Every good elopement needs a fun wedding later, as Teddy and Billy tie the knot, and future problems develop on the cusp of the New Age of Space in this delightful aftermath issue from Al Ewing, Valerio Schiti, Marte Gracia, and VC’s Ariana Maher.
Empyre: Aftermath Avengers #1
Zach Rabiroff: What a week, dear friends, for the gays and the Jews and the gay Jews. And I mean that sincerely. This aftermath issue is a lot of things – a quiet wrap-up to a fun, popcorn event; an ominous foreshadowing of things to come – but maybe above all, it’s something special to a generation of comic readers. Teddy Altman and Billy Kaplan were introduced to comic readers in 2005. Now, try to remember what the world looked like back then, culturally-speaking. One year earlier, George W. Bush had run on a platform overtly supporting a rollback of gay rights, and helping to put anti-gay-marriage amendments on the ballots in 11 states (they all won). If you were a queer comic reader, it was as dark and isolating a time as you could fathom. And there, in the pages of a major Marvel comic, were a happy couple of teenage gay Jews. Their relationship wasn’t remarked on as something controversial or shocking. They weren’t societal pariahs. Their feelings and actions weren’t relegated to subtext. They were out, they were Avengers, and it was all…remarkably unremarkable.
And here we are, a decade and a half later. Gay marriage remains the standing law of the United States (I say while knocking on wood, throwing salt over my shoulder, and swinging a cat by the tail the appropriate number of times). A 13-year-old reader of Young Avengers #1 is pushing 30 now, heaven help them. And Billy and Teddy, still young but likewise no longer kids, are married, on panel, before the eyes of comic readers everywhere. Too long in coming? Sure. But that doesn’t make it any less meaningful to see it happen, and to see that remarkable unremarkableness affirmed as the status quo. Billy and Teddy (and Marvel) have been carried by the changes in American society, but who is to say that, in some small way, they didn’t help push those historical tides along. That’s how pop culture works, after all: it reflects the world it depicts, even as it subtly, slowly, and in miniscule ways helps to change it. And maybe they’ve made it just a little easier for future gay readers, and future creators, to make moments like this happen a little more quickly and a little more frequently from now on.
Phew, okay, that’s enough of my stemwinder. What did y’all think of this ish?
Tony Thornley: Zach, that’s a way better intro that I could have even considered buddy! Thank you for that.
I’ll be honest, when Ewing said we were getting the Hulkling/Wiccan wedding this issue, I expected it to largely be a flashback to Vegas. I’m incredibly happy we got a little more pomp and circumstance, both with the slightly more traditional Jewish wedding and the very interesting Skrull/Kree… I don’t know if I’d call it a wedding. More of a joining/coronation? It’s hard to describe, but it was very cool.
ZR: It does a great job of walking the line between the two typical tropes of superhero weddings. Generally speaking, when super-fellas get married in a Very Special Issue, it either results in an obligatory and inevitably tedious plot by their enemies to disrupt the proceedings (see: Reed and Sue Richards; Rick Jones and Marlo Chandler; pretty much everyone else everywhere), or else an issue in which so little happens that the only thing anyone remembers is a U2 soundtrack (see: Scott Summers and Jean Grey). This is a fine compromise between those polar extremes. Quiet and emotional, without shoehorned supervillain intervention, but bookended by moments of tense dramatic confrontation, and punctuated at the halfway point by a fraught (and, as we will see, prescient) outburst from one Abigail Brand. All things considered, it works.
TT: I loved that this issue was equal parts happy celebration and difficult consequences. R’Klll stole the show for me, ESPECIALLY in her extremely chilling flashback. I knew the history of the Skrull Empire enough to recognize that scene, but holy cow, R’Klll just LEAVES HER DAUGHTER TO DIE as Galactus consumes the Skrull homeworld. That is just the definition of cold.
ZR: R’Klll is definitely the show-stealer here, not just in the flashback sequence (which makes an effective, if somewhat odd, companion piece to her seeming death at the beginning of Fantastic Four #257), but in her quiet confrontation with her grandson later on in the issue. There, she warns him of the consequences of weakness, and makes it abundantly clear that his own coronation was merely in the service of more ambitious and ruthless political forces who sought to manipulate him. It drives home the parallel that Ewing has been drawing throughout this miniseries between Hulkling and his Cotati counterpart Quoi. Both are young kings who have been propped up by older, more violent, and more thoroughly unreconstructed factions in their respective empires. Both, when all is said and done, are probably unsuited fundamentally to the role of ruler. But where Quoi ultimately showed himself to be incapable of rising above the bellicose jingoism of his government, Teddy makes it clear in this scene that he is dedicated to being greater and more heroic than that. And that comes down, in the end, to his parentage. Not his genetic parentage, but the actual human family that loved and raised him. R’Klll might sneer dismissively at the notion that Teddy’s human caregivers were anything more than tools to keep him fed prior to his retrieval by the Skrull empire, but we the readers know better. Teddy is human because he was loved by humans, and learned their love in turn. Those were his parents and his family, just as Billy and the Young Avengers are his family now. Whether that humanity will triumph in the end, though, remains to be seen.
