#hydrobase

[avengersmansion-official]

I was reading a marine biology paper by a guy named Dr Walt Newell and when I looked him up for more work it turns out he's like, a superhero in Hawaii or something? And he helped headquarter the Avengers one time. Is this man as cool as he sounds?

We stan Dr. Newell around these parts.

(Avengers file photo of Dr. Walter Newell in his Stingray armor.)

Stingray is a peculiarity among superheroes in that he's strictly a part-time crimefighter. Dr. Walter Newell is one of the world's foremost oceanographers, and invented the Stingray armor to aid in undersea exploration.

The armor is equipped with technology that increases Dr. Newell's strength, speed, and durability for optimal operation underneath the ocean's pressures, as well as the ability to discharge high-voltage electricity for self-defense, and a pair of large glider wings suitable for riding ocean currents.

Initially, Stingray was content to use the suit purely for scientific purposes, but he soon became an ally of Namor, the Sub-Mariner, and met his later-wife Diane through superheroics.

But by and large, Dr. Newell has been consistent about his scientific career coming first, even though he's been a reserve Avenger from time to time. His most lasting contribution to the team's history, though, may well be Hydrobase.

(Map of Hydrobase, also known as Avengers Island, before its sinking)

Hydrobase was Dr. Newell's oceanographic research laboratory, constructed on an artificial island near Manhattan. When the Avengers' flight privileges were revoked by the FAA, Dr. Newell offered Hydrobase as an airfield for the team. Later, the Avengers' headquarters were relocated there in their entirety after the destruction of Avengers Mansion by Baron Zemo and his Masters of Evil. They remained there until its sinking by robots dispatched by Latverian dictator Doctor Doom.

Since then, Dr. Newell has continued his scientific work - first from a station near the Bahamas, and later as part of the Fifty-State Initiative's Hawaiian team, the Point Men.

All that to say: yes, he is extremely cool, and proof that not everyone with powers has to be a full-time superhero - but it's admirable when they can step up to the plate and help when needed.

[nitpickrider]

a bit silly, but if you had to fill an Avengers roster, who would you pick?

Wooof, oh me oh my. Let's lay down some ground rules before I do this. 1). Only people who have been Avengers at some previous point in time. Doesn't narrow it down a LOT but this list would be a jigsaw of my favorite Z-Listers otherwise 2). Limiting it to seven people. That's the magic number with superhero teams and it gives me a reason to stop

Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America: Sometimes you just cannot beat a classic and when it comes to Avengers line ups there is no one that I think is more integral than Captain America. The pathos that he brings to the table no matter what character he is interacting with is palpable and reading through his first big volume has given me a deep respect and love for the character. He's our leader for sure, the axis of solid, steady service I can hang my weirder picks on.

Dr. Walter Newell AKA Stingray: You all saw this coming and don't act like you didn't. One of my favorite if not my FAVORITE Marvel Characters of all time. He's a doctor with an interesting specialization. His "I'm only a part time superhero" hangup is even funnier and more interesting if forced into the limelight on THE hero team. Not to mention he comes with his own swanky Hydrobase we can use for an HQ and with his wife and four kids running around underfoot we have the kind of domestic adorability I think any good team needs.

Miguel Santos AKA Living Lightning: The first time I can ever remember reading about a comic book hero being gay, as just like, part of who they are. A tiny detail in their rich inner life. Not to mention the less respect a character gets the more I want to lift them up on my shoulders. He could be the sweetheart with a little chip on his shoulder from not getting the respect his objectively awesome powers objectively deserve.

Angelica Jones AKA Firestar: Something you may not know about me. The first piece of media that really opened my eyes as to the potential and depth and scope of the Marvel Universe was Spiderman and His Amazing Friends. It was cheesy, it was cheap and yet Angelica was the first character that I felt SPECIAL for knowing and caring about. She's happy, she's passionate, her simple classic costume kicks ass and the New Warriors need their goddamn respect. 'Nuff said.

Sersi, Just Sersi: What little I have seen of this character fucking FASCINATES me. This woman is chaos incarnate. It's like she is actively making on the fly decisions with everyone she meets whether she's going to kill them, screw them, turn them into a small mammal or some combination of the three. She's *Instant Plot Complication Just Add Water* because she saw a butterfly and that somehow translates to her blowing the entire team's cover.

Dane Whitman AKA The Black Knight: I love everything about him. I love his vibe, I love the fact that his backstory is built partially around recontextualizing the lore of a mostly forgotten Atlas fantasy comic. I love that he has a wickedly evil cursed blade that comes with the side effect of basically holding him hostage to a heroic moral code. And on top of that he's a dorky intellectual who can't see a social cue if it's blaring at him from oncoming traffic.

Jennifer Walters AKA She-Hulk: ...I do not feel the need to explain or justify this choice. YOU know Jen is awesome. *I* know Jen is awesome. She-Hulk does not need justification. She shows up in stories and makes them better by existing. Also yes this is the bodytype I'd use. Yes, I have an addiction. No, I don't feel the need to explain that either. RESERVISTS: Characters I really like but either don't know enough about or don't think they make good Avengers

Marc Spector and System AKA Moon Knight: One of my favorite dudes but does NOT play well with others. Was interesting for about 10 seconds as a member of the West Coast team but I'd prefer he never touch the ranks again.

Flint Marko AKA Sandman: Marvel did Sandman fucking dirty by never letting him fully reform and be the good guy. I want Sandman to be the good guy dammit

Maria de Guadalupe Santiago AKA Silverclaw: I know literally nothing about her outside of reference books but her powers are dope and I dig her vibe.

[justdealingwithsomeissues]

So right now Hydrobase is having a funding issue, so Walter is doing anything to keep it going, and that includes selling mining rights to people like Roxxon... which Namor is trying to prevent because there is no way that won't turn out badly.

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #326: WIND from the EAST

November, 1990

Earth's Mightiest Heroes have just fought their newest opponent. Now the Invincible Iron Man has to pick up the pieces. Good luck, Shellhead.

For some reason, the combination of the cover text and everyone being flat on their ass except one person who all hope now lies with against a fiendish foe gives this cover a retro feel.

I can't point to a specific example, it just has an older energy to it.

Anyway. Have you ever noticed that if you squint, the distribution of red versus gold on Iron Man's armor kinda sorta forms an I? With the Iron Panties and the chest piece forming the crossbars? A neat way to give him that superhero initial thing.

Last times in Avengers: Uh. There's been a lot of filler. John Byrne quit over editorial interference and there's been a couple writers since, all doing their own wheel spinning. So we get to the point where the most important last time in Avengers was Avengers Island getting sunk in Acts of Vengeance.

Remember how Michael O'Brien had spent a lot of money getting a new meeting room table for the Avengers, only to be told that Thor wanted to salvage something instead? Yeah, we open on the Avengers making a new meeting table.

It's kinda awesome.

Thor and Sersi forge the big A inlay, with Sersi heating up metal scavenged from girders of the mansion destroyed by the Masters of Evil and Thor Mjolniring the shit out of it.

The Avengers actually let Michael O'Brien help (probably to ease the sting of completely wasting his time before). O'Brien had a table top hand-carved from black basalt scavenged from the sunken Hydrobase.

So the new table is going to be a bit of the previous two bases. With the whole team chipping in to help assemble it. At least, everyone listed on the cover. Quasar has apparently dropped out between issues. Or Larry Hama doesn't want to write him.

But anyway, Thor and Sersi make the A sigil. She-Hulk gouges an A-shaped space in the basalt with her fingernails. Iron Man visits from the West Coast team just to put together all the communication and display systems for the table. And Cap supervises.

As far as throwaway downtime sequences go, I quite like this.

Since the Avengers are incorporating their history into the new table, Sersi decides to give Captain America a little gift. He had a scrapbook of Avengers adventures that was lost when Hydrobase sank. Sersi used a mysterious Eternal space-time bending process to recreate it.

That's nice of her.

