Marvel Universe: In the Beginning was Genetic Manipulation

Long, long ago, before recorded history, the Celestials came to Earth. The mysterious, metal-clad, six-hundred-meter-tall cosmic beings experimented with our  genes for mysterious reasons, creating a super-powered offshoot of the human race known as the Eternals. Then, for reasons just as mysterious, they left.

The Celestials

The Eternals built a secret city called Titanos, and were led by the brothers Kronos and Uranos. Uranos wanted the Eternals to conquer the humans, whilst Kronos thought it would be better to just stay hidden in their city and do science. There was a civil war, and Kronos won, because science.

The Eternals by Daniel Acuña

Uranos and his followers were exiled from Earth, and went to live on a planet that they named after their leader - Uranus. Fortunately, many years later, we humans gave it the exact same name, otherwise things might have gotten quite confusing. On Uranus, the Eternals encountered a dormant outpost built by the aliens known as the Kree. Finding a Kree Outpost causes it's robotic Sentry to activate and attempt to kill you in order to preserve the secrecy of the outpost. The exiled Eternals managed to survive and destroy the Sentry. But destroying a Kree Sentry is a crime punishable by death. (This is why nobody likes the Kree.) A Kree force travelled to Uranus to carry out the sentence, but most of the exiles survived by tricking the Kree into thinking they were dead. Whilst in the Solar System, the Kree also decided it was a good idea to experiment on the genes of the human race. Apparently this is a thing aliens like to do to us. Another super-powered offshoot of the human race was created, this time called the Inhumans.

The Inhumans by Jae Lee

Meanwhile, Kronos' son Zuras became the new leader of the Eternals. Titanos had been pretty much destroyed in the war, so they built a new secret city on top of mount Olympus, as well as other smaller cities around the world. These Eternals still live on Earth today, and are often confused with the Greek gods. I have no idea why.

Kronos' other son, A'Lars, decided to leave Earth in order to prevent the possibility of a second civil war, and he and his followers settled on Saturn's moon Titan. These days they are called the Titans, and A'Lars is known as Mentor of Titan.

Iron Man meets the Titan Eternals

 At some point after, during, or possibly even before this, mutants began to emerge. Many people think that the first mutant was Apocalypse, who was born during the time of Egypt's Old Kingdom. But the oldest living mutant is actually, Selene who is a lot older than him, which makes me  think that there must have been others too, just less immortal, and therefore, dead. Apocalypse found a crashed Celestial transport ship, and was contacted by the Celestial known as Exon the Searcher, who revealed that in addition to creating the Eternals, the Celestials had actually created the mutant X-Gene and placed it in to the genetic makeup of the human race. The Celestials then endowed Apocalypse with great powers and tasked him to lead the world into a new mutant age, which set him on a millennia-long genocidal war. Hmm.

Now why do we care about any of this? Well firstly, Mentor's son is very important. He is Thanos, the Mad Titan, one of the Avengers' most powerful enemies. Yes, this means Thanos is actually a distant relative of you and me.

Secondly, it was Mentor who, knowing the damage his son could do, took a mortally wounded human named Douglas Arthur, and turned him into the superhero known as Drax the Destroyer. (Yes, this is a rather different origin than the one Drax is given in the Guardians movie, but I don't think anyone cares because the movie was awesome.)

Thirdly, the Inhumans are important these days due to the fact that Marvel has been trying to turn them into a semi-replacement for the X-Men. They are supposedly doing this to purposely mess up Fox, who own the movie rights (and possibly a lot more) to the X-Men. But I think the real reason is a lot simpler: Marvel want to make an Inhumans movie, because they are one of the few things they still own the rights to. They have been putting a lot of effort into turning the Inhumans from an elite kingdom of separatists into everyday superheroes you would expect to bump into whilst going shopping. Unfortunately, no one cares.

There is significant evidence that Marvel is going to retcon Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch into being Inhumans instead of mutants. As if their origin wasn't already unnecessarily complicated and completely bonkers. This is going dangerously close to messing-with-Fox territory, and is probably why Fox suddenly shoehorned Quicksilver into Days of Future Past.  But again, I think the true reason for this is simpler: it's an attempt to get people to care about the Inhumans. And to be fair, it may actually work.

Above the Storm: Part 3

Part 1
Part 2

After the games on Saturday, I tried to look around the expo. There were still a lot of people, and it was difficult to actually see stuff. Most of the stands were catered to computers and computer games, with only a few devoted to more comic-con type stuff. I was surprised to realise that I no longer cared much about computer games. I went through a lot of trades (collections of comic series), but everything was either stuff I wasn't interested in, or stuff that cost more than I wanted to spend on it.

