Hello.
Introductio
As most people following this thread might be aware, this discussion has run rampant, without a set course, for a long time by now. We've been arguing in circles over the subject for quite some time by now, and, unfortunately, we have not gotten even close to establishing a common middle ground between both parties, or anything resembling a wide consensus over the topic.
Simultaneously, I have also been questioned over some issues and arguments I've been making for my side. While most of these were answered, I realize that, to some, my answers have not been sufficient to assuage their concerns over the enormity of this upgrade. There are also some points I have not had the time to take head on and completely dismantle and analyze, which I'll do right now.
Al Ewing is well known for his attempts to tie the history of Marvel together, so I'll be primarily drawing from his cosmology, all while still giving attention to recent and relevant events that have happened and influenced Marvel Comics throughout the recent decade.
The topics I'll be focusing on mainly include:
- The Nature of Stories
- Ginnungagap as a Primordial Void
- Rune King Thor
- Multiversal Stories and Essences
- Those-Who-Sit-Above-in-Shadow
The Nature of Stories
Since I'll be going over this one issue and subject at a time, the foremost point of contention that I want to touch on to start off my analysis is the nature of stories, and their relation to the Gods in Marvel Cosmology. I'm almost certain that most bystanders and outsiders reading this thread have seen the idea/general concept of "stories" as "physical forces" being thrown around by both parties, but are possibly confused or not completely enlightened as to what that means. Well, I will explain, since, as you will see, Al Ewing's comic sagas and the older runs he draws inspiration from are almost entirely based off of the idea.
To be straightforward, in Marvel Cosmology, a "story" is exactly what it sounds like: a tale, a telling. A fantastical, dramatic or whatever-you-wish-to-call it adventure, passed from mouth to mouth through generations, or through written text. The difference is that those stories, those metaphors and tales of heroes and villains, '''actually become real''', shaping reality as a result.
The most blatant example in Al Ewing's cosmology takes place in Loki: Agent of Asgard, where the titular character Loki, who is fittingly enough the God of Stories, explains the effect of stories to Those-Who-Sit-Above-in-Shadow in an attempt to scare them away:
- You lot want stories? I'll tell you a story. Once upon a time…
- We've not gone back in time. Right now, there's no "time" to go back into. Think of this as scene setting. Three thousand years ago. The nordic bronze age. It's a hard life. Harder than usual tonight. There's a storm at the door. And it's a big one. Imagine not knowing what that was, eh? Imagine not knowing where rain like that came from. Or why. Or if it'd ever stop. Imagine how scary that'd be. For you and everyone around you - the highest chieftain to the littlest child. And imagine...just for a second..just imagine you had a magic that could take that fear away
- The storm is dead now. But none heard its passing. '''For in their ears, they have the magic words of the Skald. Spells passed down from teller to teller, to conjure the gods themselves, to make them dance and play in the mind and heart. To steal away all fear. The storm was fierce, strong enough to shake the world. But the storm is over now'''.
- The god king. The god queen. The hero. The warrior. The trickster, teller of tall tales, and so many others besides. Where did they come from? Do you know? Deep, deep down in the very heart of your heart. Look for the answer there.
- Where did they come from? All those gods, those legends. Maybe we paid a lot of visits to those early tribes. It's possible. Or maybe...maybe some stories are so good...so powerful.so wanted...that the universe believes them. So good they're magic. So good they come alive.
- Just imagine! Listen to them! Those oldest tales! Echoing! Through the air, through the mind! Through space and time! Back to the beginning of all things, mixing with the all-that-was to sparkle something entirely new: ten realms, ten ringing spheres on the great tree of everything. Worlds of demons, gods, and living myths! … Magic words that make anything possible. A story so big and brilliant that it changes other stories? Whoever * heard of that?!
- The gods of man were made by man, in time of need.
Stories echo through all space and time, forcing reality itself to bend to them, to change the status quo to adapt to human fears, conjure the gods themselves to explain the unexplainable, demons, myths. Entire mythological pantheons and their structures are all the products of the stories. And not just vocal stories, but also the stories of the mind, the dreams, and the soul.
