

This was officially published by Marvel Comics, with the expectation that it would sell. And it does not appear to be intended as a joke.

Starbie gets a transmission from Fury asking for her help in New York. She tells him that she's a little busy here, what with fishnazis and nazifish and so forth pummeling her technofortress to the point where it might bluescreen the planet. Fury tells her that he'll send the X-Men to help at Stark Island, he needs her personally in New York City right now.

Um.

...

Okay. First of all. It's been established that the Hulk is causing only minimal destruction on his own, and fighting back only when fired upon. It was also established that they've finished evacuating the area of New York City that he's standing around waiting in, so even if he causes more property damage by pacing around or whatever it's not going to be too disastrous.

Meanwhile, an evil organization that has attempted and come close to succeeding at world domination at least once before is cracking the defenses of the fortress where the unlimited energy supertech is being kept. And the combat might cause said supertech to melt down and cause a global catastrophe.

Why would he take anyone off of Stark Island's defenses to harass the Hulk some more? Let alone the woman who runs the place, and is thus most capable of both managing the defenses AND preventing the meltdown? The only answer that comes to mind is Nick's previously established alchoholism.

Secondly. When he calls her over, she converts her stupid Eva wannabe into an aircraft and flies it toward New York. So, what she has to bring to the table against the Hulk is her giant, heavily armed vehicle. The Hulk has just destroyed a giant, heavily armed vehicle with contemptuous ease. Those don't work on him! Meanwhile, the X-Men (assuming they're anything like the prime version) have a diverse array of powers that lend themselves to creative tactics, including game-changing things like mind control, energy drain, and weather manipulation.

So, even if Stark Island wasn't the more obviously pressing situation, and even if Starbie wasn't already there, and even if Starbie's own skillset wasn't directly applicable to defending it: if you had to send someone to Stark Island and someone else to New York, and you had Starbie and the X-Men to pick from, what would you do? If your answer is to send the lady with the giant robot to fight the fishnazis who can be killed by giant robots, and the people with a bunch of utility powers and tricks to see if they can get the monster who is IMMUNE to giant robots out of New York, then congratulations! You should be in charge of SHIELD, and this inebriated fuck should be bringing you coffee.

...

Also, the NFA bombardment has been going on for several hours at this point, and aside from causing some power fluctuations in the thingy they still haven't done much damage. Also, the neighboring countries haven't intervened, presumably because they're too afraid of having to look at Starbie to go anywhere near there.

The Iron-Evas are finally falling back though, as the Atlantean bioships blast them with relentless copyright claims. Namor must have made a secret supply deal with Gainax Armories, that cunning fiend! Speaking of Fish Boi, he and Baron Strucker are watching the siege from a hovering vehicle of some sort. Suddenly, an ant alate lands on Strucker's face. Then, there are alates flying all over the place! Pym must be doing something, summoning a winged ant swarm!

However, I have no idea what he's doing with them.

He's playing his stupid guitar to summon the ants, and Wasp tells him that she hopes they can manage to reseal the island's protective dome, but there's no visual or dialogue indication of how a swarm of ants is supposed to help with that. And, despite getting plenty of buildup with Strucker looking worried as he sees the swarm gathering around the island, the story never comes back to this. It's just dropped without payoff or even explanation.

Meanwhile, T'Challa does some sort of shamanic thing which I guess this version of him can do, and turns himself into a catboy. Dr. Strange's pet catgirl stops what she's doing in the middle of the battle and goes gaga over him.

"Chocolate beefcake."

Well, if anyone was worried about this comic only being racist toward Asian people, I guess you can let out a sigh of relief now.

Fortunately (I think?), that's when the X-Men arrive to reinforce the island's defenders. As mutants themselves, they're less troubled by Starbie's appearance. The X-Men start laying into the NFA forces, to Namor's outrage. Strucker is pleased by this development, and wants Namor to let his hate flow through him.

What's that you say? I'm just memeing now? I assure you, that's not the case. You see, author Ben Dunn is the one who is memeing:

I'm starting to wonder if maybe this whole comic actually IS supposed to be a joke after all.

Namor dashes off to fight the X-Men himself. The NFA forces press in on Stark Island, and the meltdown appears to be starting. Then, Strucker murders the other random merman who Namor had left on the flying platform thingy with him, floats it up to the collapsing negative energy tap, and awakens his masters.

Okay then! The life form that they've been sucking energy out of in the Negative Zone is one of the gods who Mordo was praying to before, and he and Strucker are working together due to having some religious views in common. Alright, that makes more sense than just about anything else that's happened in this comic so far.

This moment of positivity even manages to continue for two consecutive pages(!) when the entity comes through the collapsed Negative Zone Tap and takes on physical form, naming itself as Dormammu.

This is the first Mangaverse visual redesign that I actually like. Recurring Doctor Strange antagonist Dormammu has gone through multiple facelifts throughout Marvel's multimedia publishing history. Some of them better than others. My favorite take on him so far is probably the MCU version, with the writhing black void full of mind-bending exotic matter fractals and so forth (the Doctor Strange movie was one of the weakest MCU films overall, but I loved its take on Dormammu). And, the Mangaverse version is now a close second. It mixes the biblical multi-faced angel of cosmic terror aesthetic with a more science fictiony composition, with some extra golden tentacles for flavor. So, this character design works for me. It's sure as hell better than Hulk or Antman, and it might as well be a Da Vinci painting compared to whatever's going on with poor Spiderman.

