Avengers and Philosophy: Earth's Mightiest Thinkers, The (23 page)

The problem is that Kang used a single laser to generate significantly more energy than he started with, which is a clear violation of the law of conservation of energy, one of the most important fundamental physical principles in our universe. It is this sort of problem that caused Stephen Hawking to propose a “Chronology Protection Conjecture.” According to Hawking, since time travel allows for the violation of fundamental physical principles, there must be some law of nature that makes it impossible to actually build any sort of time machine: “The laws of physics conspire to prevent time travel, on a macroscopic scale.”
⁵
This is essentially the same approach taken half a century earlier by Albert Einstein in response to Gödel’s earlier closed timelike curve result: deny any potential physical reality to time travel. Not all physicists are convinced, however. Some continue to believe that time travel is consistent with the known laws of physics. Most of these physicists seem to think that the paradoxes are avoided because the closed timelike curves don’t allow you to change the past, which is another way of making history safe for historians . . . or would-be conquerors.

Closed Timelike Kang

An entire volume could be written about Kang and time paradoxes—literary agents, you know where to find me—but I’ll limit myself to three events from his checkered history that best show the immutable nature of closed timelike curves.

By the 1980s, all of Kang’s time travel and manipulations had resulted in a lot of divergent timelines where Kang existed in various forms. One version of Kang (who is often called “Prime Kang”) ends up in Limbo, from which he’s able to see the various timelines and realizes that in many of them he is absolutely inept. So he sets a plan in motion to eliminate all of the “flawed” versions of himself “before the name of Kang becomes synonymous with ‘fool’!”
⁶
The plan is mostly successful, but just as Prime Kang declares his victory, he discovers that he was manipulated by Immortus, the Master of Time, into eliminating all the extraneous Kangs. Driven insane by the memories of the Kangs he killed, Prime Kang vanishes into the halls of Limbo.

In this scenario, there is not just one path for Kang but many divergent paths, which seems to fly in the face of the idea of a closed timelike curve. The Marvel Universe is known to have many parallel worlds or universes, however. So the fact that variants of Kang exist isn’t particularly troubling. Prime Kang himself explains this to the Avengers during the Destiny War: “Time-travel does not change the past—as I trust you’ve learned. If one alters the flow of events, it merely creates a new, divergent branch of the timestream, while the old one flows on.”
⁷
In eliminating the “flawed” Kangs, Prime Kang has not altered the past (or even the future). Their actions already happened (or will already happen) in this timestream, but by killing them it just cuts down the overall number of Kangs running around.

From Kang’s perspective, the problem is that he is destined to become the scholarly Immortus, which he views as a fate worse than death. He is Kang the Conqueror, after all, and the idea of giving up the conquering does not sit well with him. The effort to thwart this fate becomes Kang’s motivation in the Destiny War. In this battle, Immortus seeks to not only prune the timeline, but to make changes that sweep through all timelines. He is successful in converting Chronopolis (Kang’s cross-timeline base of operations) into the Forever Crystal to help him “change history—and reflect those changes throughout all of the timestream.”
⁸

In the final confrontation of the Destiny War, it is revealed that Immortus’s various manipulations seem to have the goal of saving humanity from the wrath of his masters, the Time Keepers. In the end, Immortus is destroyed, which seems for a moment to shake even Kang’s resolve. “They—killed him? Was that—my death, then?”
⁹
Instead, the battle ends when Captain America destroys the Forever Crystal, the effect of which splits Kang in two—Kang the Conqueror and Immortus—revealing that Immortus is not a replacement of Kang but rather a complete variant of him, a new worldline that branches off. He is able, through sheer chutzpah, to survive the creation of Immortus with his Kang identity still intact. The important thing to note is that Kang’s attempt to change time to prevent the creation of Immortus is doomed to failure. Since he has encountered Immortus, it is inevitable that Immortus will eventually come into being; their individual closed timelike curves are set in motion and cannot be changed.

Finally, we see the same pattern at work with Iron Lad, a teenage version of Nathaniel Richards (Kang’s true identity), who when confronted with the reality of the warmonger he will become flees to the twentieth century with Kang’s armor.
¹⁰
Once there—or perhaps we should say “once then”—he gathers together a group of heroes, the Young Avengers, in an effort to stop the eventual, adult Kang. They succeed, in fact, but in doing so radically alter the timeline: Kang never exists because Iron Lad never becomes him, the Avengers are all dead, and the other Young Avengers begin to vanish from the timestream. The only way to mend the timeline is for Iron Lad to accept his fate, erase his memories, and return to his own timeline so that he can ultimately become Kang.