The stories, and the entities generated by them, are a necessary part of the universe's laws. They are woven into reality, and reality doesn't simply get rid of them:
When the mortals worship Gods, they're putting their very lifeforces into them, feeding them. So much so that even the brief prayer of a single Mortal can save a god from being erased from existence, and the lack of worship, the lifeforce generated by each story, can greatly weaken a god:
Those are just a fraction of the scans that exist, but from them we can already get the picture of what stories are, and their effect over the world. The tales and dreams inside our mind and heart shape reality itself, echoing across all space and time to force the universe itself to bend to their will, paradoxically forcing even other stories to change to their will as time goes along, and being completely independent of the concept of individual "contradictions", all of which are resolved between themselves.
Keep this in mind as we wander through the next section.
Ginnungagap as a Primordial Void
The next point of contention that has been through much, much discussion throughout this thread is Ginnungagap: the Norse primordial void that existed before the Nordic Nine Realms. The supporters and I proposed that it was a 1-A realm based off numerous reasons, mainly the Loki: Agent of Asgard storyline strongly suggesting that it was the same realm as the Outside, the void that exists as the background of the entire Marvel Multiverse. While we still feel that this reasoning is perfectly valid by itself, some people have requested more evidence that this is the case.
Which brings me to yet another point of contention that was much tossed around by Paradox and other supporters, including myself: the fact that Ginnungagap, and all primordial voids in Marvel Cosmology, are just different names and interpretations for the exact same 1-A realm, shifting depending on whoever is talking about and telling the Story. In this case, Ginnungagap would be the Nordic interpretation of the 1-A void, the Olympian Chaos/Nyx would be the Greek interpretation of the void, and so on throughout all pantheons.
Said fact of Marvel Cosmology is exactly what we're going to discuss and seek to establish a common ground on throughout this section, and for that we'll need to time travel a few years, back to 2012, to when the event known as the Chaos War was being serialized: arguably one of the most relevant myth-based stories in all of Marvel, ''and'' the most recent major event involving interactions between multiple pantheons and their cosmologies in Marvel History.
Which brings me to one of the most valuable things related to the subject: the Thor & Hercules Encyclopedia. This treatise is roughly centered around the events of Chaos War, but it also explains the general origins of nearly every pantheon on Earth at the time of the event, and it tends to contain much less mistakes and contradictions to the storyline, if compared to most other Marvel guidebooks, and for that reason I'lll be using it in order to set the context for the story and for the scans.
First of all, here is an opening bio to contextualize the pantheons a little. The gist of it is that every god and deity in the Chaos War happens to be descended from Mother Earth, Gaia, and the Demiurge, the embodiment of the lifeforces of the planet. They were the first to rise out of the primordial nothingness in this story, and as the bio itself confirms:
All other Mother Earth-type deities throughout all pantheons are simply different interpretations of what Gaia represents, and this is confirmed even more directly within the comic itself:
Referencing the aforementioned cosmology of dreams and Stories, every person throughout the different lands tells the story of Gaia differently, but in the end it's all the same entity; the first thing to be formed out of the primordial chaos. The ancestor of all gods throughout all pantheons.
This is extremely important, because it already pretty much confirms that
all chaotic voids throughout the pantheons are just interpretations of the same void that birthed all creation, but let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet.