TT: I think there’s a little bit to be said about the concept of destiny here. There’s been some hints across the story of Billy and Teddy that the two of them each have this grand destiny that they’re locked into. Billy is destined to become the Demiurge, the most powerful magical being in existence. Teddy is destined to be the King of Space.
However, the key to that for them isn’t that they’re subverting or avoiding their destinies. They’re growing into them naturally, but also becoming the best they can be at these things. It’s not the traditional “chosen one” narrative by any means. They have grown into becoming heroes, into becoming a couple, and now their current roles. They are the King of Space and one of the most powerful magicians on the planet (so not quite there but getting close), and that’s what makes them interesting.
And now that Teddy is here in this role, he’s the best dang king of space he can be. As seen in his confrontation with Major Glory and Super-Skrull…
ZR: Hulkling’s decision to spare Major Glory and the Super Skrull is fascinating to me in the way it subverts one of the hoary old clichés of superhero monarchs. Traditionally in this sort of situation, our hero can never execute his political supervillain enemies, no matter how much their murderous treason keenly deserves it. That’s because, first of all, heroes don’t kill (even though heads of government do), and second, because it would take off the table some perfectly good villains that everyone wants to use again. Thus, Namor always gives Warlord Krang a very stern talking-to and sends him on his way, six months before Atlantis gets very unexpectedly invaded all over again.
But Teddy’s action here is different for the simple reason that it is immediately and shockingly subverted, in a flash forward that shows Major Glory (and, as we will see, Abigail Brand) were shockingly and horrifyingly right: Teddy’s mercy is a liability, and one that risks the lives of everything and everybody he sought to protect. And it’s out of that wreckage that we get the splash-page teaser that will live in my dreams until the day I hold the issue in my greedy little hands.
People. People. It’s Abigail Brand! In an X-Men! Uniform! It’s SWORD, presented by Al Ewing, and it’s so obvious in retrospect that it’s like a glass of ice-cold water thrown in my face. Of course X of Swords will result in our very own SWORD of X. Of course Ewing would be conspicuously and tauntingly present at those x-writer zoom conference calls. Of course someone needs to follow up on the grand, cosmic themes about protecting mutantkind of intergalactic threats introduced all the way back in HoX PoX and Hickman’s New Mutants, and reinforced during the course of Empyre. So I ask unto you: how amazing is this book going to be? And furthermore, who are those folks silhouetted behind awesomely-jacketed Abigail?
TT: I think we all have some guesses, but holy cow, what a reveal. Brand has kinda played second fiddle to Captain Marvel for a few years, so getting to see her as this big bold redesigned lead is a huge relief. I love the short hair and X-logo, I love Manifold in comfy pants, I love the three silhouettes that could be three specific X-Men…. This is going to be a big deal series. I mean, we got double swords guy (which clearly implies one Xavier Files favorite), generic female silhouette, and generic jacket guy (who evokes a personal favorite, but who knows?).
I do think there might be a snappier name coming (Exiles could fit, X-Men Infinity would be RAD, etc), but DANG this page was exciting!
ZR: All told, I’d say this issue did everything I could reasonably have expected from a closeout to a summer popcorn summer series: it moved forward the narrative in arguably as many ways as did Empyre itself, while giving us some meaty slabs of steak to chew on for the next several months. It’s a fine effort all around.
And let’s be real: two-swords guy is definitely Snakes. Snakes with swords.
Marvelous Musings
- Probably worth pointing out that, if not for the unfortunate pandemic delays in the comic industry, both this Avengers issue and its thematic companion over in Marauders #12 would have, ah, come out during Pride Month. What a zeitgeisty June we could have had.
- R’Klll is great in this issue, but if you ask me, her best role will always be in the hit TGIF sitcom Family Matters.
- Please tweet all your new team name suggestions to @XavierFiles. I’m sure our EIC would love that.
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
Zach Rabiroff edits articles at Comicsxf.com.
