Salkafar

Impressive they had the nerve to call him 'Black Adam'. But how will this work? Nobody can defeat Khem-Adam except Captain Marvel or Shazam himself.

Same here. I started in on the first episode but it was a little cringy. So I'll wait to swallow it all in one go, like a sort of weird movie

Welp. Apparently Mephisto is at it again.

The Eternals were not originally meant to be part of the Marvel universe. They were folded in later and nobody really knows what to do with them mostly because they are so powerful they break the game.

Jason Aaron is a blight. I already said it but it bears repeating.

They finally made the Abomination interesting again after decades of abuse.

Jason Aaron is like an inverse King Midas: everything he touches turns to trash. The Eternals are typically depicted as about as powerful as normal Asgardians, although they also have superpowers. Thor and Odin are well above average, though, but that is because Odin is a Skyfather who was merged with his two brothers, and Thor's mother is an Elder God. The Elder Gods were the first beings created by the Demiurge, the sentient life force of Earth itself - ethereal titans of immense primal power. Almost all of them became corrupt and turned on each other, and were ultimately destroyed by Demogorge, the monstrous battle-form of Atum, the Sun God. After he had consumed all the corrupted gods, he expelled their raw god-stuff which blanketed the Earth until it was stirred into life again when the first thinking beings filled it with their dreams, hopes, aspirations, ideals and fears; then, from it were born the gods and devils we know. Marvel comics used to be pretty great.

Um...

Well, in the comics, it's like this: about 800,000 years ago, the Earth was visited by giant cosmic gods that we call the Celestials. They took the ancestors of humanity - Homo erectus, at the time - and transformed some of them through genetic engineering. The first group, however, turned out to be genetically unstable, so that each individual was unique, and over time cullings were deemed necessary to dispose of those who were too monstrous. They ended up living in vast cities underground. These beings are known as the Deviants. The second group were pretty much perfect. They were beautiful, intelligent and gifted, and the Celestials made them part of the 'system', that is to say, the Earth, so that the would be immortal; even if they did die, they would be reformed almost instantly in 'the machine'. These beings would serve the Celestials and guard the planet. They went to live on mountaintops and high plateaus. They were known as the Eternals. The third group was seemingly unchanged. They continued to evolve naturally until they had become Homo sapiens, and are known as Humans. However, the Celestials had in fact made changes to the effect that humans can develop super-powers. This is why super-powered people exist at all. This has been Marvel canon for some time now. The mystery was the why of all of this. The maxi-series 'Earth X' tried to explain it: the Celestials reproduce by implanting an embryo of their own kind inside a planet and letting it develop for millions of years as it feeds on the planet's life force. In order to protect the embryo, the Celestials empower the local population to defend it, like a planetary immune system against alien invaders and natural disasters. Earth is one of the few planets that has managed to deflect even Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds; in 'Earth X' it is stated he does not so much feed on planets , or the life force of planets, as he hunts down and consumes developing Celestial embryos. The movie will likely go its own way, though.

Yes and no. Shang-Chi traditionally was the son of Fu Manchu; Marvel owned the rights to use him back in the Seventies. They lost those rights later, or they just lapsed, so they re-named him 'Zheng Zu' (but always added "Although that is not your real name, Father" or something). Now, Fu Manchu was only one of several Yellow Peril characters at Marvel and not nearly the most interesting one. And they wanted to use the Mandarin but they didn't know how without offending the Chinese, so they resolved it rather creatively in 'Iron Man 3'. But now they just fused Fu Manchu/ Zheng Zu and the Mandarin into Wen Wu, who has nothing in common with either character (but whatever). Not muh Mandarin is what I say. Well, he IS an abomination... and 'Immortal Hulk' is a horror book. I was hoping for the original and the clone to merge. The clone is basically a suit, after all.

I meant that Marvel has now become self-referential. I liked him as a villain, even if I did not like the way he looked.

Captain America's shield has broken several times. On Battleworld during the original Secret Wars, by the power of the Beyonder wielded by Doctor Doom. By a lingering weakness in the structure which was exacerbated by Klaw, the Master of Sound. By Molecule Man, who simply desintegrated it (but, well, he's Molecule Man) By the Serpent, Odin's evil brother, empowered by the fear of everybody in the world "he used the armored suit again to kick the crap outta Tony" I am sure he would have wanted to, but he could never have. The armor was years out of date, and Tony was wearing his most advanced armor to date. If they had not been crushed by a falling helicarrier, Tony would have crushed Cap.

Very possibly. I once read an issue of 'Fantastic Four' where the twist turned out to be that the Ultron seen in that issue - who had transformed from an innocuous desktop computer - was not made of Adamantium like he usually is, because then Ben Grimm could not have carried him into the building. That always struck me as odd and out of place. In any event, Captain America has no actual super-strength, just peak human strength.

The 616 shield is informally named "proto-adamantium", an alloy created accidentally by Myron McLain when he was trying to meld what Vibranium the USA had at the time with steel. Because of exhaustion he fell asleep at one point and when he woke up the elements had melded. He poured the mixture into the mold of a tank hatch cover (that's why it's that shape) but was unable to reproduce the process. Years later he did manage to create Adamantium, a steel alloy not incorporating Vibranium, which is almost as strong as the shield. The shield is not extremely heavy. Cap has on occasion wielded an adamantium shield during times when he lost the original; this shield was later given to John Walker.

I bet the timeline Thanos left from and thus became a branch ("the universe without Thanos") was wiped out five minutes after he left by the TVA. He did not have to be wiped from the 'sacred timeline' after that since he was definitively destroyed by the Avengers about an hour after he arrived in the future, along with all his minions. Aha! I just realized why not! Everything that is wiped out, is not really wiped out - it is sent to "Beyond the end of time", let's call it Limbo, to be destroyed by Alioth. I think He-Who-Remains was not confident that even Alioth could defeat Thanos and his minions, and rather than risking it, leave it to the Avengers.