While not intended to replicate that famous comic, echoes of it appear throughout Judgment Day #5 by Kieron Gillen, Valerio Schiti, Marte Graci, and Clayton Cowles. On the sixth page, Captain America stands before the god determined to kill them all and makes a passionate speech as only he can, before that god kills him with minimal effort. Just as placing him in a riot is a sign of a world gone wrong, having Captain America tell off God before God kills him is a sign that everything and everyone is completely and thoroughly fucked. Gillen flips the order of events of The Infinity Gauntlet #4 by beginning with a god killing Captain America and, then, moving on to the wholesale quasi-ironic slaughter of the rest of the heroes.
Jim Starlin having Thanos kill all of Earth’s heroes with ease was shocking (and entertaining) – it was also about sending a message to readers about the scale of the story being told. Usually, the Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic Four et al are equal to any task, on Earth or off. Here, though, they were out of their league, up against a cosmic threat on a scale well beyond their abilities. Starlin’s most famous creation could only really be stopped by a character that may as well have been a Starlin creation in Adam Warlock. In many ways, The Infinity Gauntlet was a story about Starlin drawing a line between his characters who operate on a higher cosmic level and the regular Marvel heroes who just aren’t able to hang.
That, of course, is not what Gillen is doing here (unless I’m way off and you can look for the Progenitor to be the secret member of a new Eternals team that is waging war on the Celestials so this can never happen again or something...?) and the allusions to The Infinity Gauntlet #4 are more for effect than anything. It’s hard not to read a little self-deprecation in the Progenitor narrating, “I try to kill creatively because to be a god is to be creative... but there are so many of you, and I admit that, occasionally, inspiration is elusive,” as it kills the heroes in as many different and inventive ways as Thanos once did. Starlin and company kept it up for most of the 40 pages that make up their comic; here, it’s roughly five or six pages total.
The Progenitor isn’t toying with its attackers like Thanos, it’s playing a role it seems. Informed by its creators, there’s almost a sense that it understands that, as far as the heroes are concerned, it is the big villain to defeat and it must allow them to attempt to do so. But, it also has no compunction about killing them immediately and doing so in as many fitting and ironic ways as possible. This Celestial, based in some ways on Tony Stark, is a victim of genre, unable to not play into its role as world-threatening cosmic monster. If the comic alludes to The Infinity Gauntlet, it’s because the Progenitor is playing into the role established by Thanos. At the end of Judgment Day #4, it seemed like, now that Earth has been judged and found wanting, it would be destroyed immediately. Instead, the Progenitor stands around in the same place as it has always stood... waiting... why?
The judgment has not ended.
The failure is part of the judgment; the overcoming of a cosmic threat to end all life on the planet is part of the judgment.
Maybe not in an explicit manner where the Progenitor, dying, will reveal that it was all part of the test. Maybe the Progenitor doesn’t even know what it’s doing entirely. Its narration has implied a lack of self-awareness at times where it knows enough to question its own actions but not enough to answer why. Some of the key heroes to overcoming the Progenitor are, so far, ones that failed, notably Destiny and Captain America. Perhaps, they have learned something from their judgment and failure... perhaps, overcoming those failures is a part of the judgment as well...
If The Infinity Gauntlet #4 was about proving that Earth’s heroes can’t stand against truly cosmic level threats, maybe Judgment Day #5 is about proving that they can.
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I actually go out of my way not to read anyone else’s thoughts on these comics usually in an effort to stay in my little bubble where it’s me and the comics and nothing else except the odd song. But, David posted some quick reviews of the books he’d read this week and, it was after I’d read my comics, so I thought “What the heck...” And, of course, it contains a fantastic prompt for this...
I don’t disagree with David’s tossed off assessment of this issue; I also don’t agree with it.
In Avengers #60, the Progenitor comes to Clint Barton in the form of the Black Widow and, instead of judging him immediately, tells him that he has the day to prove “where your life brings as much joy and meaning to the universe as that blue metal box.” The box in question is a mailbox. It is the first time the Progenitor makes an explicit challenge of its judgment. In that and how it plays out, David is correct: this doesn’t read like anything we’ve seen in Judgment Day to this point. I’m not convinced that that necessarily places it outside the event or as ‘invalid’ in some way.
Most of the judgments we’ve seen to this point have been written by Kieron Gillen. They tend to be brief and involve the decision already being made prior to the Progenitor making its presence known. It’s not necessarily an interactive process like we get in this comic. Yet, it’s not exclusively not an interactive process. Kro, for example, gets to plead his case and what he says seems to sway the Progenitor. In Judgment Day #4, we get hints that the Celestial creates pass/fail tests in some cases without the knowledge of the participants and judgment hinges on their performance in that specific instance.
What we’ve really seen is that the criteria that the Progenitor uses for each person tends to come from the judged. How well they measure up against their own standards. With that as a guidepost and Russell writing Clint within the Matt Fraction/David Aja mould, it is conceivable that his judgment would play out this way. Clint specifically criticises the Progenitor for having no objective benchmark in its judging – and you don’t get much more objective than a mailbox. It’s the sort of dopey gag criteria that Clint would come up with for himself; he doesn’t argue against it.
Even with that in mind, this issue stands out in the way that the judgment plays out over the course of the entire issue. In Gillen’s comics, judgments rarely last more than a few panels at most, while they haven’t come up too much in non-Gillen tie-ins. Cyclops was judged in X-Men #14 over a few pages and his talking back to the Celestial stands in contrast to what we’ve seen in Gillen’s scenes. While some almost-judgments happen in Wolverine #24. None have shown up in the two X-Force or X-Men Red issues to date, leaving only the other tie-in from this week, Fantastic Four #47 where we don’t see any judgments, only the allusion that the entire Fantastic Four has already failed.
In Marauders #6, I’d argue that we get the roleplay therapy versions of the judgments where the judged are given the opportunity to answer all charges with perfect self-awareness, ostensibly not showing us how the judgments actually played out. In fact, the pushing back against the Progenitor’s judgment is the largest hallmark of the non-Gillen issues. His judgments are usually taken as fait accompli, because the judged know that it’s the truth. If there’s a misreading that we’ve seen so far, it’s not adhering to that idea necessarily. There’s too much desire to show the characters standing up against this god-like figure, refusing to be judged in that way that humans always do in stories like this. That righteous defiance in the face of overwhelming power and inscrutable morality.
We also haven’t seen a number of non-Gillen tie-ins that seem like they will show judgments, like Wolverine #25, Amazing Spider-Man #10, AXE: Iron Fist #1, and Captain marvel #42. I’m curious to see if those or even the remaining two issues of X-Force or X-Men Red #7 show further judgments and how they compare to what we’ve seen from Gillen.
The only part of Avengers #60 that rang false, for me, was the ending. The Progenitor sends Clint a letter via the mailbox and it ends with these words: “There may not be any such thing as moral clarity, but that doesn’t mean we can’t grow. And you have grown, which, apparently, a mailbox cannot do. So much judgment is that you pass. You will live. But we’ll be watching from time to time, Clint. So much advise is to act as if someone is always watching. Until you are wise enough to act as though no one is.” This flies completely in the face of Judgment Day issues four and five. It’s the exact opposite message that we get from the Progenitor at the end of issue four where the idea of growth and progress is dismissed, because it will never be enough. The promise of tomorrow’s success will always be put forth as an excuse for today’s failures. These final words prove David’s assessment as correct – or they’re foreshadowing the final issue of the event. Given Marvel’s history with tie-ins veering off and contradicting one another and the main series, I know where my money is placed.
Next week: AXE: Avengers #1 and Amazing Spider-Man #10.