In this case, again, we see that it’s not possible to change the flow of events on this scale. When Iron Lad kills Kang, he creates a short-lived alternate timeline where Kang never existed, but this timeline is a closed loop that ceases to exist moments after it was created. Even if Iron Lad had stood fast in resolve, refusing to become Kang, there’s no guarantee that years of living in desolation wouldn’t eventually have led him to become Kang anyway. The timeline could have existed for twenty years, but the moment he became Kang, it would have ceased to exist and the original timeline would have popped back into existence.

Time to End

Physicists in our own reality may not be on par with Hank Pym or Reed Richards (yet), but they seem to have a better grasp than Kang does on how hard it is to change time. Stephen Hawking has said, when speaking of his Chronology Protection Conjecture, that “it seems there may be a Chronology Protection Agency at work, making the world safe for historians.”
¹¹
In the Marvel Universe, there is such a group: the Time Keepers and their minion Immortus. But when these powerful beings, or even just a gun-toting Kang, show up with plans to change time, it’s the Avengers who step in to fill the role, to protect the timeline from harm. Even in a world where time travel is possible, there are still rules—and fortunately there are also Avengers to help enforce them.

NOTES

1.
Young Avengers
#2 (May 2005), reprinted in
Young Avengers: Sidekicks
(2006).

2.
Avengers
, vol. 1, #2 (November 1963).

3.
Saint Augustine of Hippo,
Confessions
, trans. Albert C. Outler, 397, XIV 17, available at
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/confessions-bod.asp
.

4.
Actually, this needs a vacuum, so assume the clock exists in a box that’s had all the air removed.

5.
Stephen Hawking, “Space and Time Warps,” http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php/lectures/63.

6.
Avengers
, vol. 1, #269 (July 1986), reprinted in
Avengers: Kang—Time and Time Again
(2005).

7.
Avengers Forever
#3 (February 1999), reprinted in
Avengers Legends Vol. 1: Avengers Forever
(2001).

8.
Ibid.

9.
Avengers Forever
#11 (October 1999), reprinted in
Avengers Legends Vol. 1: Avengers Forever.

10.
Young Avengers
#2.

11.
Hawking, “Space and Time Warps.”

Chapter 14

“NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME”: GOD, ONTOLOGY, AND ETHICS IN THE AVENGERS’ UNIVERSE

Adam Barkman

When Asgard, the home of the Norse gods, fell from the sky and landed in Oklahoma, one Christian pastor began his Sunday sermon by asking, “Small-g gods? Big-G? Are the Asgardians ‘gods’? And if they are, well, where does that leave my God?”
¹

Though I feel for this pastor and his disrupted equilibrium, he actually has nothing to worry about. It’s clear that in the Marvel Universe, God—capital “G”—exists. Doctor Strange learns about Him from the massive but not all-powerful cosmic being Eternity, who says, “I and my brother, Death, comprise all your reality! Neither he nor I am God, for God rules all realities!”
²
Thanos, even when he acquired the Heart of the Universe and bested the Living Tribunal (God’s right-hand man), was naggingly aware of the Supreme Deity weaving the Titan’s mischief for some higher purpose. “Was this my moment of triumph,” he asked himself, “or but a facet of another’s grand plan?”
³
As if that weren’t enough proof, the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man have personally met Him: the Fantastic Four by entering Heaven itself and Spider-Man when God appeared as a homeless stranger to comfort the weary web-slinger.
⁴

So God exists . . . but how do we reconcile this with the wide variety of beings in the Marvel Universe, including gods and demigods like Thor, Hercules, and Ares? Moreover, how should we understand the Marvel Universe in light of Exodus 20:3, which commands, “You shall have no other gods before me”?

God, the One-Who-Is-Above-All—or “Stan,” For Short

In the Marvel great chain of godhood, God is the first-tier being and different from all other beings. He is the Creator, whereas everything else is creation. In three significant instances—in
Doctor Strange
,
Fantastic Four
, and, as the Fulcrum, in the
Eternals
—God is depicted as either Stan Lee or Jack Kirby, the literal creators of the Marvel Universe.
⁵

