So, if there are infinite alternate realities which show alternative histories from certain major events forward, what about alternate realities which have visitors from other realities. For example, there are a number of visitors/semi-permanent residents from different realities in the 616 universe. Are those visitors represented properly in alternate realities mirroring events of the 616?

Let's look at recent events in the Avengers. They have yet another Hyperion on Earth-616, this one being a survivor from an incursion that destroyed both his universe and the other colliding with it. Will there be virtually infinite realities that possible events similar to Earth-616's current events with their own versions of a Hyperion (or similar sole survivor from yet another reality), except of course for those realities where "What If Hyperion Didn't Survive the Incursion?" or "What If Hyperion Was Left In the Empty Void?" and so on. If the the Earth-616 Fantastic Four took a quick jaunt to another universe, would that universe's Fantastic Four likewise be jumping next door and so on and so on?

Also, if the multiverse is truly infinite and new timelines keep branching off from significant events in each universe to account for the infinite possibilities, does that mean for every time there is an incursion where two universes are destroyed because their Earths collide, won't there be two very similar worlds where the incursion didn't occur or was prevented? Can an infinite number be whittled down? What if the whittling is occurring at an infinite rate? Would that be able to keep up with infinite newly spawned timelines?

And assuming the Living Tribunal is too powerful to be truly killed (by anything other than The One Above All) as everyone believes he was do to that image of Iron Man and the Watcher standing over his lifeless body, then what could incapacitate a being that is second in power and authority in all of multiversal creation?

Most importantly, what if "C-A-T" really spelled "dog"?




Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/2014 09:40PM by Thrudjelmer.

I'm not quite sure I understand the question....


However, most media (Movie / Comics / Games / Fiction) portrayals of individuals that cross over boarders of the Multiverse usually gain considerable Power...


Jet Li in the Movie One: Basically he finds out how to cross-over multiple universes and fights different versions himself to gain more and more power... By the end of the movie he's fairly close to a Cosmic God, but ends up in a never ending battle with himself.... Conundrum???


Then in Cronicals of Riddick: The Lord Marshal (Primary Bad Guy) supposedly crossed over one Multiverse and gained Super Human Speed with the ability to be in two places at once; almost instantaneously...

The Lord Marshal gets killed because two people (Riddick and Vauco) nail two different killing strikes on him at the same time; and out of sheer luck Lord Marshal lands near Riddick... Conundrum???


Other similar movies, comics, games, and fiction are out there... but those are the two I remember off hand.


Anyway... the Multiverse Conundrum is usually good fuel for those B-Rate Movies and Games...

With infinite universes than the simple answer is yes. It all happens, doesn't happen, can't happen and has to happen. Any question you can think of is happening (or not happening) somewhere in some alternate version of 616.

As for him being dead this is from the Marvel Comics own database

Quote

Uatu and Iron Man found the Living Tribunal on the Moon, apparently deceased, but possibly just unconscious

Yes, I believe unconscious is the more likely scenario. But the question still remains: what could even incapacitate the Living Tribunal short of the all powerful entity it answers to?

Thrudjelmer Wrote:
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> Yes, I believe unconscious is the more likely
> scenario. But the question still remains: what
> could even incapacitate the Living Tribunal short
> of the all powerful entity it answers to?

Well given Eternity's suffered occasionally being rendered unconscious or briefly imprisoned it's not impossible for such a thing to happen to the LT I'd imagine, it's mainly like with a mortal being where it was caught off guard or surprised and it didn't have its defenses at maximum so the attack slipped through (after all few cosmic beings go around worried something's going to actually attack him especially what amounts to insects or dust motes). Plus if you go by the idea of M-bodies introduced in Quasar that particular M-body wasn't invested with the full might of the LT so easier to temporarily defeat.

I thought the M-bodies only appeared in the dimension of manifestations and allowed the entities to act through the M-bodies as a matter of convenience. I don't believe the Living Tribunal scene we saw appeared in the dimension of manifestations because I vaguely recall the plane as being mostly blank white. I'm not saying they can't manifest outside that dimension... just that that's how I remember it, but its been awhile and my Quasar comics are in the attic.

There is a hole in the universe shaped exactly like Eternity because its essentially where Eternity was born during the creation of the universe, Dr. Strange once hid there, so I am not sure about Eternity needing an M-Body. And while Eternity does have limits that can be superseded by things like the Infinity Gauntlet, the Living Tribunal overcame the Gauntlet with a snap of his fingers. The only time he was ever shown to have been bested is when Thanos merged with the Heart of the Universe and gained the power of the One-above-all and became as close to actual God as have ever been shown in Marvel. When Thanos realized the Marvel universe was unraveling and nothing he could do would stop it he sensed that maybe him getting such ultimate power was the plan of something greater so he could make the ultimate sacrifice and fix it. Simon Williams coming back from the dead had pulled at the thread of the multiverse and it was unraveling, so to fix it Thanos sacrificed himself and decreed that from then on dead was dead. Which is why since than nobody that has died has come back...HAHA just kidding, less than a year after this Magneto "died" and came back but that didn't really count cause it wasn't really Magneto right? Right?




