Death in the MC2

 

Hopefully you’ve been watching and enjoying the WandaVision spin-off series Agatha All Along on Disney+ as much as I have! In the spirit of the spooky season, lets take a look at the deadly deity Death in the MC2.

 

But first, we need to gain some context by looking at the personification of Death in the Main Marvel Universe. Following a debatable appearance in the main image of a text story in Marvel Mystery Comics #10 from 1940, Death officially first appearing in Captain Marvel #26 in 1973. Death is an abstract being embodying the concept of mortality, acting as one of the great cosmic forces of existence alongside Eternity, Infinity and Oblivion.

 

Often depicted in the form of a purple cloaked skeleton or pale woman, in modern times Death has had direct interactions and relationships with notable characters such as Wade Wilson aka Deadpool and Thanos, the Mad Titan who gathered the Infinity Gems and snapped away half of all life in the Universe in an attempt to win Death’s favour (Deadpool/Death Annual ’98, Thanos Quest #1-#2, Infinity Gauntlet #1-#6).

 

With the bare bones backstory out of the way, lets look at Mistress Death as she briefly brushed against the MC2. During the events of Last Planet Standing, with Galactus poised to destroy the entire universe in an attempt to rid himself of his never-ending hunger, a gathering of the Great Powers of the Universe took place to discuss the threat posed to reality. The cosmic forces in attendance included Master Order, Lord Chaos, The In-Betweener, The Shaper of Worlds, The Stranger, The Gardener, The Collector and of course The Living Tribunal (Last Planet Standing #2).

The Great Powers of the Universe’s attempt to reason with the World-Eater one last time fails. Ultimately deciding they must destroy Galactus using a combined destructive bolt strong enough to wipe out the Earth and the entire Milky Way Galaxy, the Great Powers are halted in their attempt when Reed Richards is forced to use his Transdimensional Cannon's single shot on the cosmic beings (Last Planet Standing #3).

With Galactus enacting his final solution on Earth, the combined forces of the super hero community work to penetrate his force field and combat his doomsday weapon’s launch. When Spider-Girl, Stinger and American Dream manage to reverse the polarity of the device’s flow, the resulting backlash causes Galactus to be overloaded with enough energy to kill him and destroy the entire galaxy. As his end approaches, Galactus perceives the presence of Death coming to embrace him. However, at the last moment, Galactus’ former Herald, the Silver Surfer encases them both within an indestructible ethereal force cocoon.  Soon after the assembled heroes of Earth witness the birth of a new gestalt entity composed of the Silver Surfer and Galactus which could harness a new form of energy known as The Power Essential (Last Planet Standing #5).

 

While it’s a brief appearance, it’s at least one in the flesh…so to speak. Death personified remains in some ways connected to Galactus which is fitting given their status as higher beings. That said, this is one character I don’t mind not seeing more often!

 

Until my live-action (no pun intended) counterpart is portrayed by Aubrey Plaza, I remain

 

frogoat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Thanos met Spider-Girl

 

Back in 2003, legendary comic writer and artist Jim Starlin, now best known for his creation of the Mad Titan Thanos, worked on a six-issue mini-series called Marvel Universe: The End. In short, the story details the Main Marvel Universe’s Thanos encountering the Pharaoh Akhenaten who was imbued with the power of Heart of the Universe by the Celestial Order and had targeted the Earth. Unable to defeat him head on, Thanos used the aid of the Defenders and Genis-Vell to stealthily acquire the Heart of the Universe for himself, time-travelling back to erase the Celestial Order and thereby stop the Pharoah’s attack before it began. In doing so, Thanos rendered the reality wherein Akhenaten was abducted by the Celestial Order and all the events that followed it into the divergent Reality-4321 (Marvel Universe: The End #1-#4, Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z Vol. 12 – Thanos Profile).

 

Now at one with this ultimate power source, Thanos discovered that the universe itself held an imbalance between the barrier between life and death which would eventually lead to its own destruction. When the Great Powers of the Universe including the Living Tribunal attacked Thanos, they summoned an army of heroes to battle the Titan. Amid this mighty assemblage of heroes, if you look ever so carefully, you can spot May ‘Mayday’ Parker’s alter ego Spider-Girl (Marvel Universe: The End #5). Considering every other hero seen in attendance appears to be from the Main Marvel Universe (or Universe-616) this does raise a few questions. But we’ll talk about that shortly.

 

Thanos easily bests all who oppose him and destroys the entire universe, absorbing even abstract and conceptual beings like Eternity, Infinity and the Living Tribunal into his very being in the process. With nothing but a void remaining where the universe had been, Thanos was convinced by a (previously out-of-reality) Adam Warlock and the manifestation of Death to sacrifice himself to recreate the universe as it was minus the Celestial Order’s influence, with the dangerous imbalance between life and death repaired. A side effect of this apparent sacrifice was the removal of any memory of Thanos’ actions (Marvel Universe: The End #6).

 

There is some debate about whether or not this story took place partly or wholly or at all within the Main Marvel Universe aka Universe-616, but the fact that we see an unparalleled power source (the Heart) used to rewrite time and diverge reality, and the fact that the events of this story are recalled by both Thanos and Adam Warlock of Universe-616 after the fact would seem to confirm this (Thanos (vol. 1) #1). Your mileage may vary, but my intention with this is to preference what’s on the published page as canon. Some would disagree.

 

But what does this all have to do with Spider-Girl? Well, the big question is why would she be present in the Main Marvel Universe (or even an alternate version of it at that point in time)? Well, I think the best explanation lies with the Living Tribunal, who is a vastly powerful multiversally-transcendental conceptual being and the one responsible for summoning the army of superbeing that briefly fought Thanos. Considering these factors, I think we could infer that the Tribunal simply pulled Mayday from her own reality -either the MC2’s Earth-982 or one very similar- into the Main Marvel Universe to participate in this assault. Additionally, as the entirety of the universe’s reality was erased by Thanos and subsequently restored with no one remembering (save Thanos himself and Adam Warlock as noted above) it’s impossible for anyone to know for sure.

 

This post was originally intended to be an extremely quick one mentioning that Jim Starlin once drew Spider-Girl but I felt the background and confusion attached to this entire mini-series warranted a bit more of an in-depth look. Hopefully I haven’t lost you all to the void! Anyway, Thanos and Spider-Girl in the very same comic, in a big battle, even!

 

Until I find a way to avoid deep dives into obscure stuff no one really cares all that much about, I remain

 

frogoat