In addition to being the Creator, God “is all-powerful and all knowing. It is the very essence of what holds reality in its place.”
⁶
As such, God “sets the stage” for the drama of creation to play out.
⁷
Although God is transcendent and of a different category than all other Marvel beings, He is also immanent, interested and invested in what goes on in the realities He creates. “The play is your lives,” He tells the Fantastic Four. “Your adventures become our exploration.”
⁸
Just as an author has intentions as he writes, God has intentions—perfect intentions—in His creation. As He tells Spider-Man, “We all have a purpose, Peter. We all have a role to play.”
⁹
That He is meant to be the Christian God is clear in the allusion to Jesus when He says to Peter, “And, you know, if it’s any consolation, I’ve asked a lot more from people much closer to me than you.”
¹⁰
Indeed, the Watcher tells the Invisible Woman, “His only weapon is love!”
¹¹

Below God in the Marvel great chain of being is the Living Tribunal, a mysterious figure. Like the “Living Creatures” of Ezekiel 1:6, each of whom has four faces, the Living Tribunal has four faces (three and a “void”),
¹²
and like the Living Creatures, who adore God in His throne room, the Living Tribunal is “the representative of The-One-Who-Is-Above-All.”
¹³
The Living Tribunal’s “task is to sit in judgment of events on the far end of the cosmic scale,” with each of his three visible faces representing a mode of his righteous judgment: necessity, equity, and vengeance.
¹⁴
Each face can be likened to an angel in the Bible who pours out judgment in the name of the Most High.
¹⁵
Indeed, the Living Tribunal’s face of necessity paraphrases Jesus when he tells She-Hulk, “Necessity is the Cosmic mirror which reminds us to always judge others as we would have ourselves judged.”
¹⁶

Below God and the Living Tribunal are the cosmic beings or astral deities of the universe. These include the Celestials, Lord Chaos and Master Order, the Watcher, Galactus, Love and Hate, Kronos, Eternity, and the Chaos King.
¹⁷
Most of these cosmic beings are involved in the birth or death of universes, yet none of them are absolutely indestructible or eternal; all suffer defeat at one time or another. Below the cosmic beings are the fourth-tier beings, the elders of the universe, who include the Collector, the Grandmaster, Chthon, Gaea (Mother Earth), and possibly Death.
¹⁸

Of course, all this talk about tiers of beings only explains things such as longevity and parenthood. Those influenced by Greek philosophy and Judeo-Christian theology might maintain that that which is oldest is that which is strongest, wisest, and most indestructible. Plato believes this to be true of the Forms, and the Judeo-Christian believes this to be true of God. We can’t extend this to Greek and Norse polytheism, however. In both of these cases (not to mention in the case of one of their root sources, Mesopotamian mythology),
¹⁹
the late-coming sky fathers, Zeus and Odin, were able to defeat their respective fathers and claim supremacy even while the primordials lingered in the background. Likewise, in the Marvel Universe lesser beings such as Thanos (an Olympian god modified by the Celestials) can wield the Infinity Gauntlet, which in turn can defeat Eternity, and Hercules the sky father is able to best the Chaos King. Thus, in respect to created things in the Marvel Universe, order of existence is one thing that separates the cosmic beings, elders, and sky fathers even if not much else, absolutely speaking, does.

“Gods Are a Bit Different”

We should expect, then, that when we turn to look at the differences between “gods” and “nongods” among the Avengers, we won’t find absolute differences. Take Thor, for instance. Gaea gave birth to the sky father Odin, the supreme god of the Asgardians, and together Odin and Gaea (in the guise of Jord) gave birth to Thor.
²⁰
Odin apparently claims the title of sky father because he was directly (without the aid of a lower being) birthed by Gaea, an elder, whereas Thor is a lower god because his blood was diluted by having a sky father for a parent.

Most of the gods in the Marvel Universe, including the Asgardians, live in dimensions different from that of the Avengers, and they are able to intervene in the human dimension more easily than humans can in that of the gods. The gods’ greater magical ability also seems to give them greater resistance to magical attacks. For example, although Lord Nightmare, who is a being roughly on par with the gods, was able to take control of “those with mortal minds,” Thor, a god, remained unaffected.
²¹
The gods’ strength also generally exceeds that of mortals, even superhuman ones. When Skaar, son of the Hulk, asks, “Gods? So what? We’ve fought every monster and demon,” She-Hulk quickly replies, “You don’t understand. Gods are a bit different.”
²²
And indeed, they are: “Among mortals,” Hera tells the Hulk, “you may be the strongest one there is but Father Zeus could vaporize you with a thought.” Although Zeus doesn’t do that, he does soundly defeat the Hulk, chaining him up like Prometheus for vultures to pick at. In fact, even though Loki magically possesses the Hulk in order to turn him against Thor, saying, “Only you have ever brought near defeat to the mighty Thor,”
²³
Thor, not the Hulk, can lift the magical hammer Mjolnir, and Thor, not the Hulk, emerges victorious. As the Wasp says on behalf of her fellow Avengers, “Thor, we already know you are the strongest.”
²⁴