As I mulled over the day's events whilst futilely search for something I needed to buy, it became rather apparent to me that Phantom X-style teams were the thing to beat, rather than Highfather, and I really should have played Drax rather than Angela, as he would have fared a lot better against that style of play. I could not change my team however, and this, added to the disappointment of the stalls at rAge, made me rather despondent. I thought that perhaps I had done the wrong thing in coming. I should have given the plane ticket to someone else.

I didn't sleep very well that evening, and had odd nightmares about Earth being invaded by the Kree, for some reason. But Sunday came along (surprisingly free of invading Kree) and I dutifully went back to rAge, because, regardless of how I felt, letting down the other Durban players was not an option. I can be stubborn when I want to be.

Sunday started off a lot better. There were far less people. A lot more of them were in cosplay. We had gone in on Sat knowing nothing about what kind of teams we would be facing, but this time we had far more of an idea. Oddly enough, the most nerve-racking part of the whole weekend was waiting to for the first round pairings. I'm certain we were all hoping not to be paired against another Durbanite. And none of us were. Except for me. I had to play Chris. Again. Of course.

Actually, our game was rather civil. I'm pretty sure this was due to us having had all the rules arguments the day before. It was a close game, very close, but I lost. And it was a knock out tournament.

The End

Adi Granov's Captain Marvel

Ok, it's not really the end. I guess you want to know what happened with the rest of us? Brandon and Peter got into the semi-finals, Krishin having lost out to that terrible villain known only as a 'roll-off'. Surprisingly, I found myself unable to watch Peter's game. At some point I must have forgiven him for completely destroying me with his Blood Elves in the Warcraft card game that one time in that tournament I really, really wanted to win....wait where was I? I lost my train of though. Oh right - I actually wanted Peter to win his match. This has never happened before.

In between, I looked at the more comicbooky stalls again, and finally found something to buy - the 200pt Captain Marvel that I had really been wanting. And that was when it suddenly occurred to me. Yeah, I should have played Drax. But I played Angela instead, and I do not regret it, because she's bloody Angela. Created by Neil Gaiman. The older sister of Thor. The Assassin of Asgard. Playing female superheroes is my thing. If I hadn't played her, I wouldn't be me.

Brandon lost to a roll off. Peter won, and then lost in the finals to...a roll off. In fact, all three roll offs I have mentioned so far were the same guy beating us. Earth is a crazy place. You can't even make this stuff up!

I don't know when it was when everything had started going right. Was it when I shook Chris' hand at the end of a match that did not involve rules arguments? When I found the Captain Marvel? When I got given a free blu-ray of the Thor movie? That night at the airport, I checked in, and the lady asked me 'Would you like a window seat?' Why yes, yes I would.

We took off, and I watched the light of the city spread out below me, clusters of them all over as far as the eye could see. And then they vanished. There were clouds below us, but I couldn't see them in the dark. Until the lightning lit them up. The seatbelt lights came on, and the rest of the plane trip was rather bumpy. I don't think the rest of the passengers enjoyed it at all. But I loved it, because I was watching a storm from above. When do you ever get to do something like that? I will never forget it.

And you know, I don't think the storm was a coincidence. Someone was telling me that I was right to have gone to Joburg. To have played Angela.

Did I mention that she is Thor's sister?  

Above the Storm: Part 2

Many people think that Mantis belongs to some sort of telepathic alien insect race. But she's actually a human named Mary Brandt with the super-power of telepathy. She is also highly trained in Vietnamese martial arts, which earned her the nickname Mantis, later used as her superhero alias. She was created for Avengers in the 70s as a replacement for Black Widow, who was leaving to go hang out with Daredevil or something.

So onto rAge.

Arriving at the Coca-Cola dome in Joburg, I started to get worried due to seeing rather lengthy lines to get in. The line for Computicket was however...actually there was no one so I can't even call it a line. I just walked in. So I have to thank Jerome and Krishin for insisting that I buy my tickets beforehand.

Once inside, I discovered that there were so many people I could hardly move. I also had no idea where I was supposed to be going. There was a map but I didn't see it, probably due to the fact that there were so many people I could hardly see anything. Eventually I ended up at the Unplug Yourself booth, and Francois kindly directed me to the Heroclix tables, which took a while to get to. I don't think I need to explain why.

Once I arrived there, I met up with the other guys from Durban. For those of you counting, the players from Durban were Kureshan, Krishin, Peter, Brandon, Kavi, Keegan, Chris and myself. Kuri and Krish had already qualified, and were just there to cheer the rest of us on. The judge, Deon, was dressed in a complete Guy Gardner Green Lantern outfit, which was rather impressive.