While looking at a Daily Bugle photo of the Avengers fighting the Masters of Evil in issue #6, Iron Man almost says he was in that fight before doing a verbal backspace.

Iron Man: "Look at that front page photo from the 'Bugle'... the old Avengers battling the Masters of Evil! That was some fight we -- uh... I mean, you were in!" She-Hulk: "Sure, dude. That was the other guy in the tin suit, right?" Iron Man: "Absolutely. We are all well aware of the death of the original Iron Man..." She-Hulk: "... and you're just another anonymous employee of Stark Enterprises!"

I still have no idea why Tony is pretending he's not Iron Man to his Avengers friends. As a running subplot, it's not going anywhere. It's just repeating Iron Man saying that he's totally not the same guy they had three hundred adventures with and whichever Avenger he's talking to going 'riiiiiiight.'

Speaking of running subplots, there seems to be some conflicting writers on whether Jarvis suffered permanent damage to his vision after being beaten half to death by Mr Hyde.

Some writers still portray him wearing it. In this comic, Larry Hama has Jarvis call the eyepatch silly.

Anyway. Plot.

Big, buff black superhero Rage rings the doorbell of the Mansion construction site and says he's here to sign up to be an Avenger.

Jarvis tells him that one doesn't just show up and ask to be an Avenger. Factually incorrect, Jarvis. A lot of people do that. Like Hawkeye. But Jarvis also says that there's a lot of security checks and testing that one must go through.

Rage sees this as a runaround and just kinda walks in despite Jarvis.

Captain America comes to find out what the hubbub is and Rage asks the pretty legitimate question of why the Avengers don't have any African-American members.

Geez, this is a question that comes up somewhat frequently. You'd think that it would sink in or something.

In an in-universe sense, the Avengers just kinda form teams based on whoever is available. In an out-of-universe sense, it's a very legitimate criticism to lob. Why don't the Avengers have reflect the diversity of America better? Didn't the Avengers used to have a black chairwoman? What happened to her? Oh, an old white man manipulated her out of a job? That's a bad look.

Captain America responds, hey, what about Black Panther and Falcon! I have some black friends!

And Rage goes, they're not here, are they? And more specifically, he points out that Black Panther is a rich king. And that Falcon only joined the team because the government demanded they meet equal opportunity standards. (Wait, how do you know THAT?) Anyway, it sounds like Falcon is retired or something at the moment?

(Neither of them mention Monica. Who, y'know, led the team!)

Captain America: "You're beginning to tick me off, Rage... First off, nobody just walks in and gets to be an Avenger -- no matter if they're white, black, yellow, or green, for that matter!"

Again, factually incorrect. Starfox showed up from another planet and asked to join. And the only hurdle that required was for him to change his name because Reagan said so.

Captain America: "And just what can you do that qualifies you to be a super hero in the first place?" Rage: "What can I do? I've got super-human strength... I'm virtually indestructible -- And I believe in truth, justice, and the dignity of man."

He raises a good point.

And I like his look. The leather jacket look would definitely make him look unique on the line-up beside all the more superhero-y outfits. But having RAGE on the back of the jacket does meet superhero branding guidelines. Also, luchador mask. Pretty cool.

I don't love the codename Rage though. Superhero codenames that are just Noun are my least favorite.

Anyway, Rage accuses Cap of judging him by his appearance and thinking that he'd be bad for the Avengers' image.

Sersi and the rest of the Avengers wander out to see what's going on and Sersi sees Rage gesturing dramatically at Captain America.

So just as Rage is accusing Cap "I bet you think that I'll resort to violence at any second!", Sersi goes oh no, I bet that guy is going to resort to violence and full force blasts Rage with eye lasers.

Everyone remember that this is all Sersi's fault.

Despite Cap yelling at Sersi to not do this thing, Thor and She-Hulk assume that they're in a fight scene now and rush forward to escalate things further.

She-Hulk: "C'mon and pick on somebody your own size!" Rage: "Is that a challenge?"

Rage didn't start this. But he's not about to de-escalate either.

Cap manages to get everyone to simmer down.

Captain America: "There's been a terrible misunderstanding! Rage wasn't attacking me, he was trying to make a point... in fact a very valid point about perceptions!"

Sersi defends herself saying that she felt a lot of hostility in the scene before she eye lasered and Cap has to explain to the millennia old woman that conversations can be angry sometimes.

Rage decides that Actually, he doesn't want to be part of this "stupid organization anymore", which is more than valid.

Rage: "All you ever do is bash cosmic menaces off in some alternate reality or battle bad guys who have nothing better to do than destroy your headquarters! Nobody cares if super-villains fight super heroes! That don't mean diddly-squat to some kid in the inner city... I just want to use my powers to make life better for mankind, and if you don't know it, most of mankind is the little guy who never gets the benefit of your heroics!"

Then he slams the door behind him and walks off.

Hm. This is also something that comes up with the Avengers a lot. The idea that stopping alien invasions isn't Real. It's an argument that makes more sense as an out-of-universe argument than an in-universe one.

It doesn't matter to the little guy that the Avengers stopped a giant metal space man from eating the Earth? That's what we're going with? That's a dumb thing to say.

Benefit of the doubt, maybe this is more a statement of intent from Larry Hama about what kind of Avengers run he wants to do. As opposed to the cheap shot it usually is when some random person says that Avengers don't deal with Real Problems.

I do have to say, I like what Larry Hama did here by starting the issue with the Avengers being all chummy and building a table together and then assuming the worst of an outsider.

Paints the Avengers as maybe being a little clique-ish. Like maybe they need a new person to join and shake things up a little.

Anyway, Iron Man missed all of the Rage stuff but he shows up to tell them that Plot is happening.

Interspersed with the Rage conversation, there's been other stuff going on with Raymond Sikorski, National Security Council guy and liaison to the Avengers, arranging for Lt. Ramskov, hero of Chernobyl, to get a bone marrow transplant from Dr Estivez at Metropolitan General Hospital to treat his leukemia.

The man very heroically braved Chernobyl to shut down a steam pipe that was blasting radioactive vapor into the atmosphere, despite knowing his radiation suit would not be sufficient to protect him.

Problem though. Nobody told Dr Estivez so she is positively alarmed when a crane drops a man in a big containment suit with a radiation symbol on it.

She is further alarmed to hear that Lt. Ramskov has received experimental treatments at Tyuratam. Which is a space center and not a hospital.

These are legitimate concerns. But before you go thinking Dr Estivez is a total voice of reason, when she's giving Lt. Ramskov a look-over, she notices the containment suit is pumping sedatives and muscle relaxants into his bloodstream, she decides to disconnect the pump without asking why.

Granted, her objection is that she can't operate on a dude with unknown drugs in his system but... c'mon. Don't just pull things loose from a containment suit!

Without the drugs, Lt. Ramskov wakes up and starts glowing.

And then he melts through the floor.

... I feel like everyone in the room should get tested for radiation exposure.

Anyway, Sikorski decides this boondoggle should be the Avengers' problem and calls them in. And that brings us back around to Iron Man telling the rest of the team about Plot.

And as the Avengers investigate the hole in the hospital floor, it turns out I was wrong. Ramskov didn't melt through the floor. There's no sign of melting. No increase in the background radiation level. Iron Man sciences that it was quark manipulation what done it.

I don't have enough of a science brain to figure out what that means.

Ramskov's handler/escort, Ms Zhukova tells the Avengers that they better not kill Lt. Ramskov, Hero of the Soviet Union, on American soil! That'd be most bad!

Captain America has to tell her that the Avengers don't really make a habit of killing.

At least in these times. Superhero comics have changed.

Dr Estivez tells She-Hulk that the containment suit and the way Ramskov was kept drugged into a catatonic state leads her to believe that the Soviets were aware of Ramskov's abilities and were trying to keep America from finding out about them.

Ms Zhukova is shocked. Offended even.

And then there's an earthquake and the floor collapses, sending Dr Estivez, Ms Zhukova, and She-Hulk down into the pit beneath the hospital.