Of course, as with most everything in this graded but not rigidly fixed universe, these kinds of statements are general, not unqualified. For example, strength is an unclear term. Does it mean mere physical might or does it include, even leaving magic aside, other nonphysical abilities? Graviton’s power over gravity, for instance, is sufficient to defeat Thor, and so he rightly asks, “Do you think I would surrender because of your supposed godhood? Perhaps I too am a god.”
²⁵
And even if for the most part gods are physically stronger than superhumans, a single god such as Hercules can be physically defeated by a group of lesser beings, which is exactly what happens when Mr. Hyde, Goliath, and the Wrecking Crew beat him to within an inch of his life.
²⁶

Ontology Comics #1

So what does it mean to be an immortal? In
ontology
, the area of philosophy that studies the nature of being or existence, we say an
eternal
being is “outside” of time, having no beginning and no end; an
immortal
being has a beginning in time but no end; and a
mortal
being has a beginning and end in time. In the Marvel Universe, only God is eternal. Because all other beings are creatures (that is, created by God), all other beings are either mortal or immortal. But because all creatures, except for Thanos and Adam Warlock, will have died (as shown in
Marvel Universe: The End
#6), it seems very likely that all creatures can die. Thus, strictly speaking, everything in the Marvel Universe is mortal except God.

Nevertheless, there is another sense in which not just the cosmic beings, elders, sky fathers, and gods but also superhumans, aliens, and humans can be thought of as immortal, or, in the words of Thor, “ever defying the eternal sleep.”
²⁷
The sky fathers Odin and Zeus, for example, have died multiple times, but they continue to endure, albeit in different forms, in their respective underworlds alongside, more important, the naked souls of mere superhumans and humans who have perished. All creatures are able to die, yet all (by God’s decree, to be sure) are able to endure as well. Indeed, it’s not unusual in the Marvel Universe for cosmic beings, elders, gods, and humans alike to be resurrected or reincarnated.
²⁸
Thus when the gods are called “immortal” we should just take it to mean they can’t die from old age or disease, not that their “physical” bodies can’t perish.

The Hulk, the Wasp, and Black Widow are all on lower “levels” ontologically than the god Thor, although this is mostly in respect to lineage and age and only to a lesser extent in respect to natural immunities and abilities. All four, of course, were made by God via his servants Eternity and Gaea and in this respect are equals. But human beings, we are told, were given the finishing touches by the sub-sub-sub-subcreator Odin (“Some whisper that he made the first man”).
²⁹
If true, this would mean that whereas Thor, as the son of Odin, was
begotten
by Odin, the Hulk, the Wasp, and Black Widow were
created
(or touched up) by Odin.

So, given the existence of “one supreme” God (who says, “You shall have no other gods before me”), how can we make sense of all these other gods in the Marvel Universe? The term “god” (lowercase) is used in the Bible to describe nonexistent deities represented in statues (such as Dagon in 1 Samuel 5:4), rebellious angels (such as Satan), and even, importantly, human beings. Psalm 82:6 reads, “I said, ‘you are gods’; you are all sons of the Most High”—a passage quoted and elaborated on in John 10:34, in which Jesus says:

Has it not been written in your law, “I said, you are gods”? If he called them “gods,” to whom the word of God came (and Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, “You are blaspheming,” because I said, “I am the Son of God”?

Therefore, other “gods” can coexist with the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition as well as with the God of the Marvel Universe.

Does Godliness Imply Goodness?

In the Marvel Universe, as in our own, ontological status—which generally goes hand in hand with order of creation, longevity, power, and knowledge—is no measure of moral goodness. We have Satan and Marvel has Mephisto: both are extremely old and powerful beings who happen to be evil. This isn’t just true of the devils, however. When wearing the Infinity Gauntlet, Adam Warlock foolishly imagines that a proper supreme being must not permit “good and evil to cloud his judgment,” and even his “good” aspect, the Goddess, is nothing of the sort, imagining that goodness is something that can be forced, rather than wooed.
³⁰
Indeed, Galactus and the Celestials massacre millions when they destroy worlds; the goddess Hera shows her immorality when she tells the Hulk, “An oath to a monster means nothing”; and Eternity himself is at odds with God when he tells Dr. Strange, “I am above such petty emotions as gratitude!”
³¹
Power and privilege rarely, it seems, translate into right actions.