My first game was against a Joburg player playing M10 Iron Man, Splitlip and the Book of the Skull. As a reminder, my team was Angela, Mantis and Major Victory, using the Guardians of the Galaxy additional team ability, and supported by the Green Lantern Power Battery. Because outer space. He won the roll, and decided to go first, moving out Iron Man and Splitlip. I assume he was planning to drop hammers on his second turn, but Splitlip was now close enough for Angela to knock him out on my first turn. This slowed Iron Man down long enough for Major Victory to come in and defeat him, with Mantis assisting.

My second match was against Chris, who was playing the long-range Phantom X (I refuse to use the French spelling of his name because he isn't French), along with Black Talon (who sounds cool but is actually just a guy in a chicken suit), Weasel and the Indigo Tribe Power Battery. Those of you who know us will be aware that our games tend to devolve into rules-lawyering arguments (and it's my fault just as much as his). This was no different. I feel kind of bad that I completely forgot about the first-turn-immunity rule, which gave me a significant advantage as Angela crashed in and messed up Black Talon's day. She then blades'd Phantom X for 6, before getting knocked out. Chris' Weasel tried to heal Phantom X, but accidently knocked him out instead. Oops. Two wins for me, though I didn't really deserve this one.

My third match was against Brandon's team which was a similar idea to Chris' but used Cyborg instead of Phantom X, and a White Lantern Power Battery/Entity combo to bump up Cyborg's stats. The weakness of Cyborg is that you can destroy the objects he is using to increase his range. I just couldn't work out how to destroy them fast enough. Angela did a lot of damage, but not quite enough, and I lost. After the game, Kuri pointed out that I could have used Mantis to give Major Victor an extra attack instead of using it on Angela, which would have taken out the objects. I think more practice would probably have allowed me to come up with that idea myself.

Depite the loss, I had done well enough to get through to the Sunday, along with most of the other Durban players, with only Kavi and Keegan missing out. Part 3, which will finally explain the title of this series, is coming soon!

Above the Storm: Part 1

This is the story of my trip to rAge. It starts, of course, two weeks before rAge. I was seriously thinking of quitting Heroclix. I was frustrated with loopholes in the rules, figures being inconsistently worded, and...entities. The less I say about those the better. There was also the fact that I just didn't like any of the Marvel sets, causing most people to think that I was actually a DC fan.

Which was why I had hardly looked at the Guardians of the Galaxy set. I really should have, because I've been a Guardians fan since I decided I needed more sci-fi and bought the first issue of Abnett and Lannning's Guardians of the Galaxy comic, and saw the misfits bungle their way to saving the galaxy, not because they wanted to, but because there was no one else. Well, actually, that's not entirely true, they were doing it due to Mantis exerting subtle mind-control on them, convincing them all that it was a good idea to follow Star-Lord (it really wasn't). But this is beside the point.

When the shoppe held the 'Win a Plane Ticket to Rage' tournament, I didn't really want to play. But someone had to open the door and run the till, and since I was doing that, I thought I may as well play because tournaments are always better with more people. When my sister asked what I'd do if won, I laughed and said 'I'm not going to win.'

And then I did.

So suddenly I was going to rAge. I needed a place to stay and a team. Fortunately I have family in Joburg, and my aunt and uncle were happy to not only give me a bed to sleep in, but transport and meals as well.

Next I needed a team. I can't quite remember how I came up with the Guardians team. I know I walked away from the plane ticket tournament owning only four. I must have decided Aleta cost too many points, which left me with just Angela, Mantis, and Major Victory (none of them were in the movie, because there is such a thing as too many characters). When I looked at their powers, it suddenly occurred to me that Vic and Mantis could get Angela across the entire map in one turn. That meant I could deal with the nasty Highfather team. There was enough room for a resource - and it had to be the Green Lantern because needed the willpower.

Getting across the map in one turn wasn't entirely necessary. No one really knew what the figures did, and the' usual' play was instead to make two attacks with Angela on my first turn. I practiced as much as I was able to with the team (which wasn't as much as I wanted to).

The only other problem was that I had never flown before, and I am scared of heights. Now people had told me that it wasn't the same - but none of them were scared of heights, so I didn't really believe them. As it turned out, I was in a middle seat, in a row that did not have a window, between a man who spent the trip reading his newspaper and a lady who slept the whole way. So the whole flying thing turned out to be rather disappointing.

Oh, and my flight was delayed by 20 minutes. Of course. And on that note...I'm out of time for now, and we haven't even gotten to Joburg yet. This will need a part 2.