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/2014 08:33AM by Warlock.

There are generally two 'flavors' of alternate universes, divergent ones (the 'what-ifs') and the parallel ones where they may independently mirror events or things in other universes but may not. An alternate universe paralleling the 616 setting may or may not have counter-parts to outsiders that have ended up in the 616 setting, nor is it necessary or a given that if heroes from 616 went to another universe (like your FF example) that their counterparts there would be gone to visit yet another universe, indeed many times they encounter their counterparts (such as the Gates of What-If module, or when the Avengers encountered the version of themselves tricked by Kang's counterpart the Scarlet Centurion into eliminating all other super-humans on the planet save for themselves). Depending on how things have gone for their counter-parts this may or may not lead to conflict ('Damn when are you Super-Skrulls going to learn leave us alone?!).

An example regarding Thundra, her future timeline was effectively destroyed when it merged with the corresponding male-dominated timeline resulting in an Earth were men and women were basically equal (although all of them being super-powered warrior sorts their 'marital spats' relative to normal earth looked like massive spousal abuse). Her reward for working against Project: Pegasus was to be sent into a future timeline that was like hers in all ways save the merger (but either lacked her own counterpart or something happened to it resulting in it never returning and her taking its place).

So we have divergent timeline universes which share a history up to the point where the divergence was created, and parallel universes which may or may not be similar but have their own timeline all the way back as far as any other universe does?

Okay, so let's say a divergent universe is created after say the Civil War stuff where Cap is the victor and there's no seeming assassination plot that sends him through reliving his past. Up until the divergence, we have 616 Cap... after we have 616.0 Cap and 616.1 (yes, I know they'd get their own full reality number, just using this to differentiate easily). Historically, there is only 616 Cap until the divergence, and after we have alive Cap (616.1) and "dead" Cap (616.0). But "dead" Cap obviously comes back to life at some point, so if both were pushed back in time to the point before the divergence, we would technically have 3 Captain Americas in one timeline? Two from possible futures plus one in his proper temporal location... and both would recognize under scientific scrutiny that they were in their proper past? Or does creating a divergent timeline create its own copy of the history all the way back to creation, and any attempts from 616.1 Cap result in him going back in time to his own timeline's newly minted history?

Thrudjelmer Wrote:
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> So we have divergent timeline universes which
> share a history up to the point where the
> divergence was created, and parallel universes
> which may or may not be similar but have their own
> timeline all the way back as far as any other
> universe does?

Pretty much, the second Exiles mission example came across a universe that from what they could tell on the fly was identical to Exiles Mimic's universe (since it had him as friends with Wolverine which he wasn't in the main 616 continuity) but had started 'later' so they were only just then experiencing 'The Trial of the Phoenix'.

> Okay, so let's say a divergent universe is created
> after say the Civil War stuff where Cap is the
> victor and there's no seeming assassination plot
> that sends him through reliving his past. Up
> until the divergence, we have 616 Cap... after we
> have 616.0 Cap and 616.1 (yes, I know they'd get
> their own full reality number, just using this to
> differentiate easily). Historically, there is
> only 616 Cap until the divergence, and after we
> have alive Cap (616.1) and "dead" Cap (616.0).
> But "dead" Cap obviously comes back to life at
> some point, so if both were pushed back in time to
> the point before the divergence, we would
> technically have 3 Captain Americas in one
> timeline? Two from possible futures plus one in
> his proper temporal location... and both would
> recognize under scientific scrutiny that they were
> in their proper past? Or does creating a
> divergent timeline create its own copy of the
> history all the way back to creation, and any
> attempts from 616.1 Cap result in him going back
> in time to his own timeline's newly minted
> history?

Divergent timelines do have their own separate universes and hence pasts associated with them, although you could have a scenario as you suggest happen, where an individual who is duplicated in both branches could meet his various selves in the past prior to that divergent point and potentially create even more branching timelines. But you need a time machine or super-power sufficiently advanced to distinguish things to pull that off otherwise they'd each only meet themselves once so to speak as each goes back to the past of their particular universe rather than the past of the universe that the branching came from (so one would end up in the 'correct' past you might say while the other ends up in the past of his new universe's timeline so never meets himself from the other universe where things went differently).

It was also established in Marvel 2-In-1 #100 (I think that's the correct issue) that the universe will try and shunt you into the nearest universe most closely approximating the time you were aiming for to prevent one from interfering in their own past to force a timeline split (so apparently being shunted into a universe not your own doesn't generally cause a timeline split in that universe to accommodate one where you did and one where you didn't appear). This was shown when Reed was reviewing recordings of Ben's attempt to change history by using a cure for himself that would only work on his past self by going into the past and curing himself as Reed pointed out how he was actually in a universe where New York remained New Amsterdam which is where Reed theorized the shunting effect existed. So he only cured a counterpart of himself in what was a parallel universe rather than causing a divergent timeline.