Now, for those who don't know the story, the main villain of the arc is Amatsu-Mikaboshi. He is the embodiment of the primordial nothingness that existed before all reality. In the Japanese Marvel mythos, the gods Izanagi and Izanami (the latter being the Japanese interpretation of Gaia) come across the realm of Mikaboshi, that being obviously a primordial void of endless chaos and eternal nothingness, and use it as a canvas to shape the Japanese cosmos. As a result, the weakened shell of Mikaboshi eventually returns to his status as the Chaos King, actively seeks to destroy all creation and eventually nearly succeeds in destroying the entire Marvel Multiverse and returning it to himself, to his own original state of primordial nothingness:
This is relevant to the point, because, near the beginning of the storyline, there is yet another explanation of how Gaia, the original Earth-Mother came to be from the primordial nothingness:
And, in the background of the scan itself, Amatsu-Mikaboshi's face can be clearly seen. This goes to show yet again that, regardless of the different pantheons' views of it, all voids are the exact same in scale. Amatsu-Mikaboshi
is the void that birthed Gaia, despite being part of only one among the countless pantheons that exist, each one with their own aspect of the primordial chaos that gave rise to the Earth-Mother. All of them are voids of the multiversal scale. The lore behind each void just shifts, depending on which "dreamer" is telling it, as Gaia herself stated, and this mytheme shows itself across multiple pantheons:
And Ginnungagap is directly involved in the comparison, being one of the many interpretations of the same 1-A void:
As Strange explains, this is directly related to Ginnungagap:
This alone should suffice to prove that Ginnungagap is a 1-A void in its entirety, but I'll go one step further and provide even more evidence, from Al Ewing's own stories.
In the recent Avengers: No Road Home, Al Ewing [re]introduces Nyx. She is the Greek interpretation of the "darkness/night" that was layered atop the primordial nothingness of Chaos, being a 1-A embodiment of primeval darkness herself, and, much like everyone else, she is shaped by the stories and dreams of mortals, seeking to return the whole multiverse to primordial darkness, before recreating it into her own image.
Why is she relevant? Remember Loki's statement and explanation about the stories, and his analogy about the storyteller in the campfire? Guess what.
In Al Ewing's story, it's revealed that the exact same Norse storyteller who helped shape the Nordic gods, also helped shape the stories of light and darkness of the Greek gods, including Nyx. This shows yet again that all the stories are connected to each other, and represent the exact same concept, through the exact same scale. The same believers who thought of the Greek version of the primeval darkness also spoke of Ginnungagap, the Norse void.
Concluding this section of my post, it's clear enough and the evidence speaks for itself: all formless voids across
all pantheons are, in the end, representations of the exact same, the one void, with each pantheon interpreting the background story behind it, as stated by Gaia and so many other scans. This means that Ginnungagap scales to all the mythological voids with 1-A descriptions and general showings which I detailed above, and, therefore, it is 1-A.
Concluding this section, let's finally, finally address the relevant scaling and talk about what actually matters, afterall.
Rune King Thor
Since this is such a controversial part of the debate, I'll do the same thing as I did when explaining the stories: presenting each part of the story and explaining it bit by bit, so that people can be fully in tune with the storyline and what took place in it.
It all begins with Issue 83 of the original Thor 1998 storyline. With the help of the Odinpower, Thor
begins to realize that, in order to move beyond his own limitations, he'd need to destroy himself, and
walk the same path as his father did years ago. To seek true wisdom, he'd need to face his own fate: to go through sacrifice. And so he does;
sacrificing both eyes to the Well of Mimir, allowing him to see through the wisdom of the past, through the Golden Age of the Norse Gods, to
the time when all creation began with the death of Ymir. And in so doing, Thor
slowly starts to realize the futility that is Ragnarok. It is a never-ending cycle, cloaked in the shadows far beyond his comprehension. And that's when the Odinpower reveals to him what must happen for him to gain true enlightenment: he must experience death, cast his life aside, cease to be, and be remade, go
a step beyond his father. And Thor does. And that's when we get the infamous quote:
From the nine days he hung at the Yggdrasil, Thor gained the ability to see through absolutely all things. He now sees beyond time itself, beyond all quantum structure and cosmic architecture, right into the primordial nothingness of the yawning void.
And he knows what he must do to end the Great Cycle now. He knows everything that will happen. But he is not quite done; for his ascension in power only comes after being reborn. And he is. With the help of Odin, Thor bests death, and is taken to a place far beyond space and time…
And now, he has been fully reborn and ascended. Both in power and in perception. This is the character we all know as "Rune King Thor".
