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Anonymous asked: I'm kind of confused as to why Steve was angry at Tony in Avengers #34 and now he's apparently on good terms with Tony as of Captain America #25 and Axis #1, which take place later on. Will this be explained eventually?

subtextsays:

ylixia:

brevoortformspring:

People seem to be very confused about the overall chronology, so I thought I should maybe lay some stuff out here, because there is one gaffe within it all that seems to be causing a lot of the problems. And that gaffe is Thor’s hammer.

So yes, going back, RAGNAROK NOW/AVENGE THE EARTH happens in UNCANNY AVENGERS. Thereafter. some time later, ORIGINAL SIN happens, during which Steve Rogers regains his knowledge of the Illuminati and what they’ve been doing.

The bit that people seem to be having difficulty with is the fact that Steve doesn’t act on this information immediately. But he does not—he doesn’t make a move until some point within the eight month period we’re now in, leading up to the TIME RUNS OUT issues of AVENGERS/NEW AVENGERS.

Part of that is that he’s dealing with other problems, primarily the loss of his youth and vigor, which happens in CAPTAIN AMERICA. This is where the Thor problem comes in, as because we were working on all of this stuff so far ahead of time, Thor appears in the immediate follow-up storyline in CAP, THE TOMORROW SOLDIER, with his hammer.

Given that Thor doesn’t do anything particularly important with his hammer in that storyline, just assume that that’s a “chronicler’s error”, and that he was actually wielding his axe, Jarnbjorn.

This all takes us into AXIS, where not only has Sam Wilson succeeded Steve as Captain America, but Wolverine has also died, in DEATH OF WOLVERINE. And Thor is again carrying Jarnbjorn.

And at some point over the next few months, we’ll get to the point where things begin to lay out as we see them in AVENGERS #35 and NEW AVENGERS #24 and thereafter. But we’re not quite there yet.

Also, as I mentioned earlier today, Thor having both arms in AXIS #1 isn’t a mistake. You’ll have to keep reading both AXIS and THOR to see what I mean—or you can not, and either simply take my word for it, or decide that I’m crazy and not buy any of it. Totally up to you. But Thor having both arms was an important bit of coordination between the AXIS crew and the THOR crew.

Simple enough, yes?

(And here come the questions…)

Please give your readers more credit than this; Thor’s hammer + arm is a gaffe, sure, but it’s not the problem; the problem is Steve and Tony’s relationship as it currently stands in the continuity.  There may be a universe where it makes sense that Steve and Tony would pal around after Steve finds out about the mindwipe and tells Tony that he’s going to “beat him bloody,” and then gathers the avengers to hunt down the monster that is Tony Stark, but it’s not Earth-616.

I understand that Marvel is a sprawling universe and that it’s hard to maintain continuity with so many cooks in the kitchen, but big events should be controlled a little tighter than this.  Right now the 616 continuity looks like a hot-ass mess, and implying that your readers are confused because they aren’t paying close enough attention is insulting.

Oh come now, we’ve long suspected that fans pay much closer attention to continuity than marvel’s writers and editors.

Not to mention that quite clearly NONE of this is going to stick for more than, oh, a year or two.  If nothing else, Steve is going to be back as Cap in time for the 75th anniversary of his first appearance in 2016.

*rolls eyes*

• 9 October 2014
• 42