Obviously at this point many things are in effect as they don't clearly apply all the time (Doom from a future similar to FF: The End arrives to try and change Reed's unconscionable behavior during the Civil War to force a timeline split and their future counterparts appear with future Reed having a wrist-band device to detect how close they are to causing a timeline split as he tries to ensure Doom doesn't cause one). Doom's time machine seems able to indeed send someone into their own universe's past, which as we see in the West Coast Avengers way back when resulted in a timeline pile-up as not only were the FF in the past dealing with Rama-Tut in a classic adventure for them but Dr. Strange in his own title prior to the WCA showing up was the one really responsible for turning Ben back human long enough to free the rest of the FF while there on one of his own missions and then the WCA show up as well where they're responsible for other events (such as delaying Strange being locked into a FF sarcophagus that his astral form wouldn't have been able to escape so he'd be free to turn Ben back) that ensure all the other known events occurred.




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/23/2014 12:19PM by Nightmask.

i don't think you can go into your own past. i think at times people thought they did go into their own past instead of an alternate past. What i think really happened is that they went into an alternate realities past, while a alternate reality version of them when into their past. When they come back and see the changes that happened they assume it was them. Say 616 Dr Doom travels back in time finds a powerful artifact and buries it in the ground so he can find it when he returns to his time. He comes back digs it up and assumes it is the artifact he buried. In reality he traveled back to Earth 615 past and buried the artifact for that Doom to find. 617 Earth Doom actualy came to Earth 616 past and buried the artifact that Earth 616 Doom digs up

geekgirl Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> i don't think you can go into your own past. i
> think at times people thought they did go into
> their own past instead of an alternate past. What
> i think really happened is that they went into an
> alternate realities past, while a alternate
> reality version of them when into their past. When
> they come back and see the changes that happened
> they assume it was them. Say 616 Dr Doom travels
> back in time finds a powerful artifact and buries
> it in the ground so he can find it when he returns
> to his time. He comes back digs it up and assumes
> it is the artifact he buried. In reality he
> traveled back to Earth 615 past and buried the
> artifact for that Doom to find. 617 Earth Doom
> actualy came to Earth 616 past and buried the
> artifact that Earth 616 Doom digs up

Well as Marvel's shown you can go back into your own past, but your technology or magic has to be able to overcome the general nature of the multiverse to shunt you into a parallel universe nearby rather than deal with the complications of possible universe formation due to temporal paradoxes and the like. In your Doom example he's not doing anything that would generate paradoxes by going back into the past and arranging for something there to be locatable in the future so doesn't have any issues with it.

There can be infinite numbers of alternate universes/timelines. Anything can happen in them. Any character can die (including the Living Tribunal). Any character that has been killed can be brought back to life.

The people writing the comics have the power to do anything they like. They don't even have to remain consistent with apparent laws they've previously established, if they don't wish to (though they may have to deal with outraged fans, if they don't). Hopefully, if they don't remain consistent, they cook up some pseudo-plausible explanation of why the rules have changed.

With the Watcher and Ironman finding the Living Tribunal's body, for example; how do we know it's really The Living Tribunal? Do we have a previous sample of his DNA? Would he even have DNA? Isn't he a sort of transcendent being, who only creates a physical form as a convenient means of communicating with us 3 dimensional meatbags? We won't know until the writers reveal their answer, and they can make up any damn thing they like.

For my part, I don't really care. I don't think comic books provide entertainment commensurate with their cost. I haven't bought one since the late eighties and don't intend to buy another for the rest of my natural life; though I do occasionally thumb through them at the magazine rack, just to make sure I haven't changed my mind about that.

So far, I haven't.

FASERIPPER Wrote:
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> With the Watcher and Ironman finding the Living
> Tribunal's body, for example; how do we know it's
> really The Living Tribunal? Do we have a previous
> sample of his DNA? Would he even have DNA? Isn't
> he a sort of transcendent being, who only creates
> a physical form as a convenient means of
> communicating with us 3 dimensional meatbags?

Well, as its been pointed out to me, its possible that the Living Tribunal's apparent corpse may not be the Living Tribunal itself, but rather M-bodies from the dimension of manifestations. M-bodies essentially rent themselves out, for lack of a better expression, to cosmic powered entities so they can appear in more than one place at the same time. Living Tribunal, who is unique in the multiverse as he exists outside them, would need something like that since if he needs to appear through various realities amongst an infinite number of them.


> For my part, I don't really care. I don't think
> comic books provide entertainment commensurate
> with their cost. I haven't bought one since the late
> eighties and don't intend to buy another for the rest
> of my natural life;

I suppose I feel the same way. I don't really buy comics anymore, but I read stuff on ComicVine.com and other sites about current events in comics and I just wonder what the hell has gone wrong that things go the way they do anymore.