Thor finds himself before Those-Who-Sit-Above-in-Shadow, in the cosmic void:
Thor, who had gained the ability to see right into the cosmic nothingness of the great void, is no longer fooled by them. He now sees past the shadows they had cloaked over creation. He sees past time, and past all the quantum structure of the multiverse, right into the great void - right into Those-Who-Sit-Above-in-Shadow. Which shows that it's not just the realm of Ginnungagap that transcends all space and time, but also its inhabitants, too.
Which is, of course, backed up by the already well-known Loki: Agent of Asgard scans, which I won't bother quoting.
But what Thor had gained in perception, he also gained just as much in power and stature. He had ascended to a level far beyond anything the Norse Gods could think of. He had become something beyond even what the TWSAIS could have foreseen.
He then proceeds to physically leave the void, transporting himself to Asgard. Showing that it was far from just his perception or even just a dream - he had really ascended to that level, to become on par with, if not greater than, the Shadows themselves.
And proceeds to take to a cosmic sleep of nothingness...
TWSAIS/Multiversal Stories and Essences
My friend Paradox already summarized this just as well, if not better, than I could, and his post is, rather surprisingly, still up there with without a single response to it whatsoever.
Basically, the idea is that the Story of Last Day was a story capable of affecting the entire Marvel Multiverse, and the TWSAIS not only existed outside its very framework, but were capable of consuming it without moving an inch, only coming after the story physically after Loki saved it.
Final Considerations
And that's that, wrapping up my analysis of all the arguments put forth in the thread.
There are some miscellaneous claims that did not quite make it to the main sections, which I believe would be pretty prudent to address somewhere. Might as well do it in here.
- Claim 1: Those-Who-Sit-Above-in-Shadow were stated by Loki to have "fled back to wherever they came from", suggesting they do not in fact come from beyond the Marvel Multiverse, and the background color of their realm is shown to be black, while the Outside is white, further suggesting that their realm is not the Outside.
Rebuttal:
Addressing this through two different paragraphs:
Right off the bat, concerning the color of the Outside: the Outside is an adimensional void beyond and outside all concepts of reality. To try and use its color to tell it apart from other voids is an extremely flawed approach, to say the least, and becomes even more so :when one considers the fact that each writer draws the void in whichever color they desire black, white, or even blue, in some instances. Case in point, this story was written by Al Ewing,
who the went ahead to depict the Outside as a dark void countless times in the Ultimates storyline, which was first released mere months after the finale of Loki: Agent of Asgard, the storyline this argument focuses on.
To make this point even more questionable, the first appearance of the TWSAIS in this storyline, which took place in the Outside,
clearly depicted the void as black, just like in every other appearance they made. In fact, the very same scene being used to argue this supposed "color inconsistency" had instances
''where the background was arbitrarily shifting to black'' while the TWSAIS were on-screen!
Second, concerning Loki's claim that the Shadow Gods went back to "wherever they came from". As anyone can see from the context,
Loki admits to the fact that he pulled everything he'd said about them out of his arse, and that he didn't know whether any of it was really true or not. His claim that the TWSAIS returned to where they had come from is part of the bluff, as well, especially considering they just fled in fear from the general area, in order to escape the possibility that they had been created by the very same Gods they transcended and used as toys, to begin with. So Loki is self-admittedly not sure of any of the ideas he threw around about the TWSAIS in this particular scene. Weighing his word against the tons of external evidence that they Shadow Gods do, indeed, naturally reside in the 1-A void, we can dismiss it as disproven speculation.
And even if we assume that Loki ''is'' correct about something he himself admitted was an uncertain bluff, and that they did return to where they had come from, which the physical body of evidence heavily disagrees with,
the very concepts of space and time had ceased to exist, so the TWSAIS would have simply fled to another 1-A realm, not to the inside space of a Multiverse that no longer exists. So, once again, even assuming Loki's admittedly shaky claim ''is'' true, it's not evidence of anything.