Well, She-Hulk is obviously fine. She fell through an entire building once, on purpose. The other two women might get hurt, though.

Iron Man and Thor leap into the pit and save the two normal women. She-Hulk declines being caught because "I could fall twice this distance and not muss my hair!"

And she falls to the lowest subbasement. Which looks like a sewer but She-Hulk calls it a conduit tunnel. She spots some footprints on the floor and goes looking for Lt Ramskov.

Thor and Iron Man want to deposit the two normal women back up in the hospital but both insist on joining the search for Ramskov. Zhukova because she is responsible for him and Dr Estivez because Ramskov is under her care and this is a medical problem!

So the two heroes land in the conduit tunnel and, like She-Hulk, start following the footprints.

Meanwhile, Ramskov. He is still hallucinating his backstory, miming turning a valve as he remembers trying to shut down the steam pipe back in Chernobyl.

But the flashback thickens! In his memory, he sees two mysterious figures in lead suits, dismantling a device attached to the reactor. Ramskov chases them because messing with the reactor could lead to a total meltdown!

... I thought Chernobyl had already melted down. But even still, it was not a situation that would benefit from being made worse.

Ramskov is still hallucinating backstory when Thor and She-Hulk find him. And since She-Hulk happens to be carrying a half-melted pipe she found, Ramskov sees the two heroes as the two lead-suited figures from his memory, who assaulted him with a crowbar and a wrench when he cornered them.

Ramskov punches She-Hulk in the head so Thor retaliates and Mjolnirs the Hero of Chernobyl in the helmet.

Meanwhile, Iron Man is walking with Ms Zhukova and Dr Estivez. The doctor repeats what she heard about Ramskov receiving treatments at the Tyuratam Space Center and now Iron Man is suspicious about this whole thing too.

He begins to ask if Ramskov is part of a special weapons program but then there's another earthquake. Iron Man tells the two women to stay put and goes to check on Thor and She-Hulk.

Where he finds them flat on their asses, as on the cover.

Ms Zhukova and Dr Estivez both refuse to listen to Iron Man, though, chasing after him.

Zhukova: "I cannot let them endanger the integrity of Ramskov's containment suit!" Dr Estivez: "He's still my patient, too!"

You could at least hang back a safe distance but no. They chase right up to where Iron Man is and where Ramskov is glowing and just making physics weep.

Iron Man: "Ramskov is emitting energy in wavelengths that don't exist on any scale! He's dismantling vector bosons and doing things to gluons that should never be done!"

That sounds bad!

Still reliving his memories, Ramskov tears open his containment suit as he tore off his radiation suit after it was ripped by the two men in the past times. Which just intensifies the energy he's putting out in the present.

I hope Thor and She-Hulk's gluons are okay.

Meanwhile, Rage is still in this book.

I figured he'd wind up joining the A-plot but it seems he's got his own subplot going on right now.

Rage walks up to a building that a drug dealer called L.D. 50 operates out of and tells some prospective customers to beat it because business is closing its doors.

Some of L.D. 50's men come out and try to shoot Rage with bullets from their guns for scaring off the customers and not gtfo-ing when they told him to.

Rage does his best Luke Cage, just walking through the gunfire.

I sorta wonder whether Rage exists because Luke Cage wasn't available to use. There's some overlap in powerset and the names rhyme. But Larry Hama is clear on what his inspirations for the character were and Luke Cage was not mentioned.

The muscle run upstairs to warn their vocabulary rich boss that some bulletproof dude is causing trouble. To his credit, L.D. 50 actually thinks of a possible way to deal with a bulletproof dude. Just throw him out a window.

But Rage didn't need to go upstairs to shut down L.D. 50. He pulled a Cage and now he's pulling a Sampson.

Rage: "This tenement was condemned by the city, but drug money bribed the inspectors and the misery of the people furnished it in luxury... It's about time it all came tumbling down!"

Then he shoves the load-bearing columns and the building starts to collapses. I can see why it was condemned.

I guess that's Rage dealing with the Real Problems tm that the Avengers don't have time for.

Next time in Avengers, the dimension of badly-drawn rocks, apparently. But actually next time, hopping back over to West Coast Avengers for some Great Lakes Avengers! Woo.

Follow @essential-avengers for more excitement noises. Like and reblog and comment and leave money for me under rocks. Any rock will do. It doesn't have to be badly-drawn.

[thatsastepladder]

Avengers EMH season 3.

What stories would have liked to have been adapted or given a twist?

Would you have changed the roster line up and which main member should stay?

For the most part, I like Yost's plan he put on his Twitter a while back, combining Avengers vs. X-Men, Evolutionary War, and the Dark Phoenix Saga as the main ongoing storyline of the season.

I think adding Wanda and Pietro is a must, and Wonder Man coming back seems like it would have been inevitable. I'd like to see Beast if we have Wonder Man as well, but the show shares canon with Wolverine and the X-Men, and i'm not keen on the WatXM Beast design.

For other things that weren't in Yost's outline:

Korvac was done dirty, although it was great to see the Guardians pre-Gunn, complete with Cockney Rocket. I'd like to see another stab at the Korvac Saga.

Avengers-Defenders War could be fun - Hulk, Valkyrie, and Silver Surfer were all in the show already, and Namor and Strange would be easy adds.

There were hints very early on at a Civil War storyline and I think they could have handled it well, but what I'd really want from that is an adaptation of that Fantastic Four issue where Reed testifies before Congress.

I don't think it should be a season 3 story, but Under Siege would be amazing - give some time for Zemo to build his army, then siege the mansion, forcing the team to relocate to Hydrobase. Just a stinger or cold open every few episodes with Zemo bringing another bad guy into his fold.

A few thoughts I haven't fleshed out as much: Immortus and the Legion of the Unliving, Graviton returns with the other Fundamental Forces, Scourge of the Underworld, Celestial Madonna saga?

More information on the original plans here:

[namor-the-submariner-dot-net]

Sunday Sub-Mariner's World

HYDROBASE

This floating island and home to Walter Newell, aka Stingray, mainly shows up in the Avengers, who rented it as an alternative air field. However, its first appearance was in Sub-Mariner 61. It was created by Bill Everett and Win Mortimer, and was originally the base for Dr. Hydro.

Eventually it was sunk, but raised and repurposed as Hydropolis in Namor's 90s run.

More info here:

Source

[sebeth]

The Atlantis of Marvel Universe

[dberl]

Maybe building our headquarters on top of a giant inflatable raft was a bad idea...

SUNK O.O

[tracyswimmer5]

Secret to Success ..... #krankcyclefusion #differenttrainingyieldsdifferentresults #hydrobase #liveheartratetracking #justtryit #calorieburningparty #workforit (at Blair Regional YMCA) https://www.instagram.com/p/BwDme4unuEq/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=lhhzjy1d6iw6

[avengersmansion-official]

Welcome to Tumblr!

I'll start with a relatively softball question, which, yes, I could get from the official Avengers website, and an abbreviated version of which I have from a newspaper clipping about their first official announcement, but let's have it again. How did the Avengers first meet and decide to become a group?

I actually answered this already, but I'll give you another angle on it!

So the basic story is as follows: the original five Avengers (the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man, Wasp) met after Thor's brother Loki tricked the Hulk into a rampage in order to pit him against Thor. The other four heroes answered a distress call meant for the Fantastic Four, and the five of them teamed up against Loki. At the Wasp's suggestion, they decided to remain a group thereafter.

Captain America joined soon after, replacing the Hulk, and the rest is largely history.

However, what's lesser-known is the operational structure of the Avengers during those early days. The Avengers were (and still are, to an extent) governed by a team charter:

(a digital scan of the original Avengers charter)

This charter, drawn up by one of Tony Stark's lawyers and ratified by the original members, defined the scope and structure of the Avengers' operations during those key early years. Most crucially, it did three things:

It defined the team's legal status - officially deputized and sanctioned as a peacekeeping force by the United States government, the UN, and SHIELD, meaning they could apprehend supervillains and stop disasters with a good degree of operational freedom. (largely aided by Captain America's ties with Nick Fury.)

