Awesome / Marvel Universe

Awesome moments in the Marvel Universe.

• In Marvel vs. DC, all the heroes and villains of the Marvel and DC universes are "witnessing the end of everything", the end of both their universes. Everyone, Lobo and Darkseid included, are serious and grim at this. Thanos is the only one who isn't. He's smiling. And he isn't speechless like the others, either. What does he say, watching the death of everything that ever was? "It's... it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen..."
• Anything involving Squirrel Girl.
• In Excalibur #5, Captain Britain and his longtime love Courtney Ross are about to go on their first date after years of separation. Ecstatically happy, Courtney walks into her apartment to find a woman who looks just like her standing inside; Cap's archenemy Sat-Yr-9, Courtney's Evil Twin from a Mirror Universe. Cut to Captain B with roses in hand, being met at the door by a ravishing seeming-Courtney. They move in to kiss— on the floor is an odd human-shaped silhouette of ash reaching toward the roses he'd dropped... A poignant, post-mortem moment of creepy and awesome at the same time. Sadly, this storyline will never be revisited due to the revolving door of writers.
• Everything Ares does in his original mini; the most well known is lighting himself on fire and thrown by Hercules in the middle of the Zombie Samurai horde guns blazing.
• The whole of Alan Moore and Alan Davis' run writing Captain Britain could count, but the best has to be when Captain Britain faces the Fury. The Fury had, earlier in their run, killed Captain Britain (he got better), and had just killed Mad Jim Jaspers, who was effectively God. What happens? Captain Britain pounds the shit out of the Fury.
  • ...until he goes down himself, at which point Captain UK—who lost all her friends and loved ones to the Fury, and who's spent the whole storyline in a state of paralyzed terror—steps up and finishes the job by ripping out the Fury's spine.
  • The Captain's twin sister Psylocke (in her pre-X-Men days) got one in the story in which Cap got replaced by his Evil Twin. Kaptain Briton attempted to rape Psylocke, who responded by burning out his brain. By the time Cap came flying to the rescue, it was all over.
  • Of course, Mad Jim Jaspers has had several impressive moments of his own: one of the best is arguably during the final battle, where he transforms himself into a giant, makes Captain Britain believe that his adventures were All Just a Dream- twice, then takes on a number of different forms just to humiliate him before running him over with a combine harvester.
    YOU WERE SAYING SOMETHING ABOUT FIGHTING WITH EVERY LAST BREATH IN YOUR BODY, I BELIEVE. FIRST CLASS SENTIMENTS, CAPTAIN, AND I'M SURE THAT THEY WERE REAL... but nothing else is.
  • Unveiling himself before the Vixen, warping her bodyguards into submission and transforming her into a literal vixen.
• Reed Richards has one in the opening arc of Illuminati. The Infinity Gems, when placed in the Infinity Gauntlet, grant godlike power and getting them all together with the gauntlet is the stuff insanely long and convoluted Crisis Crossovers are made of. Reed Richards managed it in one issue. One! Issue!
• Adam Warren's Livewires miniseries (technically done for Marvel Comics, but almost never mentioned since then) ends with a humdinger. Stem Cell, the team Woobie, is left running around free while her fellow robot secret agents have been captured by a hivemind army of Nick Fury robot duplicates. In desperation, she starts modifying her own programming (which required prying out her eyeball with a screwdriver to physically hack her own brain— and she had fully human pain senses and emotions at that point!) to find a way to save them. Later, she faces her enemies:
  Stem Cell: This is Stem Cell, broadcasting loud and proud from your roof!
  Hollowpoint Ninja: Stem Cell - No! Hide!
  Stem Cell: You know, I'm considering changing that name. Stem Cell's a noob name... and I'm an ops virgin no longer.
  Nick Fury Android Copy Groupmind: (with big evil grin) That's somethin'. Be kinda sucky if you was gonna die a virgin.
  (strange noises start coming out of the ducts)
  Stem Cell: Nossir, not a virgin of any sort. You want proof? YOU WANNA SEE MY BABIES?!
  (And then her army of jerry-rigged fusion-powered nanotech monsters on fire come out of the ducts and kick the crap out of the Nick Furies)
  • She then tops this by escaping a nigh-inescapable situation (the nanotech monsters having no 'off' switch). While leaving she gets in a parting shot: "My advice? Think of something insanely clever. I know I just did. Good luck, you eyepatch-wearing piece of hiveminded crap."
