Things aren't going well.
Chaos War is a 2010 miniseries by Marvel Comics, written by written by Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente. The miniseries follows up on plot threads started in The Incredible Hercules and a couple of miniseries featuring Amadeus Cho.
The Japanese evil god Amatsu-Mikaboshi, who got a hold on many enslaved alien gods during Secret Invasion, goes on a rampage across the multiverse. He intends to destroy all of creation and return everything to primordial chaos. Unlike Annihilus however, he takes out gods and other supernatural entities first. Hercules, who has just come back from his supposed death with a significant power boost, assembles a team of gods and close enough individuals to combat the king of chaos.
Titles Involved
- Chaos War #1-5
- Chaos War: Chaos King #1
- Chaos War: Dead Avengers #1-3
- Chaos War: Alpha Flight #1
- Chaos War: God Squad #1-3
- Chaos War: Ares #1
- Chaos War: X-Men #1-2
- The Incredible Hulks #618-620
Chaos War provides examples of:
- And I Must Scream: Ares got turned into Chaos King's puppet and sent to murder his son while staying conscious.
- The Anti-God: Amatsu-Mikaboshi, who was previously thought of as only the Japanese god of evil, is revealed as the personification of the Primordial Chaos that predated the universe. Eternity (the Anthropomorphic Personification of the universe itself) explicitly calls the Chaos King this trope, and states he cannot help the heroes, as without Amatsu as the other side of the coin, he will cease to exist, despite the King's victory meaning he will be destroyed either way.
- Apathetic Citizens: Hercules comes back from the dead to announce the death of the multiverse, but who cares? Is it that part of the month again?
- Backported Development: Chaos War: Ares shows Amatsu-Mikaboshi wearing his present-day duds in a flashback to the original Ares miniseries.
- Backup from Otherworld: Since the various death gods were obliterated, a number of dead heroes got back into the land of the living, which came rather handy with most living people being put in a coma.
- Big Bad: Amatsu-Mikaboshi, the Chaos King.
- Brought Down to Badass: Hercules burns out all of his godly powers at the end of the miniseries, leaving him without any Super-Strength at all, but he still fights supervillains and criminals. He has access to some magical weaponry and is highly skilled at using it, but even then can barely keep up. Yet he still kicks butt.
- Destroyer Deity: Amatsu-Mikaboshi, the Japanese god of evil, is revealed to be an Eldritch Abomination made of living darkness and older than the universe itself, and seeks to return the cosmos to the void by devouring everything. He almost succeeds but is tricked by Hercules and trapped in a pocket dimension.
- Deus Exit Machina: Eternity appears but refuses to fight Chaos King because he can't exist without him even though his victory means Eternity will cease to exist.
- Do Androids Dream?: The Vision is one of the Avengers temporarily brought Back from the Dead, suggesting he is actually a living being. This contradicts The Thanos Imperative, where a parallel universe Vision was immune to possession by Eldritch Abominations specifically because as a synthezoid he was never really alive to begin with.
- Does Not Know His Own Strength: Hercules trying to give a heads up on the end times is stymied by inexperience with his recent omnipotence. His cries are quite literally explosively thunderous and his steps are earth-shaking.
- Earth Is the Center of the Universe: Near the climax, Gaea explains that she was the first being to emerge from primordial chaos. Earth is the final battleground of the Chaos War and it's where Amatsu-Mikaboshi, who is a counterpart to Eternity itself, was imprisoned.
- Eldritch Abomination: Amatsu-Mikaboshi is revealed to be an entity of living darkness predating the multiverse itself, and seeks to return it to the void by devouring everything in existence.
- 11th-Hour Superpower: Thor is fighting an eldritch abomination named Glory, and losing, but manages to pull out the strength to win via a powerup from a woman who was praying to him.
- The End Is Nigh: Hercules suddenly appears in New York, claiming that the end is coming.