It defined the team's nonprofit status, protecting them from being affected by corporate interests and allowing them to go against groups like the Zodiac and the Corporation with impunity.

It established the purpose of the team - not as those who might try to define a path forward for humanity, but as peacekeepers and sentinels. "Watchers on the rim", as a popular book series might put it.

Notably, the charter doesn't specify what the bylaws of the team were, only that there were bylaws. What were they? I, somewhat embarrassingly, don't know. All existing copies of them were destroyed and unrecoverable when Hydrobase sank (a disaster for data preservationists like ourselves, and a good advertisement for having off-site backups), and a new charter was established shortly thereafter, with its own set of bylaws. Maybe I'll ask Ms. van Dyne if she recalls what they were.

From what little I could gather, we know that early on, chairmanship of the group was on a rotating basis, and there was a strict meeting attendance policy, with penalties possibly up to and including expulsion from the team for missing scheduled meetings. Additional requirements, such as a seven-member active roster and racial diversity quotas, were later foisted upon the team by the United States government.

Other than that, little is known, because, again, the meeting minutes were destroyed with Hydrobase, and due to certain... issues involving the Vision, database sharing between the Avengers and their West Coast counterparts was often a fraught situation.

[infopresse]

Martinique - Explosion et incendie dans un bâtiment de l'hydrobase du port de Fort-de-France

Martinique – Explosion et incendie dans un bâtiment de l’hydrobase du port de Fort-de-France

Explosion et incendie dans un bâtiment de l’hydrobase du port de Fort-de-France …Explosion et incendie dans un bâtiment de l’hydrobase du port de Fort-de-France #AnonynewsFrance , #InfosPresses

[docgold13]

365 Marvel Comics Paper Cut-Out SuperHeroes - One Hero, Every Day, All Year…

Supporting Character Supplemental - Stingray

Dr. Walter Newell is a brilliant oceanographer and engineer.  He supervised the construction of a domed, underwater city in the Pacific Ocean with plans to use it so to grow food for mankind. The city was attacked by the Plunderer who was stopped by Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner and Lady Dorma.  Unfortunately, the domed city was destroyed in the battle.  Later Dr. Newell aided The Sub-Mariner in a fight with the villainous Tiger Shark.

Some time thereafter, Dr. Newell created a sophisticated suit for deep sea exploration. He took the name Stingray after basing some of its design on manta rays.  As The Stingray, he would embark on a number of adventures alongside Namor, The Incredible Hulk, The Thing and The Avengers.  Newell and his wife later became the caretakers of the aquatic Hydrobase, which has acted as the headquarters of the undersea team, The Deep Six as well as a temporary base of operations for The Avengers.  

The hero first appeared in the pages of Tales to Astonish #95 (1967).

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #296: HEARTS of OAK... and HEADS to MATCH!

October, 1988

The Beginning of the END!

Yes, good, let this end.

This run is a bummer.

But hey, the Hearts of Oak... and Heads to Match title is a Pogo reference. That’s fun!

What’s with all the quote titles lately?

Anyway, back to Dr Druid putting Black Knight out of his misery. And mine.

It is a sad state when the Avengers have been reduced down to four and half is trying to kill the other half because Druid is an asshole.

Last times in Avengers: Hoo boy, where to start.

Dr Druid has been having ominous sex dreams about a lady who is secretly Nebula Kang and will later be revealed to be even more secretly Ravonna but its not written like she is now but honestly she’s not written like she’s Nebula either.

Under the influence of sex dreams, Dr Druid undermined Avengers chairwoman Captain Marvel Monica Rambeau, made her stupid herself almost to death, and then used psychic voter fraud to get himself made the new chairman.

Nebula Kang Ravonna needs the Avengers to find some super-duper-secret-weapon that the Council of Kangs is looking for. Playing on Dr Druid’s arrogance and power fantasies, she has him pretty thoroughly under her thumb and he can keep Black Knight and She-Hulk under his own thumb. But Thor resists the psychic whammy so Nebula Kang tries to get Thor killed by robot T. Rex from the future that’s more than meets the eye.

She-Hulk and Black Knight shake the psychic control when Druid tells them to ignore Thor’s calls for assistance. Black Knight manages to escape and help Thor beat the robot T. Rex notTransformer but She-Hulk is left in Dr Druid and Nebula Kang’s clutches.

Also, Black Knight fell out of an airplane and into a lake and is under the effects of a turbo curse so he had to go to the hospital.

And Thor isn’t the type to patiently sit in the waiting room reading old New Yorkers.

After Thor finishes walking his way through hospital staff trying to get him to chill, he finds Black Knight’s hospital bed empty.

A doctor shows up, lightly chides Thor for not chilling, and tells Thor that since Black Knight’s life wasn’t in danger but he was too dangerous to keep in a hospital bed, they let him go.

He’s out back, in the parking lot. Being accosted by reporters who have somehow already heard about the thing where Black Knight’s body is as sharp as a sword.

Apparently, between issues, Black Knight sliced right through a hospital bed and several floors to land in the basement.

That sure would have been fun to ACTUALLY SEE.

Bah.

Thor has not much patience for the first amendment.

Thor: “Better a company of Frost Giants than a gagle of reporters!”

He swings Mjolnir around to kick up a strong wind and obscure himself and Dane, Black Knight, from view.

Thor asks Dane how he’s doing. And Dane recap/confirms that his curse is still cursing him.

He’s fused into his armor and his hand slices through stuff like a sword. He can control it if he’s awake though. In case you wanted to be a clever dick, flipping through the pages and going hey why isn’t he cutting through stuff there, why isn’t Dr Druid filleted like a fish?

Oh. Speaking of which.

Black Knight tells Thor that Dr Druid is a dick, he’s using mind control on the Avengers, he tried to stop Dane from coming to Thor’s aid, and that he has She-Hulk bound to a chair.

Thor and Black Knight hammer-throw-fly off to Hydrobase and the reporter who is a winking reference to Superman shows up again, although his hair is the wrong color.

Hi, Clark, random journalist.

In Simonson’s Thor run, which is actually good, Thor in his new secret identity of guy in glasses and ponytail bumped into a journalist named Clark. They both almost sorta seemed to recognize each other.

So a journalist named Clark saying that he imagines Thor puts his hair in a ponytail when he’s off-duty is an extension of that joke.

And now I’ve explained it and its surely just as funny as if you’d gotten the reference without help.

Back at Hydrobase, Dr Druid, Nebula Kang, She-Hulk, and Jarvis hi Jarvis! see the CNN report showing Thor and Black Knight leaving the hospital.

Nebula Kang is basically in-charge now, as she starts making plans on how to deal with Thor not being as dead as she'd prefer.

She asks She-Hulk if she can handle Thor.

She-Hulk: "No problem. Those blond brains are strictly Stone Age vintage. It would never occur to him to watch out for a woman!"

??? What

And Dr Druid will handle Black Knight. Er, I mean, he'll handle correcting Black Knight's misunderstanding of the situation! Haha we're all friends here!

Meanwhile, god dammit we're still doing the Council- my mistake, the Cross-Time Kang Korps plot.

Beard Kang is announcing to the Kollected Kangs that this entire organization is a waste of time and that instead of doing anything productive, they've all been canoodling with Nebula Kang. Yes, that's right. All of them.

The best and maybe only good thing that comes out of this entire subplot is that when Beard Kang brings this up, all of the Kangs try to look nonchalant and then blame every other Kang for being a horny idiot while claiming to be above reproach themselves.

Beard Kang: "I can't stand it. The cream of the time travelers. Without an ounce of brain among them."

Beard Kang takes Fred Kang and another Kang who the fuck can tell what his cute nickname is and heads off to handle the Nebula Kang problem himself. Because, again, this entire large Kang Kollective are a bunch of horny idiots who think with their dicks.