• MODOK's Eleven was a miniseries where the title character (an encephalitic man on a floating chair) assembles a team of D-List villains to steal a MacGuffin, in this case a miniature supernova, called a hypernova, kept continuously exploding so it can be used as a power source. The macguffin is secured, and MODOK's true nastiness reveals itself: MODOK's chief rival and ex-girlfriend decides that it would be easier to buy him off than just attempt to force it from him, so she offers one billion dollars. MODOK accepts the cash and hands over the hypernova. The kicker? The hypernova's containment field is incredibly unstable, and has been deteriorating ever since it was stolen. Soon, while trying to use it to power one of her own evil schemes, the ex-girlfriend and all her minions get blown to smithereens. As MODOK himself puts it, "Killing my greatest enemy? Exquisite. Tricking my greatest enemy into paying me one billion dollars to kill her? Priceless."
• Vance Astrovik of the New Warriors refused to let his teammates break him out of prison because even if the crime he committed was an accident, he was still sentenced and found guilty.
  Just because I have powers which would make it tempting to ignore the law — doesn't give me the right to.
• In the new run of Thor, the titular hero and Tony Stark give us this little gem after Thor smacked Iron Man around a bit.
  Tony Stark: My suit's busted, how am I supposed to get home?
  Thor: Walk.
  • That same issue had Thor give Iron Man a verbal beatdown along with the physical one:
    Tony Stark: You've been working out...
    Thor: No, in this time, and this place, I am no longer holding back.
    (Thor rips off Tony's helmet and looks him right in the eyes.)
    Thor: Give your orders and ultimatums to those who chose to obey, or are too cowardly to fight, NOT to me. Or learn again the difference between a God of Thunder... and a mortal man in a metal suit.
  • Considering that Tony and Reed cloned Thor, attempted to make their friends believe the clone was the real deal, and send the clone after said friends, resulting in the death of one, Tony is very lucky that Thor was that nice to him.
  • Speaking of Thor, from the final battle of Civil War proper: Hercules going head-to-head with the Pro-Reg side's robotic clone of Thor. It seems that in general, readers on both sides agreed that this was an awesome moment.
    Hercules: How darest thou wear the flesh of The Odinson?! I knew Thor... Thor was a friend of mine... and you know something, imposter?
    [Smashes Robo-Thor's head in, with its own hammer no less]
    THOU ART NO THOR!!
    • Made even better by Storm and Invisible Woman looking on appreciatively. The two heroines get their own when they stop Robo-Thor from killing some more Anti-Reg supporters and nearly putting him down. When it looks like it might not be enough, cue Hercules:
      Hercules: Step aside ladies
  • Tony counters by an incredibly (and witty) CMOA of his own in Invincible Iron-Man: After spending most of the (very long) arc dismantling his brain to keep Norman Osborn from picking it for secrets he finally succeeds, going comatose. Norman has him in custody but can't do anything to him, and it turns out that he made a living will and appointed someone to execute it.
    Norman Osborn: Who the hell is "Dr. Donald Blake"!?
• Marvel 1602: The leader of the anti-Witchbreed (ie, mutants) inquisition is attacked by an assassin who expresses his pride in his steel knife. He responds by revealing that he's Magneto, when he takes control of the knife and uses it to back the assassin into the same pit he was about to be thrown into.
  • Matthew Murdock scares the crap out of King James, and promises to watch him for the rest of his life, making sure he never hurts mutants again.
• During the over a year long "Dark Reign" story arc, Iron Man was branded an enemy of the state by Norman Osborn for hiding the identities of all of the superheroes from Osborn, and spent the majority of the even slowly deleting his brain to the point he was rendered comatose, at which point a number of allies worked on restoring his brain from a back-up. As Stark was recovering from this, Osborn lead all the supervillains in an assault on Asgard. The first thing Tony Stark does as Iron Man following his recovery? Put on an old suit of armor, fly over to Asgard & promptly disable Osborn's stolen "Iron Patriot" armor without firing so much as a repulsor ray at it. Oh, but only after asking the president of the United States if it's okay if he flys over to beat up the clearly insane super villain in charge of a branch of country's military.
