The New Warriors had attempted to turn superheroing into reality TV and the result was the destruction of Stamford, Connecticut by the villain Nitro. As a result of this the government passed the Superhero Registration Act forcing all superheroes to register with and essentially be controlled by the government. Opposition to the SHRA, led by Captain America, forms and the anti and pro-registration side, led by Iron Man, clash in Civil War. In the end, Captain America is killed and the law stands. The 50-State Initiative is started to place teams of registered heroes in each state and at Camp Hammond, among the ruins of Stamford, powered individuals will undergo mandatory training... whether they want it or not.Today is Avengers: The Initiative #1-4Previous >>154666016
Oh yes, the Gauntlet. Introduced in Slott's She-Hulk in a possible future as a great hero and mentor to Southpaw, this series is his first actual appearance in the 616. He's a giant asshole.
Cloud 9 will basically exist as an example of everything wrong with the idea behind the SHRA. All she wanted to do was fly.
Is Rhodey still a technopathic cyborg like they tried making him during this time or did they reset him back to being a guy in armor?
Armory's weapon is the same as Gauntlet's and Southpaw's. Slott spent 15+ years building up these things and the Reckoning War and when he finally did it in his Fanastic Four run, it was a generic alien invasion and a giant wet fart.
Also a lot of the characters on this bus are going to be present in some form or another throughout the rest of the book, either as part of the Initiative or the anti-Initiative Not-New Warriors group called Counter-Force or the Shadow Initiative.
MVP and Armory were both false leads though this whole thing with MVP and covering up his death is going to hang over the entire rest of the series.
Issue 2
It's Dubya. I'm kind of surprised they just explicitly have him as president since usually the MU likes to avoid that stuff.
>>154676858I will relentlessly shit on Krakoa but the best thing that ever came from that shitshow was this slimeball finally dying, hopefully permanently. Motherfuck Henry Gyrich, all my homies hate Henry Gyrich
Issue 3Hey look, it's Fred and Shocker!
Dani, after getting unceremoniously booted from New X-Men, will pop up in here a few times before she goes over to the newly launched New Mutants book.
Black suit means this is in the middle of Back in Black which means OMD is close to happening.
Issue 4
That's all for today. Next time is Avengers: The Initiative #5-7 plus Annual #1.
>>154676899He's been back to normal since he ended up in a new cloned body at the end of his solo. And he's died and come back again since then.
>>154676821Damn please write Storytime in the thread name. Almost missed this one.
>>154676919>>154676927Yep, it is a 2000s comic alright.
>>154677279Isn't this Pym a skrull? lol
>>154676858>magic canes and radioactive spidersHow would Gyrich even know about these if both Thor's and Spider-Man's human identities were secret?
>>154676876To be fair a flying license doesn't sound like an unreasonable idea in world where there are hundreds of flying people and vehicles. What they did to Abby was not okay though.
>>154678545Post-Civil War, pre-OMD so Spider-Man's identity and origin are public knowledge. Thor was a long time Avenger.
>>154677134I want to say that Armory didn't deserve that. They knew how Trauma's powers worked and they still decided to pair him up with a walking nuke?
>>154678603Ohhh, right, I forgot Peter's identity was public at this point. But I don't recall the radioactive spider part being disclosed (though I might be misremembering).I know Thor's been a long-time Avenger, but I don't think Gyrich was privy to Donald Blake shenanigans.
>>154678483He is, but iirc at that point he was a sleeper agent and really thought he was Pym. Also idk if it was even supposed to be a skrull back then or it was retconned in later.
>>154677333>>154677346>If your rating's below class 50, you'll be issued a pulse rifle>Gargoyle, class 2, is not given one
>>154677558>If only you knew how bad things really are
>>154677618>>154677627Ben looks like he's 3 meters tall on these pages, if not even taller than that
>>154677326Miguel sure got swole.>>154677540It is impressive quickly the whole "different writer has a different idea of his role" thing happened to him. Jim Shooter said the overall idea behind him was to tighten up the Avengers' security, be a consistent government contact and have the Avengers' various member statuses standardized. The initial showing and raising flags about how he was able to walk in is consistent with that. Then you have almost immediately you get him causing severe problems that interfere with the Avengers under Michelinie including forcing Falcon to join despite Sam not being interested in that and treated as a fool, and that becomes his usual way to the point he becomes a raving anti-superhero/alien/whatever guy. When he is reasonable his actions stands out.