Are you enjoying getting to do a Kang story, Simonson? Is this everything you imagined it would be?

I'm sour because nothing done so far has justified bring Kang back so soon after the last big Kang story that also used a big Kang organization.

Back at the A-Plot, Thor and Black Knight arrive at Hydrobase.

The Heavy Metal story made it look like it had way more buildings and none of those quite look like Avengers Mansion, which was airlifted to the island.

Black Knight warns that Dr Druid will be expecting them but Thor says its no big because they've got a Thor. It's him. He's the Thor.

Plus, the Avengers STILL haven't fully rebuilt from the attack of Heavy Metal so most of the defense systems aren't online for Druid to use against them.

Then they see She-Hulk standing over a knocked out Dr Druid.

This would work a lot better on the audience if we hadn't seen She-Hulk planning how to beat up Thor with Nebula Kang.

She-Hulk claims she busted free of that bondage chair and whalloped Druid but good.

She-Hulk: "He wasn't much of a gentleman while you boys were gone. So I didn't feel like being much of a lady."

BUT TWAS RUSE!

Dr Druid jumps up and FZAPTs the back of Black Knight's neck, claiming it will make him much more reasonable.

While Thor is shocked by the sudden attack on his pal, his friend, his rotten soldier, She-Hulk puts a device on Thor's neck as well.

Black Knight tries to fight back against Dr Druid but the doctor just turns up the power on the device and Black Knight falls with a FZZAPT!

Thor tries to fight She-Hulk but the device make him uncoordinated and she's able to knock him around.

She-Hulk: "I've been waiting a long time to knock the arrogance out of you, Thor!"

??? Have you?

She-Hulk holds Thor down long enough for Dr Druid to put additional devices on the thunder god. A total of three "mindbenders."

Dr Druid: "When they awaken, they will be real Avengers at last! Completely obedient!"

Eat a stump, Druid.

She-Hulk is skeptical that the mindbenders will work on someone as stubborn as Thor but blue Nebula Kang assures She-Hulk that the mindbenders work great. Why, they're working so well on She-Hulk (that explains that), the Avenger wouldn't hesitate to jump off a cliff if Nebula asked.

Meanwhile? Beard Kang and co are watching what just happened on a monitor. He's very concerned that Nebula Kang has already taken over the Avengers.

Because, dammit, the Cross-Time Kang Korps was supposed to be doing that!

The Korp really does suck ass at its one mission.

Fred Kang asks for more information since he did bring Nebula's treachery to Beard Kang's notice. He could be more helpful if he knew more.

Beard Kang agrees that Fred has earned the right to know.

Beard Kang: "We have discovered something so big, so dangerous, that even we Kangs could not rival it for power. A Celestial. A renegade Celestial who fell from grace but not from power... and who has, through means we cannot begin to guess at, constructed a weapon mighty enough to threaten the entire space-time structure of the Omniverse! It must be a wonderful thing... and WE want it!

I hate omniverse as a term. Prefer multi-verse. I think omniverse might be the multi-verse of multi-verses but that’s really way too big to be stakes.

Anyway.

This supposed paragon of weapons is located 20 years in the future of where the Avengers comics are in this issue. And in that period of 20 years in the future, there is a massive time bubble "some fifteen years long"!

Cool. That's. Entirely unhelpful as a descriptor.

Huh. Just struck me how history and/or comic book plots repeat themselves.

In the current Avengers comics, the big plot is Kang wanting to get some secret prize hidden in a time bubble and needing the Avengers' help to do it.

Someone must specifically be a Simonson's Avengers fan... but why?

Anyway, there's so much text. The exposition dump is unbelievable.

The Cross-Time Kang Korp Council Whatever got images of the time bubble at the cost of three Kangs. Apparently by the three Kangs driving a ship right into the bubble and exploding.

There's weird probability flux around the bubble so that trying to enter it causes the violent destruction of the craft or for it to just cease to exist.

What the Kang Council Korp Afterschool Club knows is that the only people known to succeed in entering the bubble are the Avengers.

Which Avengers? The current Avengers? Who knows. Probability flux. But definitely a team of Avengers yup definitely won't be only very technically true!

The only thing Beard Kang knows for sure about the group of definitely Avengers is that Thor is with them.

And if Nebula Kang kills Thor for being too hard to control... well, the Kangs will never get the super-duper-pooper weapon thats at the heart of the time bubble.

So here's a weird twist. The Kangs have to protect the Avengers!

Huh! Weird!

(If you'd led with that and had A Kang hanging around the team, I might be more enthused about this plotline, gonna be honest. Kang has to protect the Avengers is a great premise.)

Back at Hydrobase, Nebula Kang is telling the Avengers the score.

Nebula Kang: "You, my salves, you are the key! The Kangs were prepared to wait until the Avengers gathered themselves together to unravel the enigma of the mysterious time-bubble. The Kangs think because they can travel through time, there is no need to move quickly, to strike when the iron is hot! They think they can simply wait until the fire is ready! But I have seized the moment and by the time the Kangs realize what is happening... it will be too late, even for them!"

Mindbent Thor urges that they delay no longer and go get Nebula that weapon!

Of course, he also doesn't really know how they'd even go about that. Mjolnir can't time travel anymore right now.

But Nebula Kang boasts that she's a Mistress of Time because of all the Kangs she slept with and stole technology from.

Nebula Kang: "The corridors of all ages are mine to walk as I will. And it was all so easy. You'd think that none of the Kangs had ever seen a woman before."

This is the plot Simonson decided to bring Nebula back for.

Nebula Kang further exposits (because villains love exposition) that she didn't know about the Council of Cross-Time Kangs (I thought it was the Cross-Time Kang Korp, make up your fucking mind) until she met her first Kang and knew that she could exploit the goober and his technology. And since the Kang was one of the council, she found out about more Kangs that she could seduce.

So she killed her first Kang and took his place.

Real quick though.

I guess this is where Nebula ended up after the Beyonder teleported her.

But she doesn't mention the Beyonder or having been fighting the Avengers previously or that she was teleported to a random space-time and just happened to run into Kang.

If this is picking up Nebula after the previous story, it doesn't feel like it! It doesn't even feel like specifically Nebula, who was mostly a space pirate trading on Thanos' name and his war crime of a spaceship to exploit the Skrull civil war.

Now she's sex infiltrating a secret Kang council that shouldn't exist based on the last Kang story and seeking a weapon that can threaten the OMNIVERSE.

I'm not saying that a character can't shift like that but there's a disconnect. We don't even know for sure that it was being teleported by the Beyonder that threw Nebula in Kang's path.

Which is a shame because getting thrown across space by an unfathomable cosmic entity in a silly outfit after getting embarrassed by the Avengers could be great motivation for Nebula to want to up her game. Get a weapon so powerful that no one could ever mess with her again. And if she can mess with the Avengers on her way, so much the better.

But we get an unexplained Nebula shift into sexmurdering her way to cosmic power and a time prophecy that the Avengers can get into a time bubble for some reason.

I guess it is a good thing that this will be retconned. Because its not a great use of your Nebulas.

Anyway.

On top of all the time technology that she stole with seduction, she seduced information about the Great Weapon and what was needed to get it from the Council and/or Korp.

Maybe there's something to the idea that Nebula Kang is motivated to prevent further Beyonder-esque humiliations because she goes on a rant.

Nebula Kang: "Throughout the ages, power has rested in the hands of the many! The greatest armies, the strongest armadas, the most powerful airships... And though they are terrible to reckon with, such forces are ultimately vulnerable to destruction from within. In time, the struggle of individuals to control such great power ruptures the use of the power! And the entity collapses under its own weight. But what if the power, the living power itself, were in the hands of a single individual and her mindbent slaves? Instead of a chain of command, there is only the word... the word of a living and vengeful god! And the word would be 'death'! In my hands, no being in all the Omniverse would be safe! Neither great fleets of starships nor impregnable fortresses of adamantium would be proof against me!"