• Heroic Age - Prince of Power #3, appropriately titled "Our Lady of Slaughter", was surely Delphyne Gorgon's finest hour. Having escaped from imprisonment when the Pantheon invade Olympus Group, she applies her "Death Scrunchie" (adorned with skulls), arms herself to the teeth and kicks some ass. When some goons get the drop on her, she uses her snake hair to fire four guns at once and proceeds to slaughter everyone in a whirlwind of reptile fury. Her enemies make the mistake of trying to track her in darkness by infrared. It doesn't end well, and Delphyne reminds the last surviving Mook that she's cold-blooded as she shoots him in the head.
• A fairly recent She-Hulk mini-series saw a pretty impressive one for D-List villain The Wizard. After being captured by the two current She-Hulks (odd story), the Hulk pumps him for information on his fellow mad scientists. When the strongest hero in the Marvel universe is basically saying 'Tell me what I want, or I will crush you,' most people would fetch their brown pants. The Wizard however instead manages to end up practically pampered in return for the information, not once panicking, and actually managing to use this situation to regainn his equipment to break out and attempt revenge on the She-Hulks. That part doesn't go down too well, but DAMN!
• Mr Fantastic's "Anti-Galactus suit". Do we have enough examples for a "Crowning Moment Of Awesome: Comics Mecha" yet?
  • Tony Stark tops this in ''War Machine: Weapon Of S.H.I.E.L.D." when Jim Rhodes takes control of a satellite with a Giant Robot mode.
• AXIS deals with characters' personalities being inverted, with heroes becoming evil and villains becoming good. This, naturally, led to fans being concerned that the event would result in another Civil War-esque status quo of everyone hating the heroes. The Awesome part? The characters in-universe saw this coming, and Steve Rogers, one of the few heroes to still be good, had several of the now-good villains record and release a fake confession to the media wherein they take credit for the whole mess, precisely to prevent such a status quo from coming about. It works too. This is also coming from Rick Remender, who generally writes extremely cynical stories.
• When Mockingbird got to be Captain America for a day. For context, all the other Avengers are hit by a device that removes their powers and leaves them in great pain. Bobbi, being a Badass Normal, is unaffected, and goes on to fight the villain by herself, making them, in her own words, 'run like a bitch'. She's taken out by the Wrecking Crew, but only because they're Thor level villains, and she puts up a decent fight.
• Mockingbirds 's Badass Boast. After being offered a We Can Rule Together option by AIM's scientist supreme, she replies by headbutting them, breaking their nose, then beating them and their mooks.
• Bobbi's entrance in Secret Avengers #2. Just as it looks like the team is screwed (Taskmaster, the person they were trying to get has just been taken away by the person who seems to be the Thorndrake), they suddenly knock Taskmaster out and tell Fury the package is secure before dropping camotech and revealing themself to be Bobbi. Now we know where she's been since the beginning of Marvel Now.
• Bobbi's entire life could qualify as one. She went from a biologist to a SHIELD agent, to a costumed hero, to an Avenger (who was a founding member of the West Coast Avengers), survived on a planet full of Skrulls after seeing through their deception, managed to adjust to being back in her old life, put the ghost of her rapist away once and for all, then ended up becoming a super soldier. On top of all that, she evaded the Skrulls for so long and killed so many that she was considered a horror story by them. And she did all of that while being a completely unaltered Badass Normal. Who knows what she's capable of now?
• An issue of New Avengers has Barney Barton trying to kill Mockingbird. What does she do? Deflects the arrows with her bo staff and kicks him in the face. Guess someone forgot to tell him that she's a super soldier now.
• The announcement that she will be joining the cast of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was the highest voted announcement on CBR's SDCC announcement poll of the second day, even beating big-news topics like Sam Raimi's Evil Dead TV series announcement, The Walking Dead season 5 trailer reveal, and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) sequel announcements. Not bad for a character people wrote off as 'obscure' when it was announced.
• Nick Fury capped off SHIELD's first major feud with HYDRA by heading to HYDRA Island and finishing off the entire organization (while stopping their plot to kill humanity with a global death spore attack) by himself. Even the rest of SHIELD keeps bringing up how badass that was for issues afterward.
• Nick Fury escaping a nuclear bomb blast on a rocket powered motorcycle. Shirtless. While smoking a cigar and firing two machine guns. Nick Fury is CMOA.
