Okay, so I didn’t have any particular expectations of this book and that just tells me I need to reexamine my preconceived notions, as Jim Valentino and Ric Levins redefine how dangerous Danger Noodles are in…
What if Set Walked the Earth!
Which is not the title on the cover, but the story this is spun off from was called Atlantis Attacks and not “Sickass Snake-Cthulhu Fight”, so that’s on Jim Shooter.
Anyhoo, back in the early 90s, there was a big Crossover Event story called Atlantis Attacks, in which Atlantis Attacking was just one small factor and which I never really sought out because I don’t care for most Atlantis stories. Regardless, after getting into a dust-up with the Silver Surfer out in space, some wizardy shmuck named Ghaur wound up inadvertently getting his batteries recharged by the Power Cosmic. This is, by and large, bad news since he was also the head priest of a cult that worshipped the unspeakably evil snake god, Set, who ruled the Earth way back in pre-Conan times.
Like Shuma Gorath, it’s kiiiiiind of ambiguous if Set counts as a Marvel character or a Conan character so he doesn’t get trotted out very often, but I think he’s technically a House of Ideas creation.
Anyway, Ghaur makes up for millennia of being a disembodied spirit by quickly launching a plan to summon Set to earth; tricking Atlanteans into attacking (hence the title) so they’d be killed en mass and he could sacrifice them to the serpent, gathering up every piece of the mind controlling Serpent Crown spread across the universe to allow Set to control his followers entirely while also granting him a mortal body, tricking everyone’s… third or fourth favorite Secret Underground Emperor/Lost Roman Tyranus into accidentally distributing a drug that turns people into goofy-looking snake monsters, and hypnotizing seven of the most powerful female heroes on Earth into being a bride for each of Sets 7 heads. I’d rather not examine the logistics of that last part too deeply.
Anyway, this plan ultimately failed because Ghaur badly misjudged the sheer volume of superheroes Earth has to offer, and, like… all of them ganged up and beat him silly and smushed up his stupid god before he could manifest. But, as it turns out, they only had, like
just enough superheroes to do that.
So
what if a couple didn’t bother showing up!
Specifically, Namor got inadvertently blowed up by Atlantis Attacking, Moon Knight and Daredevil got dosed with Snake Man drugs and Thors half brother (he… has one?) didn’t want to go to Snake World to fight Sets disembodied soul.
Well… it all goes
catastrophically badly.
Without the extra pair of hands that Thors brother offered, the team of heroes who were fighting Sets astral body (which looks more like a giant pile of offal than a snake-god) were quickly overwhelmed; Ben Grimm is eaten, Dr. Strange is burnt to a skeleton, and Quasar is sent flying so far that it’s literally days before he stops spinning).
This removes the only obstacle keeping Set from manifesting on Earth where things immediately go
much worse.
So… umm… yeah. Within about five minutes Sets killed, like… almost everyone who isn’t inclined to worship a monstrous snake god. And most of the people who were fine with praying to it, since he’s 7 snakes, each the size of a building, and none of them are particularly concerned about collateral damage.
Then things get worse still.
Sets cooking with Primordial Elder God gas, so he doesn’t need to settle for Tyranus hocking street drugs to turn people into snake men on his behalf when he can just do it himself and he infects
the entire human race with his power turning every living thing into his spawn.
Who, I stress again, look much more silly than they do horrifying.
The only holdouts being a handful of people who are, for one reason or another, immune; Thor, Hulk, Wolverine, Sabertooth, Dr. Doom, Rachel Summers, Cloak and
Jesus Christ Aquarian.
It’s implied that Dooms immune to Sets influence because he just doesn't wish to be controlled by it.
Anyway, while the team thinks it’s distasteful they’re forced to accept that there’s no saving the planet; everyone outside the room is a mindless thrall of Set, irreversibly changed into monsters, and Sets only growing more powerful. The best they can do is avenge the world that Sets destroyed.
The team splits into two groups; one assigned to kill Sets Brides so they can’t be used to breed with the monster (frickin’
yeesh, guys), and the rest go after Set himself; a Super God that’s large enough he's
visible from space, and it’s slavish minions;
the entire population of Earth.