How do you know what adamantium is?

Anyway.

I think that's a Cobra man, perhaps a commander obscured by falling debris. After the notTransformers reference the previous issue, I'm not discounting it.

Thor asks for more information about this mysterious weapon but Nebula isn't trusting that information to anyone, not even to mindbent slaves.

She does say that she may have to destroy a universe, to prove that she'd do it.

Does that work as a threat? People can't usually see the destruction of other universes. You can see a nearby city get razed or hear about a calamity befalling another country but its very hard to hear about another universe.

It took a bit of digging for the people in Marvel's march to Secret Wars 2015 to realize that's what they were dealing with.

Nebula Kang: "That weapon is the birthright of the granddaughter of Thanos... and I shall have it!"

Then, Nebula Kang puts Black Knight in charge of refitting a Quinjet with her stolen technology.

Thor is helping carry a variable locus generator over to the Quinjet but Dr Druid yoinks it out of his hands with PSYCHIC POWERS so he can be smug.

Dr Druid: "You see, Avengers, the measure of a man is the development of his psychic facilities... And those of Doctor Druid have been developed to the peak of perfection. Which is why I am the leader of this group. Mind over matter, my dear thunder god. As simple as that."

Which leads Thor to think bitterly about how Dr Druid is showing him up in front of the Nebula, who they all serve.

Even though they're all being controlled by Nebula, Thor is still tired of Dr Druid's shit.

BACK AT THE KANG KLUBHOUSE, the Kangs have decided to send some Kangs to stop Nebula Kang.

They gotta send some Kangs because the Time Bubble is making it hard to spy on the time period she’s messing around in.

The council chooses Beard Kang to represent the Wisdom of the Kangs (lol), Fred Kang to represent the knowledge of the era, and Kang from Earth Mesozoic-24 because he’s one of their finest warriors.

IS HE A DINOSAUR?

Under his mask, I mean. He looks like a generic Kang. Its Beard Kang and two generic Kangs. I know that one of them is Specialist Boy Fred but I can’t pick him out of a crowd.

Beard Kang says they need to avoid alerting the Avengers to Kangs interfering in the time stream because they don’t know how the Avengers will eventually get into the Time Bubble or even which ones will. They don’t want to risk injuring or killing any of the Avengers.

One imagines that interference might also change how time plays out in other ways.

(I wonder if this explains what eventually happens)

Beard Kang also says that since Nebula Kang betrayed the Cross-Time Kang Corps Klubhouse Corporation so she gets the worst of punishments. They’re gonna remove all traces of her from history.

Take that.

Meanwhile, on Earth-616 Time: When this comic was published.

The Avengers and Nebula Kang are all in the Quinjet getting ready to leave.

As security/a dick move, she orders Jarvis to stay where he is until they come back. And to not reveal anything to anyone. “You will die of a heart attack if necessary first.”

Fiend. Evil.

Jarvis is a delightful guy and you are a rude.

The Quinjet skreacckt! BOOM!s away with its super special FTL drive.

And immediately after, the three Kangs show up.

Mesozoic Kang is fascinated that this is a Jarvis because the Jarvis he knows is so different.

Beard Kang calls Mesozoic Kang a lizard SO I GUESS HE IS A DINOSAUR?

Would it have killed to give him a cooler design than generic then?

One of the two generic Kangs demands Jarvis tell them where the Avengers are but Jarvis refuses. The other generic Kang suggests breaking the mindbender that is mind bending Jarvis’ mind but Beard Kang says that if they didn’t properly decrypt it, the removal would kill him and they still wouldn’t know anything.

And Beard Kang’s time probe can’t find the Avengers because they’re hidden by multiple probabilities. Probably because of the infinite improbability drive variable locus generator.

Beard Kang declares well dangit they’ll just have to go after the Avengers no matter the danger!

Not sure how they’re going to do that if they don’t know where the Avengers are but hey. But hey. Kangs work in dumb ways.

Meanwhile in the future, yes meanwhile in the future, the time turbulence buffets the Quinjet.

It even looks like the Quinjet will be shaken apart.

Why, there’s even a red light on the left existential turbine! The Quinjet drops to 94% existence! Good thing they can increase power to the redundancy generator!

I’m sure this all makes sense.

But with Nebula Kang’s insistence that they either make it through or die, they do make it through.

Not through the Time Bubble, no. Not yet. But through the time turbulence around the Time Bubble.

That’s sure. A bubble.

I guess.

In fairness, I don’t know how you’d visualize a bubble, in time, and also in space so it may as well look like stained glass. More interesting to look at.

The new issue ends this specific arc but you know how it is. We’re alternating over to West Coast Avengers.

Follow @essential-avengers​ because what if this story suddenly gets really, REALLY good? Its hypothetically possible! Like and reblog and comment, maybe. I love the feedback.

[marvelman901]

Super-Villain Team-Up vol 1 3 (1975) . If Vengeance Fails! . Written by Jim Shooter Penciled by George Evans Inked by Jack Abel Colors by Ellen Vartanoff Lettered by Gaspar Saladino and Ray Holloway Edited by Marv Wolfman Cover by Ed Hannigan, Joe Sinnott and Irv Watanabe . The Sub-Mariner and Doctor Doom joined forces to defeat Doctor Dorcas, Tiger Shark and Attuma... . See more relevant content here: #marvelman901submariner #marvelman901drdoom #marvelman901drdorcas #marvelman901tigershark #marvelman901tamararahn #marvelman901attuma #marvelman901atlantis #marvelman901edhannigan #marvelman901joesinnott #marvelman901georgeevans . #submariner #joesinnott #edhannigan #70s #drdoom #drdorcas #tigershark #attuma #georgeevans (på/i Hydrobase) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cpg5Q7VKxrl/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[sineala]

Is 616 Tony a Democrat or Republican or neither? I’ve seen posts comparing him to Trump (barf!)

Wow. Geez. You don't ask easy questions, do you, anon?

First off, I am going to assume that whoever was comparing 616 Tony to Trump was trying to slander Tony. And I will tell you that we do in fact have 616 Tony's canonical opinion of Trump -- yes, Donald Trump exists on Earth-616 and has been referenced in several comics -- and he doesn't seem to like him much. I mean, this is back when Trump was primarily being known for being a New York businessman. They canonically ran in the same circles and Tony canonically knows him. He doesn't like him.

Here's Tony in Iron Man v1 #227 complaining that Trump bought him out of a building:

And here's Tony again in Iron Man v3 #37 being not especially thrilled when he thinks that the person he is about to meet is Trump:

(The person he is actually meeting is Tiberius Stone, which is also a very bad idea.)

I am also going to point out that due to the way Marvel likes to handle politics in its comics, I don't think we can say anything about the canonical political affiliation of most characters, because Marvel deliberately leaves that undefined. So to the best of my knowledge, we don't have a canonical statement about Tony's political affiliation and we probably won't ever get one.

But we can speculate based on canonical evidence, can't we?

My very long answer is under the Read More.

Your question is sort of framed as "tell me if Tony is a good or a bad person," and I would like to suggest that this is not really a useful framing for several reasons: (1) what the political parties currently stand for is pretty recent, actually, and Tony as a character predates a lot of the modern conceptions of the two parties; (2) the history of the Democratic Party specifically in New York, where Tony is from, is, let's just say, not 100% pure and unproblematic; and (3), when we're talking about someone with the amount of money, connections, and influence that Tony has, party affiliation generally doesn't mean the same thing it would mean for us ordinary mortals. What I mean by that last point is that there is a big, big difference between every one of the following list of statements: "I would vote for Republicans," "I am a registered Republican," "I would give very large amounts of money to Republicans," and "I would accept a political appointment in a Republican administration." For most of us, the last two of those points aren't ever going to be something that comes up in our lives, but they are going to be things that matter very much for someone like Tony Stark. And we have a canonical answer for at least one of those things. We can theorize about at least some of the rest of them.