- Evil Versus Oblivion: Amatsu-Mikaboshi is trying to reduce the entire universe to nothing and that includes evil entities like Nightmare and even the Marvel universe version of Satan.Satan: We all assume a role, Chaos King. You and I are not so different. Each of us in our own world was cast to play the villain—
Amatsu-Mikaboshi: I am NOT like you. You choose evil over good. I choose nothingness. - Fastball Special: In Chaos War: Dead Avengers'', Mar-Vell did this with Swordsman.
- Generic Doomsday Villain: The Chaos King wants to destroy the entire multiverse, just for the heck of it.
- God Is Inept: Hercules sacrifices his omnipotence to recreate the Universe, destroyed by Chaos King. Everything goes back to exactly how it was before, including all villains and various monsters. Hercules claims that he was "Guided by wisdom beyond human understanding" but considering he accidentally brought Ares's son Knykos back to life, it's rather clearly this trope.
- God of Chaos: Amatsu-Mikaboshi, the Chaos King, is the primal god of chaos from Shinto legend. Predating reality, its motivation is to destroy the multiverse so as to return to the peaceful state of nothing it once came from.
- God of Darkness: Amatsu-Mikaboshi, the Japanese god of darkness, is the embodiment of the primordial void that existed before the universe was created. Seeking to return the universe to a state of absolute darkness, the Chaos King almost succeeds in devouring all that exists before being tricked into trapping itself in a pocket dimension, Hercules burning out his new Skyfather powers to restore the cosmos.
- Going Commando: The Chaos King implied this to be the case in a Fourth-Wall Mail Slot section in the first issue.Reader: Boxers or Briefs?
* Grand Finale: For The Incredible Hercules (though Hercules would get a post-event spinoff that would serve as a final coda). - Gratuitous Iambic Pentameter: Amatsu-Mikaboshi, the Chaos King, speaks in Haiku / for added coolness."When Chaos triumphs, / even Haiku will vanish. / Only then I weep."
- I'm a Man; I Can't Help It: In Chaos War: Dead Avengers #2, Swordsman explains why he flirts even as the world comes to an end:Swordsman: Ah! Forgive my manners. I cannot help myself sometimes. I am French.
- Killed Off for Real: Athena by Hercules, in defiance of her request that he continue to be Top God.
- Lame Comeback: Invoked by the Chaos King in the Fourth-Wall Mail Slot in Issue #2.Amadeus Cho: C'mon, dazzle us with some REAL invective!
Chaos King: Shut up, you. Yeah, you. / Start with the shutting up now. / Then shut up some more. - Let Us Never Speak of This Again: In issue #3, while under the influence of Venus's magic song, Amadeus admits to Thor that he loves him. Thor says he loves him too, and then says not to speak of it ever again.
- Ludicrous Precision: When almost the entire population of Earth was put into a trance, Amadeus warns that at least 32451 people could die due to things such as being in speeding vehicles or in the middle of surgery.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Hercules reveals the Godheads' whereabouts to force them to fight back against Mikaboshi instead of hiding. Mikaboshi simply slaughters them and their realms, adding to his already immense power.
- No Such Thing as Space Jesus: Averted, as the gods of various alien cultures are every bit as real as the Asgardians and Olympians, although most of them were dead in the aftermath of Secret Invasion.
- Not So Omniscient After All: Hercules temporarily becomes omniscient. Despite this, he is tricked repeatedly and has to be guided to victory by others. Omniscience is useless if one either ignores it or does not bother to use it.
- Number of the Beast: In Chaos War: Chaos King, Thrann's journal in the prologue starts with 66.6.01, with the first entries being about the creation of the universe and Thrann's arrival in Zenn-La. Entry 66.6.06 turns it into an Apocalyptic Log.Mental Note 66.6.06: That was the beginning of all things. But now—
- Offstage Villainy: Mikaboshi is said to be destroying the Multiverse, but is only shown attacking Earth-616 and its adjacent pocket dimensions, leaving his decimation of other universes completely unshown.