• And of course, this line Nick Fury delivers to the Skrulls: "Oh yeah? Well... my God has a hammer!"
• Don't forget when Nick Fury delivered a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to a corrupt general who came up with the whole "Fake terrorists crashing a passenger jet full of innocent people as a distraction" plan in The Punisher MAX with his belt.
  • And the ending of that storyline as well. After the Punisher intentionally botched the "secret" mission by letting a virus in a little girl's bloodstream be destroyed (he promised no one would hurt her), the corrupt generals who ordered the mission attempt to have him arrested. Fury simply stood next to Frank and told the soldiers to go ahead. They wouldn't go near him, telling the generals they would rather be sent to Iraq.
• Surrounded and vastly outnumbered by hostile H.A.M.M.E.R. Mooks, Nick Fury warned them not to mess with him. Result: not only did they surrender, but they also pulled a Heel–Face Turn and joined him.
  • In the first few issues of that series, Nick Fury was horrified to discover that Baron Strucker had been running a scam on him for years. In the last few issues, Strucker was horrified to discover that Nick Fury had been running the same scam on him. For years.
• The climatic issue in the Yellow Claw storyline when Steranko's Art Evolution hit its full flower with funky surrealism and a mega four page spread that in the 1960s practically demanded you buy a second copy to see it all in one piece, or nowadays open up the fold out pages in the modern reprint books.
• How does Nick Fury deal with The Punisher's death in "War's End" from The Punisher MAX? He pisses all over the police investigating what happened, takes the war journal Frank wrote when they tried to look into it, torches Castle's home because of how depressed Frank was over his family being killed, then orders SHIELD to blackout an area of New York to finish what The Punisher started by killing Kingpin's wife.
• From the very first issue of Nick's series, all the way back when, there's the moment Nick is appointed Director of SHIELD. He tries protesting, that he's not the guy they want... then he sees a chair's been rigged with explosives. Nick doesn't hesitate in grabbing it, ripping it out of the floor and tossing it through the nearest window.
  • Which also leads to a mildly awesome Wham Shot: Up until that point the whereabouts of SHIELD's headquarters hadn't been given. When Nick throws the chair through the window, we see where the base is, with the first ever shot of the Helicarrier, in all its glory.
• Thanos obtaining all six Soul Gems, which he renamed the Infinity Gems, from those who had currently possessed them at the time, the In-Betweener and the Elders of the Universe. Obtaining the Soul gem from the In-Betweener, the Power Gem from the Champion, the Time gem from the Gardener, the Space gem from the Runner, the Reality gem from the Collector and the Mind gem from the Grandmaster, Thanos managed to do what no one else had ever done and assemble the Infinity Gauntlet.
• Thanos once shattered Captain America's shield into splinters with his Infinity Gauntlet-clad fist (in Captain America's decades of history, you can literally count the number of times his shield has been damaged with only the fingers on one hand, this one included). Later that day, he imprisoned Eternity, Infinity, Chaos, Order, the Celestials, the Stranger, Death, Galactus, and every other cosmic being in the universe.
• Thanos's very first major campaign saw him outplaying multiple heroes from behind the scenes, suborning several major villains to his purposes with empty promises of power, and culminated with him using the Cosmic Cube — which previous villains like the Red Skull had used merely for petty personal ends, not understanding its true potential — to literally become God.
• Thanos made a deal with Mephisto to enlist his aid against the Goddess. The price for his assistance was one Cosmic Cube. After the Goddess was defeated, Thanos delivered the Cube to Mephisto, as promised. Mephisto immediately attempted to use it to destroy Thanos, to no effect. After all, he had never specified that his Cosmic Cube be functional.
• Blade's eventual reaction when chained up and expected to "chow down" on an innocent girl:
  Blade: Did you know a wolf will bite off its own paw to get out of a trap?
• Blade set off a huge explosion in a building to destroy an enemy. Thing is, Blade was inside too.
  Blade: I hurt in places I never knew I had. But it's worth it all to hear you scream!
• From Mighty Avengers: The Deathwalkers, which are snake ninja creatures, have blown up Blade's safe house. He jumped out the burning building and this is their reaction◊. "Daywalker. Deathwalkers. That's gonna get real real fast. Keep it simple. Say my name"◊.