I'm saying all that because I suspect you're really not going to like my answer.

I think that there is a very, very high chance that 616 Tony is a Republican.

I mean, I don't think he'd be a Republican right now at this exact moment in time, are you kidding me, but I feel like he has definitely been a Republican at some point in the past. Say, before Trump. One of those socially-liberal fiscally-conservative types. With a conscience. Sort of like Mitt Romney. Picture the kind of Republican Massachusetts likes to keep electing as their governor.

Yes, is possible that, since Tony is from New York, he's a lifelong Democrat. It is definitely possible. New York is heavily Democratic in our world, and barring contradictory evidence, that is probably also the case on Earth-616. But I think that, specifically because of the rest of Tony's background and the ways that Tony has interacted with the world of politics in 616, he is most likely to be a Republican. It doesn't mean he couldn't be a Democrat! I have no proof either way! In terms of several elements of his characterization -- say, his commitment to social justice and fighting inequity -- I would say he definitely leans Democrat, because these days that sort of thing is mostly the province of the Democrats, although I suspect that back when Tony was created it wouldn't have been out of character for a lot of Republicans. I'm just saying that Republican seems more likely. If you gotta pick one. I think you could definitely argue for either. He doesn't fit completely into either but his canon interactions with politics push me toward thinking he's a Republican, because he does several specific things that I think it would be unlikely that anyone other than a Republican would be given the opportunity to do at the specific time that he does them.

Yeah. I know.

Right. Okay. Tony is extremely, extremely rich, and even though I know that he is basically the fantasy of The One Good Ethical Billionaire (more on this in a sec), it's probably worth thinking about what actual real-life rich people do with their money in ways that intersect with politics. And the answer to that is, well, generally they give money to politicians who are favorable to, say, helping them continue to have money. Now, yes, as far as I know there is no evidence of Tony doing this in canon -- this is where all the conjecture comes in. So we ask ourselves, okay, if Tony were to endorse particular politicians because of this, what party would he give money to? Who would he want to get in good with? In most parts of the country, that would probably be the Republican party. But, specifically in New York, it's the Democrats.

So, yeah, one of the big points in favor of him being a Democrat is that, well, Democrats traditionally run New York. The class of old-money New York elites are pretty stereotypically Democrats. And that would include Tony. Which is not to say that he couldn't be a Republican, but if he wants to get anywhere with New York politicians, and I suspect he probably does because he is trying to run a series of very large businesses and he owns a fair amount of real estate including several buildings whose permitting processes I can only imagine fall into the category of “probably highly irregular" -- I mean, he has multiple jets that he regularly lands on his house and secret underwater tunnels for a submarine -- he has to cozy up to Democrats. If he gives money to anyone involved in politics, that's who he gives money to. Making superhero bases probably took a lot of money. A massive amount of money. The city planners probably cry when they see him coming.

(At one point I believe they did ban him from keeping the Quinjets in his house. That was when the Avengers had the Hydrobase.)

I tend to assume most people know something about the history of the Democrats in New York, or at least the history of US political parties in general, but the tl;dr version is that the parties haven't always stood for the same things that they do now. They also weren't always the same parties. And historically, in New York, the political machine gives you Democrats. That's just the way it is. The Democratic Party of the past was not really, um, devoted to all the same causes as the current Democratic Party. And it was very hard to get anywhere in New York and not be a Democrat. It still is. If you haven't read up on Tammany Hall, maybe you should. There was a lot of corruption. I mean, yeah, it's not currently a thing, but the Democrats remained in power in New York; it dissolved probably around about the time the Republican Party explicitly decided that the way to win the South was to appeal to the racism of white voters ("the Southern strategy"). Because, yes, before that a lot of white, conservative Southerners were traditionally Democrats. And then the Democrats split about civil rights, and, uh, the Republicans took in the racists.

Anyway! US political history is sure a land of contrasts! Rich New Yorkers are traditionally Democrats! That is a point for Tony possibly being a Democrat, yes. Moving on!

But Tony is not just a random old-money New Yorker. He inherited Howard Stark's money and Howard Stark's company. And Howard was, well, a defense contractor. And so was Tony, until he stopped making weapons. And, uh, being a defense contractor is, um, one of those things that is extremely, extremely Republican. No, I don't have stats to back this up. Just trust me. So, yeah, he's a rich New Yorker -- but he's also a defense contractor from a family of defense contractors. I would be amazed if Howard Stark were anything other than a Republican. Which is not to say that Tony could not be a Democrat anyway, but the job does come with a certain predisposition.

(Incidentally, one of the other things Tony inherited from Howard was his membership in the Hellfire Club, which is one of those things I keep forgetting about until canon smacks me in the face with it every few years.)

We all know that the conception of Tony, as a character, is basically the fantasy of the Ethical Billionaire. He is The Best At Capitalism. He has money and he is not corrupted by it. He has money and he uses it to do the maximum amount of good in the world because that is what he really, deeply wants to do. He supports a large number of philanthropic causes! He has a foundation named after his mother! He funds programs for low-income youth! He runs a homeless shelter for women! Throughout his history, he has been consistently portrayed as a deeply, deeply kind human being, who wants to help people. A lot of people! People who aren't like him! People who might not even like him! That is just... who he is, as a person.

And these days we tend to associate that kind of push for systemic change and caring about social issues and remedying inequity with Democrats, but that wasn't always the case. I think it still would have been believable coming from a Republican, oh, around about the time Tony came into existence. He was created back when you could be an elected Republican and, uh, push social policies that I think these days we would consider progressive. I mean, Eisenhower was the one who started integrating schools, right? The Republicans are the party of Lincoln! It's not like Republicans are prevented from doing good things. And I think we need to keep in mind that Tony dates from the early 60s when socially-progressive was still a thing Republicans could conceivably be.

So, yes, Tony is very kind. It's nice. We all like that about him. But also many of the ways in which he is kind to people are very much Republican fantasies. Like, yes, he's a great boss. He's close to his employees. They're like family. If any of his employees have problems, he helps them out on a personal, individual level -- and that, as an ideal, seems very Republican to me. I mean, he's a CEO, right? He's owned a lot of companies. Are any of them unionized? Combing through Wiki, I find one reference to a union in ToS 63, which is really, really early -- you know, back when unions were more popular. I can't find anything after that. And nothing is coming to mind. So, I mean, yes, we have now established his employees were at one point unionized, but he's certainly not known for, say, running a union shop. Part of the fantasy of the Ethical Billionaire is the idea that Tony's employees don't need unions because Tony is so kind and so generous and so personally selflessly good that he takes care of everyone who works for him. And the thing is, Tony actually does do this. He is fictional and therefore capable of achieving perfection.

Okay. He's a fictional character. Let's step back a little and think about fictional characters, and specifically the way Marvel Comics depicts fictional characters interacting with well-known real people. Many real people from our Earth do seem to exist in 616. Earth-616 is not our Earth in a vast number of ways, but one thing it shares with our Earth is presidents. Whoever is the real-life president when a comic comes out is pretty much generally president on Earth-616 at the time. Yes, I'm going somewhere with this.

Now, for whatever reason, Marvel often does not canonically refer to presidents by their names in dialogue, but the artists pretty much draw whoever is president at the time when someone in canon needs to meet the president. (Captain America seems to get to meet the president a lot. I'm sure you're shocked.)

There are a couple exceptions to "everyone who looks like the president is the president,” namely that Marvel says that the villain who was Number One of the Secret Empire in Captain America v1 #175, who attempted to conspire with aliens to take over the Earth, whom Steve watched commit suicide -- anyway, the official Marvel word is, I believe, that this guy is not Richard Nixon, but Steve Englehart, who wrote the comic, says it absolutely was:

And, yes, this is the incident that causes Steve to lose faith in America and become Nomad. You can kind of see why that would be traumatic. Marvel clearly had some feelings about Watergate they needed to process.

