Headscratchers / The Avengers (Jonathan Hickman)

• Hickman's Avengers has the same exact problem as Crisis on Infinite Earths: the villains' plan to destroy the multiverse doesn't fit with how parallel universes work in this setting. In Marvel comics, any time any action can have more than one outcome, new parallel universes are born for each outcome. This means that countless new universes are born every moment, and there is an infinite number of parallel universes. The only way for the entire the multiverse to be destroyed was if each and every parallel universe was destroyed exactly at the same time. However, this is clearly not the case, as we see the incursions are not all simultaneous. So it is mathematically and physically impossible for the villains to reduce the number of universes to a few hundred thousand, let alone to two dozen. And even if it wasn't impossible, after the destruction the remaining few hundred thousand or two dozen universes would once again spawn countless new universes every second, so the number of the universes couldn't be kept down.
  • Simple explanation: They're that efficient. Further, it seems that the production rate of universes within the Marvel multiverse is nowhere near as quick as dozens per moment. Assuming that the 28-trillion-and-something reality is as far as things got to expand and assuming further a one-universe-per-second rate of growth, there's only been... 887,264 years worth of multiversal expansion going on in the billions of years since the creation of the universe. That leaves two conclusions: That these monumental seconds where universes branch off happen ages separated or that the earth simply makes these happen absurdly often.
  • "They're that efficient" can't really be the answer, because their task is both theoretically and practically impossible unless they destroy everything all at once. As for the idea that only some moments would lead into branching of separate alternate universes... That just raises more Headscratchers. Why would only some actions lead to branching of new universes, while others don't? Who would decide which action is "worthy" of creating an alternate universe and which isn't? If the creation of alternate universes is an automatic function of the multiverse, then every potential course of action has a corresponding parallel universe, and there are infinite universes. The only way this wouldn't be the case was if the entire Marvel multiverse had a single omnipotent God who, at every time a universe is about to be born, would decide whether it's "worthy" of living or not, and would allow only the "worthy" universe to go on, thus limiting their number.
  • Adding to the previous comment, in issue #2 of New Avengers, when Reed explains the nature of the Incursions, he clearly says there are infinite parallel universes. So it would take an infinity for the Incursions to destroy them one by one.
  • The Marvel Multiverse does have a single god. He is known as The One Above All.
  • Yes, but it's never been implied that s/he interferes with the multiverse in any way, except via the Living Tribunal, and certainly not that s/he would intentionally limit the number of universes in the multiverse. And Reed clearly states that there's an infinite number of universes in New Avengers #2.
    • How would Reed know though? It's not possible to empirically verify whether the quantity of something is infinite or just really, really large as it would take an infinite amount of time to check. Infinities are also problematic in mathematical proofs. It's possible that Reed was talking loosely, which isn't a good habit for a scientist of his stature but understandable if he wanted to avoid getting sidetracked by too much detail, to refer to a number which is so vast as to be beyond human comprehension. If a new alternate universe is created for each possible outcome of a quantum wavefunction collapse (as per the many worlds interpretation of quantum theory) the number of alternate universes would be finite but so staggeringly, incaculably large that referring to it as "infinite" for most purposes might be acceptable. Ultimately, though, the MST3K Mantra applies. In superhero comics, where fundamental breaches of the rules underlying reality like time travel, FTL travel, going between dimensions and laughing at the laws of thermodynamics are possible, it doesn't make much sense to make a stand against misuse of the term "infinite".
    • Even if the number of universes is incalculably large but finite, if "a new alternate universe is created for each possible outcome of a quantum wavefunction collapse" (which is indeed how the Marvel multiverse has been shown to function in most stories), the conclusion of the story is still impossible. Since the universes are being destroyed gradually, not all at once, the story should never reach the point where there's just two universes left, because new universes would be born faster than the old ones get destroyed.
  • Simple answer: the OP confuses alternate universes with alternate timelines. They are not the same thing. Which would be, for example, the "point of divergence" when the Ultimate Marvel or the Supreme Power universes have branched out of the main one? None. They are completely their own thing.
