hsut@ecn-ee.UUCP (08/29/84)
#N:ecn-ee:24800010:000:1825
ecn-ee!hsut Aug 29 11:47:00 1984
There are many problems with ranking cosmic
entities. I was going to bring up the Beyonder and Order and
Chaos, but since someone beat me to it here are my reservations!
It has always been emphasized that Order and Chaos are abstract
entities and DO NOT take part in most conflicts. The In-betweener
is a (most unreliable) messenger for O. and C. who actively does
things, though he too is supposedly beyond conflict (refer to
Dr.Strange #26 or thereabouts for the Inbetweener's part in the
Creator Chronicles). While it's obvious that Order and Chaos
belong in any power ranking, how do you rank beings of this nature?
There is an old issue of What If from a few years
back (What if the Avengers had become the Pawns of Korvac?) which
had most of the cosmic entities in action against the now god-like
Korvac. Beings not mentioned in previous lists but who appear
there include the Inbetweener, the Gardener(where did he come from?)
the Grandmaster, the Shaper of the Worlds, the Stranger and the
High evolutionary. There was also a Tribunal-type with three faces
who seems to be a kind of judge for the multiverse i.e. he is
perhaps above Order and Chaos! It might be possible to infer from
the events in the What If some relative ranking for these
entities (I'm not going to try!).
Which reminds me of two other ephemeral characters.
Way back in Defenders #15-16 or thereabouts, the Xmen joined the
Defenders to battle Magneto and his new (not again) protege:
Alpha the ultimate mutant, who promptly turned Magneto and his
Evil Mutants into babes and flew off into space. If that doesn't
qualify for a place in the rankings... Also there's the dead god
Immortus/Kang/Rama-tut, whose powers over space and time are never,
in my opinion, fully exploited. Comments?