Anyway, I just wanted to put in a picture of that time Ronald Reagan was turned into a snake person. It's Captain America v1 #344:

I love comics.

More recent presidents still make appearances in the comics, and they are the president who was the real-life president at the time. For example, the president who pardons Steve for all his SHRA-related crimes in Who Will Wield The Shield is definitely Obama:

And that means that I must also unfortunately inform you that Hydra Steve also received a presidential pardon:

Though the issue in question (Captain America v9 #8) does not specifically name the president, following the "whoever is the actual president is the 616 president" rule, the president who canonically pardoned Hydra Steve is... Donald Trump.

Let's just pause here to contemplate this. Take as long as you need.

(I was today years old when I learned that Hydra Steve has been dead in comics for over a year. Since the issue in which he was pardoned, actually. Which is an issue I am sure I read the day it came out, but somehow I missed the four entire pages where Hydra Steve is set on fire and burns to death while hailing Hydra with his last breath. I guess it wasn't memorable! I mention because I am pretty sure I am not the only one who missed this.)

Anyway. I do have a point to make here, and my point is this: Tony has received political appointments. Two of them, in fact. In the 2003-2004 Iron Man arc "The Best Defense," Tony becomes Secretary of Defense. He does get Senate confirmation; it's not a deputy appointment. He actually gets unanimous confirmation. And I know that Tony had this job is a fact that everyone knows about Tony, but I feel like a lot of people may not be totally conscious of the timeframe involved here, and by that I mean that he is absolutely, positively, the Secretary of Defense for Earth-616's George W. Bush. Yes, I am sure of this.

Here is Tony with the president in Iron Man v3 #78, being told he got the job:

Yeah. That’s George W. Bush.

Can a Cabinet appointment cross party lines? I mean, sure, it's possible. I am not the kind of giant politics nerd who has this memorized, but there is in fact, a Wikipedia page for US political appointments across party lines. And it looks like there have been five cross-party Secretaries of Defense and five Secretaries of War. So, I mean, yes, it's happened, but it's fairly rare. None of the cross-party Secretaries of Defense (deputy secretaries excluded, since they weren't confirmed, obviously) were ever Democrats appointed by Republicans. And since we're looking at Dubya's administration specifically, it looks like only one of his Cabinet appointees (Transportation) was cross-party. So it looks like he in particular would not have been especially likely to appoint a Democrat to his Cabinet, since in real life he only had the one.

So to me it seems that the most likely party affiliation for Tony has to be Republican, because of this. Sure, the appointment could have crossed party lines. But I feel like it's just... not likely. Being a Republican Secretary of Defense in a Republican administration just seems way, way more possible.

(Also I'd like everyone to remember that Tony is replacing the previous Secretary of Defense because the previous Secretary of Defense was secretly the Red Skull and released an engineered flesh-eating virus at Mount Rushmore. Just, y'know, to set the mood.)

What's more, Tony gets a second political appointment from the Bush administration. It's not a Cabinet position, but he does become the Director of SHIELD in 2007. Here Tony is with the president, slightly earlier, in Civil War #1:

This is not really as good a likeness of Bush as the previous and I guess you could argue that the artist was drawing A Generic Politician but I feel like, y'know, it's probably still meant to be Bush. And Tony may not have wanted this particular job -- we know he definitely didn't -- but he absolutely wanted to be Secretary of Defense. So we know that he is definitely fine with serving in a Republican administration.

So, yeah, that's my argument: odds are pretty good that Tony has, at some point in his life, been a Republican. Maybe not right now. But probably in the past.

Having said that, given the way Marvel handles politics, I don't think it's likely to ever be much of an issue in canon; the Avengers mostly just tend to get to get along with whoever the president is at the time and I can't recall really anything about partisan issues. However, you're never going to convince me 616 Steve was anything other than a New Deal Democrat -- even though I know that in Cap #250 he turns down both the Democrats and the Republicans when they ask him to run for president -- because, I mean, come on. I assume that he and Tony probably try not to discuss politics ever anymore, because we all know how the SHRA went. They probably mostly agree, but when they disagree, people have a tendency to end up dead.

That was probably more than you ever wanted to know about my thoughts on this topic.

[agentsterling]

S.H.I.E.L.D. BASE LOCATIONS

I’ve been compiling a list of as many SHIELD bases I could find from comics, movies, tv shows, cartoons, ect and making a map of them as best I could. Most base names and locations came from here and here. 

Some bases listed the location as classified or unknown. I enlisted the help of @specialagentace, @agentbrompton, @agentariannagrace, and @theebabomination to help find base locations and come up with possible locations for these bases to headcanon. If anyone would like to use our headcanon’d locations, be our guest. If you would like a map devoid of our headcanons, please send me a message and I will provide it for you. If you know of the canon location of a base that we headcanon’d or you see a mistake, please let me know and I will update the map. 

Some of these bases are abandoned or destroyed but I listed them anyway as SHIELD has a habit of reclaiming old bases. 

Below cut is a long list of each base and a link to a description and their location if listed. 

U.S. MAP

New York: + SHIELD Primary HQ + SHIELD Medical Clinic [Beneath Manhattan] + SHIELD Pizza Parlor [Base under a Pizza Parlor] + SHIELD STATION [Research and Development subdivision] + Barbershop HQ [Base under a Barbershop] + Gamma Base One [contain Hulk level threats and gamma irradiated monsters] + The Garage [SHIELD vehicle storage] + The Raft [Prison] + The Big House [Prison - Shrunken Villains] + The Krazy Kanoe [SHIELD Safe house/Speakeasy] + Cocoon [Training Facility] + SHIELD Correctional Facility [Maximum Security Prison]* + The Lighthouse

New Jersey: + Area 13 [S.T.A.K.E. Base] + SHIELD Academy + Camp Lehigh

Connecticut: + Pleasant Hill [Prison] + The Labyrinth [Beneath Pleasant Hill] + Camp Hammond [Superhuman Training Facility]

Washington DC: + Triskelion + Washington D.C. Office [After Triskelion destroyed] + Black Site [Artificial Intelligence Division]

Virginia: + S.H.I.E.L.D. Training Facility*

FLORIDA: + S.H.I.E.L.D. Command Center*

Ohio:  + Brynmore Psychiatric Facility + S.H.I.E.L.D. Dam Facility

Michigan:  + Barracuda [SHIELD Weapons Factory]

Illinois: + The Carousel

Louisiana:  + The Swamp

Nebraska: + The Guesthouse

Texas: + Black Ice [Deep Storage Containment Facility] + Hangar SFC-5* + Ogma*

Colorado: + The Vault [Prison] + Mount Charteris

New Mexico: + Drygulch [Maximum security detention facility] + SHIELD Outpost and Airbase + Slingshot [Dangerous tech disposal]*

Montana: + Kratos + The Playground*

Utah: + Substation 14

Arizona: + The Sunburn*

Nevada: + The Cube [Prison - Alien Criminals] + Area 51

Washington: + The Dock [Shipyard base housing SHIELD Helicarriers]* + The Retreat [Temporary houses enhanced individuals]* +  S.H.I.E.L.D. Research & Development Laboratory*

California: + Joint Dark Energy Mission Facility + Los Angeles Office [2] + Red Worm [Psi-Agent Quarantine and Processing Facility] + Auerbach Theatrical Agency + SHIELD West Coast Command* + Sickle [Used for cadet war games]*

Alaska: + Ulu + The Hub + Utopia [Holding Facility] + The Fridge [Prison]

Hawaii: + The Torch

WORLD MAP

Hydrobase [Oceanography research station] Theta Protocol Facility East African HQ The Sandbox Guyana [The Treehouse] France [The Rat] Egypt [Coventry] Providence [Ontario, Canada] Barbershop Base [Havana, Cuba] Antarctica [Friendship Outpost] Shangri-La [Hunan, China] S.H.I.E.L.D. Trauma Zentrum [Zürich, Switzerland] Immortal City [Rome, Italy]