  • This is not true. In the Marvel omniverse, alternate timelines and and alternate universes are the same thing: when a timeline splits, it creates an alternate universe. This is most evident in What If?, where the premise is that Uatu the Watcher is observing alternate universes created by various changes which have diverged the timelines from the "main" 616 universe. In the The DC Universe there are external forces responsible for creating and maintaining alternate universes, but in the Marvel omniverse the only explanation for alternate universes that's ever been provided is timeline divergence. Just because we don't know the divergence point the of Ultimate Marvel or Supreme Power universes doesn't mean that there isn't such a point. The point may be thousands or millions of years in the past.
• Dr. Doom tells Dr. Strange that the one limitation the Beyonders have is that they are temporally linear: they can't travel in time, and therefore they can't go back to when Doom and Molecule Man launched their plan and stop them from carrying it out. But in the original Secret Wars (1984) Beyonder plucked Doom, who was dead at the time, from an earlier point in his timeline, so that he could part of the villain team on Battleworld. So this Beyonder, who is explicitly mentioned to be a child unit and therefore less powerful than the adult Beyonders, had the power to go back in time and mess up Doom's timeline. Why could he do it but the other Beyonders can't?
  • Technically, as shown in Fantastic Four #288, the Beyonder himself didn't travel in time; rather, he sent Doctor Doom back in time to avoid a destructive paradox (due to a bunch of unrelated shenanigans because the first Secret Wars ignored that Doom's body had been destroyed in an FF story). So he didn't travel in time himself, and he had to act to keep time from getting screwed up; thus the Beyonders can't jump through time themselves, and can't create paradoxes. Both of these limitations would keep them from retroactively thwarting Doom and the Molecule Man.
  • Actually, in Fantastic Four #288 the Beyonder is capable of changing the past, even if it creates a paradox. But in that issue Reed Richards convinces him that doing so would disrupt the space-time continuum, and hence destroy the universe, which is why he chooses not to do it. But in Hickman's Avengers the Beyonders are said to have an inherent limitation against manipulating the future or the past, which the original Beyonder clearly didn't have. And the reason why the original Beyonder chose not to disrupt the past, that it might destroy everything, is clearly not an issue for Hickman's Beyonders, since destroying everything is their explicit plan.
  • That Beyonder no longer exists, because he was such an Invincible Villain that Marvel had to retroactively alter the stories he appeared in to make the possibility of his defeat believable. These Beyonders were given more reasonable limitations that one did not have from the start.
  • Hickman's Avengers actually retcons the earlier retcon, according to which the Beyonder was merely an incredibly powerful Inhuman. Hickman's Beyonders explain that Beyonder of the original Secret Wars was a child member of their race. (Earlier on, it had already been revealed that the Beyonder wasn't originally an Inhuman, but due to the nature of his powers he became an Inhuman once everyone else started to believe he was.) And none of these retcons have ever changed the events of Fantastic Four #288, where the Beyonder does portray time travel abilities. So the original headscratcher still remains: if (as the Beyonders say) the original Beyonder is a child of their race, why was he able to change the past when they can't do that?
• It's made explicitly clear than an Incursion happens when the Earths of two parallel universes clash with each other, and that destroying an Earth will make its parent universe safe from any future Incursions. We see Namor and the Cabal do that to various parallel universes. Yet right before Secret Wars we learn that there are only two universes left in the multiverse, the 616 Universe and the Ultimate Universe. What happened to all those universes whose Earths were destroyed and who were supposed to be safe from destruction?
  • They were destroyed in the battle between Doom and the Beyonders. The Beyonders were going to destroy them all anyway, regardless of whether the incursion was prevented or not. Basically everything that happens related to the incursions is entirely pointless because they're working from a flawed premise (prevent the incursion, save the universe) from the very start.
• When Captain America becomes an obstacle for the Illuminati, Dr. Strange mindwipes him and sends him home. But then, the spell is undone... by sheer force of will? From someone who was not even aware that he had been mindwiped? Do things work this way? Perhaps it have been easier for the Illuminati to be outed by the Eye of Uatu during the Original Sin.
  • The spell is shown to be imperfect from the first - in the very first issue of Hickman's Avengers, Steve awakes from having a nightmare about the incident, suggesting that the knowledge is slowly crawling to the surface of his consciousness.

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