>>154677697Why the fuck would they even waste SPIN tech syringes for these guys? Neither Boomerang nor Shocker have powers, and Hydroman is fucking made out of water
Never made sense to my that Justice was an instructor here while Rage, who has almost as much super-hero experience as he does, was a cadet
>>154679068Rage's "actually not an adult" strikes again. This comic has a bad feeling. It has a lot of people I liked in other comics as glorified cameos, being fallout from a stupid event, and Dan Slott.
>>154679068Justice was more Standard Hero Guy and developed from New Warriors to Avengers. Rage was a kid who was an Avenger for a bit and then got demoted back to New Warriors. He's always been a headstrong retard.Gargoyle and Bengal definitely were beyond recruit level but Bengal quickly got moved to the Shadow Initiative and he even gets to be one of the few cape characters who gets an ending.
>>154679253Wait, Gargoyle was recruit status? That is absurd.
>>154679271To be fair, the Initiative is intentionally retarded since Pym is a Skrull and it''s being used as a means of weakening the heroes and making their invasion easier.Which actually makes me wonder, how soon did Slott (and Gage) know about Secret Invasion? Like it's clear by the time of the Annual they knew but did Slott know that was the plan with Pym fromt he very start?>>154679204I think it's ultimately a really solid book, especially once Gage takes over with issue 8 (which is when he starts being billed as co-writer but we know what his deal with Slott is so likely he was the actual writer).
>>154677466Goddamn it Hank
>>154678331This shit is why they had to have death show up in the Ben Reilly comic and explain how if you're dead and get cloned your soul gets shoved into the clone body but if your alive and get cloned said clone gets a shiny new soul.
>>154679506I'll give Slott credit, he wrote a great Beast on that page. That's how he SHOULD be written.
>>154677618Goddamn it Ben
>>154679515Of course this is all thrown out the window thanks to Krakoa's "they're totally not clones" resurrection and everyone just sidesteps the X-23 situation even in universe because it reveals that line to be a load of horseshit.
>>154679515Except for the most famous clone story which most ones use as reference not doing that.
>>154679530Nta but Krakoa shit works exactly like >>154679515 described? If they are dead, the clones get a soul of original. If the original is alive, like X-23 was, then the clone is a new person. Which does, incidentally, mean that current X-23 is not the original one and the original one got vaporised by High Evolutionary.
>>154679547Aren't the most famous ones Jean/Madelyne and Pete's clones both of which are the case of the original being alive so the clones get their own souls and enough variance over time that clones of said clone inherit Ben/Kaine's soul.
>>154679614The entire bit about clones and souls is just bullshit PAD made up anyway because otherwise the reader has to wonder why we should care about this 30th generation clone claiming to be Ben Reilly when he's just a clone of a clone of a clone of a etc. and not THE Ben Reilly. "Oh, he's totally the same guy he has the same soul," was an attempt to mitigate that. Not that it mattered in the end.
>>154680011It had to be made up because at that point every character of significance was a clone or had been reborn by some method or another so confirming that they still had the OG's soul covered the bases..
>>154680038If you are in that situation, you need to look at yourself as a company.
>>154678483I don't think slot planned that. Not even to his discredit, A lot of shit in Secret invasion feels like Editorial just sprung that shit the on writers. Everyone body has to produce a skrull imposter for their book.
>>154676821Nice, a storytime from the time when I started reading comics.
>>154677540I think when Maria Hill started to be a thing, Gyrich become obsolete. You finally had a government stooge that wasn't totally the friends of the superhero community, but at the same time wasn't duplicitous looking like Henry.
>>154677267Jezas, this kid power is a handful.
>>154680662Maria's always been terrible and they try and make you sympathize with her too. Gyrich is an asshole, has always been an asshole but he's very much a love to hate kind of character who makes for an effective antagonist.
>>154677608How many traumatized kids does she wants to ruin? lmao
>>154678694I’m still mad they didn’t use Skrull Pym as a way to retcon the slap.
>>154680911Yeah, but they don't want an antagonist but a minor hindrance to generate friction in the comics. That was the original role of Gyrich.
>>154681114That would mean the real Pym has been missing since the Reagan administration.
>>154681147Wouldn't be shocking for Marvel to shit on Pym like that.
What's YMH mean?
>>154677026cute cloud butt
>>154682428young marvel heroes, I guess.