Strucker welcomes Dormammu by sacrificing all the HYDRA and merman soldiers on the beachhead to him then and there. Lol.

Cut back to Earth orbit, where we'd left off with Doctor Strange breaking both of Baron Mordo's arms and disabling his spellcasting. Mordo isn't suffocating or decompressing, so either the spell that made him space-capable doesn't need active maintenance or Doctor Strange is keeping him alive. In the way of villains written by lazy hacks, Mordo explains the plot to his victorious opponent, and he actually has a slightly better justification for doing this than the usual nothing.

When HYDRA captured Dr. Banner a few years ago, they and their wizard brothers-in-faith determined that the Negative Zone was actually the spirit world, and the energy he was tapping was distilled psychic power. This dimension is home to many supernatural beings, including the god Dormammu who they've just summoned, and the Hulk, who Banner made psychic contact with and was driven insane by. The plan is for Dormammu to destroy modern civilization, restore magic to its rightful place as the dominant human paradigm, and let his magician-cultists rule as his ministers and vassals forevermore.

Mordo talked to Strucker about the possibility of convincing Dr. Strange to join them in this; as a fellow magician, he has as much to gain from it as they (also, Strucker is implied to be a wizard himself, I guess? That would explain how he could breathe underwater before, so sure, I can roll with that. Weird that HYDRA wasn't using more magic in the siege of Stark Island though, if this version of them is so mystical). Strucker said that Dr. Strange would never join them, and Mordo reluctantly deferred to his judgement, but since he's got no better way of escaping from this situation now he might as well try. So, he invites Doctor Strange to join them. Strange refuses, of course, but this was a more logical "join the dark side" speech than I'm used to seeing in similar media, so kudos for that I guess. Baron Mordo continues to be the most level-headed and realistically motivated character in this story.

This does raise another plot issue, though. If HYDRA's original energy tap was really just meant to summon Dormammu, and only failed because their shoddy construction caused the whole thing to brick itself with EMP before it could work (this is explicitly what Mordo says happened), then what was the point of the giant satellite gun that they used it to power? If they hate technology so much, why would they have...oh, whatever.

Also, rather than simply rejecting his offer, or even letting him die in the vacuum, Doctor Strange sends him to Hell.

I guess Mangaverse Doc Strange is actually Stardust the Super-Wizard in disguise.

In New York City, Parker-Kun tries to unilaterally blind the Hulk by shooting ninja silk in his eyes, but Hulk just ignores him and trudges off into the ocean. Whatever he was waiting for, the watching SHIELD pilots muse, it must have happened now. Why was he waiting in New York, of all places? Same reason HYDRA blasted it with a satellite cannon that they had no reason to even build let alone use. That reason being "fuck New York."

As the Hulk wades out into the ocean, thereby resolving the conflict and obviating the need for any further interaction, Starbie reaches him and starts shooting. I take back everything I said before, Stark Island can probably defend and maintain itself much better without her. Well, at least she gets what she deserves:

Heh heh heh.

Cut to...somewhere...with Princess Namora having forgotten about her world-saving mission and seducing Bruce Banner awake. Like, she has him in this loveshack bedroom type environment, and she's in lingerie, and is actively pawing him. Before the lung-pumping beetle she was using to save him from drowning can even finish withdrawing its tentacles out of his trachaea.

Apparently, among the memories Starbie suppressed were those of the fish princess who he spent much of his stay at HYDRA having his face sat on by. Because Banner has come across as a real ladykiller, what with his high school nerd style attempt to take advantage of the Wasp and getting slapped for it. Total stud. Bigtime Mikiya.

A catchup round of mermaid facesitting jogs his memory, but we cut away before we can see what else he remembered. What I learned? The antidote for Stark memory-suppressing tech is scaly blue ass. I'm sure that's going to create problems for them if the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants ever finds out.

Back to Stark Island. How are there this many things going on at the same time in the second damned issue of this series? In true shonen manga style, Ben Dunn has decided to introduce team after team after team of new characters with new powers before letting any of them have a chance to shine, or even really characterize themselves. Well, at least he's staying true to his inspiration. Here come the Fantastic Four now, and this might be the worst visual redesign besides Spiderman's.

The Fantastic Four are one of the most distinctive-looking teams in the history of superhero comics. This version of them is one of the most generic. Their powers have also been incredibly genericized; they're all just benders now.

They're only here to pose for a couple of panels before fading from relevance though, so at least I don't have to spend too much time looking at them.

The Hulk makes his way to the island, wiping bits of Starbie out of his eyes, and his greeted fondly by Dormammu. The Hulk is an ancient demon who has served him for eons, and it's nice having his righthand man with him to help claim this new world.

The Incredible Hulk as a demon that Bruce Banner accidentally summons is soooort of along the lines of the original on a plot level, but the thematics are totally off. It's not a bad concept, which for Mangaverse is something of an accomplishment, but why bother calling the scientist Bruce Banner, and why bother calling the monster the Hulk?

The Fantastic Four ignore the people telling them to run away and try to bend at the demons. It doesn't work. They get their asses kicked. Tigrayan is weirdly smug about this. Strucker, still in control of the Atlantean hovercraft he hijacked, floats up triumphantly at the right hand of his god and announces that resistance is futile.

No, really.

So let's see, he's done the Palpatine meme, the borg meme...I predict that within the next few pages he'll be screaming "Heresy!" and/or declaring that the spice must flow.

I'll stop this here for now. I challenge any of you to blame me.