So, heavy hitters or no, the good guys are in a pretty lopsided battle here. And, as you’d expect, most of the rest of the comic is Rick Levins drawing the
absolute hell out of superhero fights.
Team Kill the Wives (again,
Yeesh) consists of everyone except Thor, Doom and Rachel and first they have to fight their way through all the other superheroes, now converted into mindless snake monsters. Which they do with aplomb, even if half that team abhors violence.
Sidebar, but I wish we got more of the New Mutants because I really wanted a better look at the Snakeman versions of Wolfsbane and Warlock than what half of one panel shows me.
Anyway, they collectively kill the snake monster heroes pretty easily, but then the Wives of Set appear and, for one thing; they're not snake monsters. They look the same as they ever did. Second; while they’re 1000% on Team Snake Monster God, and don’t so much as grunt let alone speak, they’re clearly in full control of their abilities and… well… they’re
crazy good at wrecking house; Sabertooth and Wolverine get skeletoned by Storms Lightning and Wanda turning Logan’s entire body to anti-matter, Dagger and Storm overload Cloaks ability to absorb light until he implodes, Aquarian gets blown up by antimatter Wolverine, and Sue suffocates Hulk with a force field until he passes out and then everyone punches Bruce Banner until there’s nothing left of his skeleton.
GIRL POWER!!
Meanwhile, everyone fighting the several miles worth of Snake God aren’t fairing any better; Thor is a mythical God, and The Phoenix outranks even that in terms of power levels, but Set is several rungs beyond both of them put together.
And Doom dies in flame while screaming his own name, so that’s a pretty MF’n Doom way to die.
On the plus side, Thor manages to take off one of Sets noggins before dying, which is about as close to a win as anyone’s had in this issue.
Also,
a Day late and a dollar short, the Silver Surfer shows up, feeling kind of bad about inadvertently starting this whole mess and he also fights Set, also taking off one of its heads, but even the Power Cosmic is no match for him now that Sets killed and absorbed the Phoenix Force and subsumed the whole of the Earth.
Luckily we have a Deus ex Machina, as Quasar, last seen in Sets home dimension bouncing around like a Pinball, finally came to a stop and got his bearings, and picked up the Eye of Agamotto from Stranges corpse, which tremendously boosted his already
bonkers enormous power set that his Nega Bands granted him, and… because the entire universe was in dire peril, he was also joined by the Enigma Force that creates realities greatest champion; Captain Universe, boosting him even further still.
All this happened completely off panel btw.
Anyway, now we have a giant translucent man empowered by the most powerful scientific and magical artifacts the universe had ever seen as well as Eternity itself fighting a comparably enormous multi headed snake turbo-god… and realizing he can’t win; Set is even more powerful than
that. So Quasar opens the Eye of Agamottos full power to open a door outside the entire multiverse and drags Set into it instead; locking both Super Gods beyond the reach of reality forever.
The Surfer says “Well… umm… hmm… rough couple of days, eh?” And hands the Eye of Agamotto; now containing two hyper gods locked in an eternal war that could tear the omniverse asunder off to Uatu, who has a garage full of stuff like that anyway.
Then we got an epilogue; where Uatu mentions that, well… literally everything on Earth is a mindless slave of Set, even if Set isn’t around so there ain’t a whole lot of society going on down there. Which is still better than what happened to the Wives of Set, since they still had their bouncing baby snake gods. And they were hungry boys and ate their mothers absorbing their powers. And also whatever life was left on Earth.
And also they’re still the true children of an elder god beyond comprehension so… they can just *leave* the earth/universe and keep right on consuming and destroying entire realities.
And Uatu also helpfully points out that, technically, the Reality of you, the person reading this comic, also exists within the Marvel Universe framework so… you know…
watch your ass.
But Did It Happen?!?!
Well, thankfully not. But a part of Al Ewings recent Defenders series involved travelling through rougher iterations of the universe, one of which consisted solely of an enormous glowing man battling a comparably enormous snake-like dragon outside all of known reality. And a recent issue of Jed McKays Avengers was showed the team as the last ones standing on the planet trying to bring down a monsterous god that killed everyone. Which, to pull everything together, was also named after the monster from that Al Ewing comic.
NEXT TIME: Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead