Episode 81 of the Letters Page: Multiverse Recap

Honestly not surprised this was three hours, though I'll agree with them that last week's episode was a little more exciting and worth the time investment. I just hate that I'm not usually in a spot to take notes while listening to these, because after three hours, I can't remember any comments I wanted to make. x.x Oh well, this was still fun and enlightening, as episodes tend to be. Here we go, Oblivaeon...

I hadn't realized that The Scholar was the first published hero to have his own deck.  Greatest Legacy and G.I. Bunker are the only older playable heroes, and they're just variants.

Didn't they say in his episode that he was older than the wraith ?

Going back, you're right, they did.  I didn't realize he was older than even Finest Legacy and Tyler Vance, though I could have figured it out if I'd been methodical about it.  I wonder when Stylin' Shirley debuted?

I understand how this was an important episode, fixing some continuity issues and all, but I really couldn't get through the whole thing, it felt too much like a spreadsheet being read out loud. At least I can applaud all the effort that went into the timeline.

There are some issues with the timeline as laid out in this episode with respect to real world context.  I'm sure it's mostly the result of the timeline snarl they've been trying to iron out, and of using semi-random issue numbers in the early days of card creation, so I don't really blame C&A.  Still...

The most glaring issue was suggesting that Black Fist's first appearance was in early 1951.  That's just -- no. Not in the decade of the worst race relations since the actual Civil War.  I don't care how progressive your comics company is, that just can't happen.

Black Fist was a blaxploitation character, and that means the early 1970s, the very late '60s at the absolute earliest. Black characters were virtually nonexistent in mainstream comics prior to the early '60s, and even then served almost entirely in secondary roles (such as token ethnic characters in the Howling Commandos and similar groups) for most of the decade.  T'challa was the first recognized black superhero with his 1966 debut as a Fantastic Four guest-star, and even then he didn't get his own starring title until 1973 (a year after Luke Cage #1, and well into the blaxploitation era). Kung-fu heroes similarly were riding a pop culture trend of the early 70s that originated from imported movies that grew out of Hong Kong's late-60's economic boom, so unless the 'fist' part was originally just like regular punching and not kung-fu punching, he really has to originate somewhere in 1971-72.

I know why it happened, it's because they said his first appearance was Justice Comics #129 and the math says that must be in 1951, but that just doesn't work at all.

Even now, I'm still confused as to the nature of the Termi-Nation event.  I understand it happened after the Progeny event, but it was my understanding that the events that resulted in the Adamant Sentinels becoming Void Guard were actually a part of the Termi-Nation events, not something that happened prior to those events.

I really do wish we could get a fuller run-down on that event specifically; it seems so minor in the grand scheme of things, but there just seems to be some real fuzziness on the whole series of events there.  Maybe it's just me...

Yeah, I'm with you.  If I remember correctly:

TermiNation started when the F5 responded to a call from Fort Adamant because Choke, now Chokepoint, had just gone wild and started tearing up the place.  Inside the base, the F5 discovered the horrorshow in the basement and their trust in the government was shaken to the core.  In the same base but more or less unrelated, Chokepoint's damage to the base lets the Sentinels find the cache of Oblivaeon shards, and they take them, becoming the Void Guard.

In the aftermath, unable to trust the government, Maya sells a lot of her company holdings to buy out the F5's gear and Freedom Tower itself, and then Zero, Bunker, and Unity end up in another fight with Chokepoint in the Omnitron 4 factory as they try to reach the remains of Omnitron X.

Have I gotten something in there wrong..?

Not to mention, the only appearance of Black Fist we see in Sentinels of the Multiverse is in the Enclave of the Endlings, a homage to the works of Jack Kirby. Several of the cards have the signature Kirby krackle (the black dots in colour to show energy). Kirby krackle didn't become a hallmark of his art until the mid-to-late sixties with the Fantastic Four. So Black Fist, despite being basically a fad super, according to the Mister Fixer episode, managed to last as a backup feature of Justice Comics for 15 years (as a minimum) to team up with Legacy in the Enclave story. 

I caught another error, I think: Unity is based on the animated series from the '90's, but her first appearance in comics was very early in 1990.

I got the impression that it was a deliberate parallel to the animated comics shows that came out in the 90's, especially Batman (1992-1995).  And while Harley Quinn was so popular that her comics debut was just one year after her TV debut, Unity definitely was not--she wasn't introduced in comics until the animated series was long gone.  Then again, C&A are so hazy on what came out in the '80's vs. the '90's, it's probably fine.

I recommend skipping straight to the questions at 2:16. There's some good stuff there, some banter as they try to correct past mistakes.

So, if I got this right, the first hints of OblivAeon stuff happened in the comics in 2008. The year of the OblivAeon story was 2016. That's quite a long time of the writers intentionally building things up, winding storylines together, and dropping hints!

Hey I tried to piece together when the environments appear. Here is my list, thoughts?

40s
Silver gultch 
Megalopolis
Mortengrad
Rook city
Pike industrial complex

50's
Megalopolis official
Mobile defense platform
Insula primalis
Magmaria 
Madam ministers festival

60's
Wagner mars base
Tomb of Anubis
The block
Ruins of Atlantis 
Enclave of the endings 

70's
Temple of zu long 
Rook city official
The court of blood
Realm of discord
Doth thurak 

80's
Celestial tribunal 
Time cataclysm 
Silver glulch reappears 
The final wasteland 

90's
Freedom tower

00's
Champion studios?
Nexis of the void?
Maerynian refuge

11's
Fort adamant
Omnitron 4