- The Omniscient: Hercules is imbued with true omniscience beyond anything possessed by skyfathers or most cosmic beings. He knew anything he put his mind to. Unfortunately, it was completely useless thanks to his Leeroy Jenkins attitude. He either charges in blindly or is tricked by the Big Bad into letting the villain into the heavens. It is only when his super-smart best friend Amadeus Cho and Mother Nature both call him out on how dumb he is being with it that he bothers consulting it at all.
- Omniscient Hero: Hercules is granted omniscience. This turns out to be practically worthless because Hercules either didn't bother to use it or purposely ignored it constantly making things worse. Only changed when all of his allies called him out on his crap and even then he had to be guided by others to victory.
- Planet Destroyer: Amatsu-Mikaboshi, the Chaos King, absorbs the pantheons of many alien worlds and then destroys them in his quest to return the world to nothingness. He succeeds in absorbing 98% of the known multiverse. Later in the story, Hercules is given the power to rival him and sacrifices it to undo all of the damage across the multiverse that Mikaboshi had done.
- Pocket Dimension: A provisional solution was to move most people on Earth to one of those. Amadeus did not like to play God and decide who lives and who dies. Eventually, he found another solution: put the Chaos god, at full power, in this dimension, where he believes he did win... while the majority of the multiverse has a reset that brings back those he killed.
- Power of the Void: Amatsu Mikaboshi is the personification of primordial chaos, with his ultimate goal being to consume all of creation and return the universe to non-existence.
- Prescience by Analysis: This is played with, as Amadeus Cho and other super-intelligent characters accept that the Big Bad Mikaboshi is unbeatable, but Hercules refuses to accept it.
- Reset Button: At the end Hercules used his super-god powers to restore the almost entirely destroyed multiverse, bringing several characters Back from the Dead while he was at it.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Played with. In the flashback of his first moment after being created, Vision discussed with Ultron about Rene Descartes. Vision said that he was incorrect because an imperfect being (Henry Pym) created a perfect one (Ultron). Ultron was infuriated by his answer, yes, Rene Descartes was wrong, right, but not because of that. Descartes was incorrect because he was human! Ultron is not, and he generates his own logic! But, as both of them were taking deductions from Ultron's Insane Troll Logic premise (he's not perfect), then none of them were actually right.
- Romantic Fusion: In Chaos War: Thor #2, after apparently losing his powers, Thor’s human alter ego, Donald Blake, merges with his love interest Becca Steinhardt to become Thor once again.
- Rousing Speech: At first subverted, with heroes being of not very high opinion about Hercules, but played straight soon after.
- Seen It All: Iron Man is not surprised at all to see Hercules resurrected. That's a common tradition in the superhero community.
- Strange-Syntax Speaker: Amatsu-Mikaboshi, the Chaos King, has taken to speaking in haikus exclusively.
- Too Dumb to Live: Hercules has been granted omniscience, along with omnipotence, which would allow him to know beforehand if a plan is going to work or the proper course of action to win. He never uses it which causes him to make one mistake after another including letting Mikaboshi into heaven by the front door. He also insists on punching Mikaboshi even after it doesn't work. It takes getting his butt kicked, his hyper-smart friend Amadeus Cho, Gaea, and finally an attempt at consulting his omniscience to make him consider trying something else. Except he goes back to trying to punch Mikaboshi and is losing until Cho tricks Mikaboshi into another completely empty universe. Some god of gods.
- Took a Level in Badass: Both Hercules and Amatsu-Mikaboshi. Since they were Physical Gods, to begin with, Hercules obtains Skyfather levels of power while Amatsu-Mikaboshi reveals his true form as an Eldritch Abomination.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Hercules comes back from the dead, but nobody finds it surprising or stares at him in disbelief. See Apathetic Citizens and Seen It All.
- War Arc: The miniseries is this for The Incredible Hercules.
- Who Dares?: Eternity says this after having been summoned by Hercules.