Rebuttal:
Those scans come from the oldest stories available about the TWSAIS. Back then, Chris Claremont *
had introduced the Shadow Gods as benevolent, Divine Judges, who tried and decided the actions of the Norse Gods whenever they descended to the mortal world, and never remotely hinted at them being evil deities feeding off the Grand Cycle. Which already means that, taking things at face value, much of the information about them within those stories has been retconned and overridden by later, more important storylines. If we used this storyline as an argument, we'd be forced to concede to the idea that the TWSAIS are veiling their true nature from the Asgardian Gods and everyone else, which ends up leading directly to the idea that they, alongside their whole realm, are merely taking on avatars, so that Loki and co. can interact with them and grasp their meaning and structure for a moment, much like most other Marvel Abstracts do, even Oblivion:
The TWSAIS themselves state, upon meeting Loki in this storyline, that:
And, as we saw through my analysis of the original 1998 Thor run & the Loki: Agent of Asgard storyline, the TWSAIS completely transcend the Nine Realms and the World Tree, viewing them as no more than how a child views a toy, not to mention the entire adimensional aspect of their being, which I've already gone in-depth about above and am not quite willing to repeat here.
So we have two options: we either concede to the fact this old, obscure storyline was retconned by the far more relevant events defining Thor in the 90s and Al Ewing's new cosmology, or we can attempt to tie it into continuity, which still leads to the idea that the TWSAIS in this story were purposefully stripped down avatars going by the context.
And, finally, the handbook mention stating that their base of operations is a dimension connected to Asgard. This would be valid evidence, were it not for the fact that The Marvel Handbooks, and Marvel Comics as a whole in fact, suffer a lot from misidentifying every single realm outside conventional space and time as mere "pocket dimensions", regardless of the context behind them.
Even Oblivion, the unquestionable 1-A embodiment of nonexistence, has suffered from this treatment, with the handbook claiming him to be the ruler of a pocket dimension known as the Outer Void, as opposed to the blatant 1-A realm we see in the actual story. So, much like the situation with Oblivion, what the actual storyline reveals about the TWSAIS takes precedence, and the actual storyline is certainly not dismissing the Shadow Gods' realm as a pocket dimension by any possible stretch of interpretation, no.
Conclusions
Having analyzed pretty much every point, angle and argument brought up both in support and against my point of view, I am henceforth led to believe that the evidence from all sources strongly and heavily points to the following conclusions being nigh-undeniably factual:
- "Stories" in Marvel Comics shape all of reality and operate independently of, and closely work with, the contradictions between each different point of view and mythological pantheon/abstract story.
- And on that same vein: Ginnungagap is an Outerversal void, the exact same formless and adimensional "nil" as every other multiversal pantheonic void in Marvel Comics, being the exact same thing as the Outside, and existing prior to, after, and beyond all dimensionality and space and time.
- The "Story" of the Last Day, together with Ragnarok, was a story that had repercussions throughout the entire omniverse, and the TWSAIS were portrayed as being entities (1) outside the framework of the story (2) capable of consuming it in its entirety.
- Rune King Thor, upon hanging himself from the Yggdrasil and going beyond the Realm of Death, became an entity capable of transcending all of space and time, having ascended to the level of existence of the TWSAIS, as well as heavily implied to have become one with nothingness after destroying the Grand Cycle. Both his perception and physical power are on such a level, as opposed to just one or the other.
- Those-Who-Sit-Above-in-Shadow are Gods who transcend all dimensionality and exist relative to the void of Ginnungagap/the Outside, which was their realm, all while viewing everything as a toy, as opposed to simply being capable of temporarily surviving outside of the multiverse and still being bound to space and time.
It is therefore my opinion that Rune King Thor and Those-Who-Sit-Above-in-Shadow should be strictly upgraded to tier
1-A, and that all arguments against it are flawed and easily refuted upon an actual inspection of the storylines in question.
Thanks everyone,
Kepekley23.
