UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE EQUALIZER
Classification: Extraterrestrial (possibly Titanian/Eternal) technology
Creator: Unrevealed scientists/technicians (possibly from Titan)
Users/Operators: Thanos (and his space raiders). The Universal Language Equalizer spacecraft was manned by more than twenty warriors.
Aliases: None
First Appearance: Avengers I#125 (July, 1974)
Powers/Abilities/Functions: The Universal Language Equalizer is an enormous machine that can somehow cause anyone within its range to perceive words of any unfamiliar language as being in a language which they know. Its effect extends to both spoken words that are heard and written words that are seen. Exactly how the machine does this has never been revealed but it presumably involves using some form of artificial telepathy to technologically project the meaning of the words into the minds of everyone within its range. A more detailed (and speculative) description of the incredibly complex way in which it might have functioned can be found in the comments section.
The machine's effects on an individual only extend to languages that are unfamiliar to them. If someone was multilingual and the words were in one of the languages with which they were familiar, then their perception of those words would not be affected.
Although not related to its translational ability, the spacecraft that was the Universal Language Equalizer was also equipped with a force field generator. The force field that it projected protected the spacecraft and its solid black outer surface also hid the spacecraft from outside observers. The force field also made anyone who was within it see nothing but blackness outside the field.
Limitations: The Universal Language Equalizer has no permanent effect on those who are exposed to it. If the machine is deactivated or destroyed, everyone within its range would no longer be able to understand spoken or written words from languages that they did not previously know how to speak or read.
The machine was so large that it had to be built into a large spacecraft in order to be moved to where it was to be used.
History:
(Captain Marvel I#33 (fb) - BTS) - As part of his master plan to use the Cosmic Cube to become a god, Thanos
decided to deal with the Avengers by decoying them into space so that he could place Earth in a different
time phase than them. To accomplish this, Thanos ordered his outcast band to attack Earth.
(Avengers I#125 (fb) - BTS) - A Universal Language Equalizer was a vital part of the fleet of space raiders that Thanos assembled.
(Captain Marvel I#31 - BTS) - Wanting witnesses to whom he could brag about his accomplishments
before he killed them, Thanos used the Cosmic Cube to teleport Captain Mar-Vell, Iron Man, Drax the Destroyer
and Moondragon from Avengers Mansion on Earth to Titan, and then imprisoned them alongside his father, Mentor,
and his brother Eros. Thanos then used the Cosmic Cube to teleport himself and his six captives to the outskirts
of Mars' atmosphere to show them the fleet of space raiders that had been waiting there for the sign that Earth
was ready to be plundered by them as the first step in his conquest of the universe. Thanos then showed his
captives that he had already used the Cosmic Cube to shackle Kronos, the incredibly powerful Supreme Titan,
and then teleported them all back to his observatory on Titan.
Soon afterwards, Thanos enacted his Grand Transformation and had the Cosmic Cube change
him into all things in the universe. Then, having accomplished his goal, Thanos released the six captives
and threw the Cosmic Cube at their feet.
(Captain Marvel I#32 - BTS) - After retrieving the Cosmic Cube, Captain Mar-Vell tried to use it to stop Thanos but it didn't work. Mar-Vell concluded that that was because Thanos had apparently drained all the Cube's power into himself.
(Captain Marvel I#32 - BTS / Avengers I#125 - BTS) - The joint Russian-American space observatory Starcore detected a massive space fleet headed towards Earth, and informed the Black Panther.
(Captain Marvel I#32 - BTS / Avengers I#125 - BTS) - The Black Panther told the other six Avengers who were then at their headquarters (Captain America/Steve Rogers, Mantis/Brandt, Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff, Swordsman/Jacques DeQuesne, Thor Odinson, Vision/"Victor Shade") that Starcore had detected a massive space fleet headed towards Earth, one that was much like the one that Captain Mar-Vell had warned the Avengers that Thanos would be sending to conquer Earth. The seven Avengers immediately prepared to fly into space to defend Earth or die in the trying.
(Avengers I#125) - The seven Avengers launched themselves (from Avengers Mansion?) aboard the two spacecraft then in their possession. The Black Panther flew alone in the Zodiac Cartel's captured and rebuilt Star-Cruiser while the other six flew in an Avengers Quinjet that had been redesigned for space travel. The Quinjet was piloted by Captain America.
The two spacecraft (somehow) quickly traveled almost 93 million miles inwards from Earth. Then, as they were both in close proximity to the Sun, the Vision spotted the enemy space fleet and called out, "Look--Just above the Sun--! HERE THEY COME!" As the opposing fleets approached each other, Thor exited the Quinjet, stood astride its hull, and raised his hammer and his hand in a final gesture of proffered peace. However, the aliens immediately rejected that offer by firing at him, so Thor leapt off the Quinjet and began firing blasts of energy from Mjolnir that caused every spaceship they struck to silently explode in the vacuum of space.
Since the Quinjet and Thor were too small, fast and maneuverable for the mammoth attack-craft to target with their weapons, the Star-Cruiser was their only real target so the Black Panther began firing at the attackers while praying that the First Lion grant him the better aim that day.
Aboard the flagship of the Thanos-thralls, the Badoon commander soon observed that the Terrans were resisting them most convincingly and contacted Thanos for help. When Thanos' translucent head appeared on the viewscreen, the Badoon realized that the Titan had achieved the godhood for which he had schemed. The commander told his master that, although he had promised them they would strike Terra unopposed, three defense units were sundering them! Thanos reminded the Badoon that he had also promised them that each of their ships had power enough to ravage a world, and then told him, "You panic needlessly, scum -- Strive On!" Seconds after Thanos' image vanished from the viewscreen, a hole was smashed open in the starship's side, and Thor entered, telling the invaders to behold the power of the God of Thunder and warning that it would be that power that seared their sight for the final time if they did not lay down their arms and depart that quadrant. The Badoon commander reacted by telling his legions to ignore the strange-speaking Terran and ordered them to destroy him, for Thanos! Thor then began battering the crew of the flagship.
Meanwhile, the continuing battle between the Avengers and the Thanos-thralls had moved through space, from close to the Sun to near-Earth space. When Captain America fired a blast from the Quinjet that struck another of the attackers, that now-flaming starship fell into Earth's atmosphere and finally crashed on top of a building in New York City. The citizens of NYC sought shelter where they could wait for the fighting to end.
(Captain Marvel I#32-33 - BTS) - On Titan, Rick Jones had ISAAC teleport himself and the drained Cosmic Cube back to Earth. After Rick arrived in New York City, Thanos appeared (as a translucent head) before him. Remembering that Mar-Vell had concluded that Thanos' ego was his big weakness, Rick taunted Thanos, suggesting that he was afraid to face Mar-Vell in personal combat and that, if he were on their level and not an almighty god, then Mar-Vell would stomp all over him. Enraged, Thanos manifested himself in physical form in front of Rick and challenged him to bring forth Captain Mar-Vell from the Negative Zone. Rick did so and Mar-Vell and Thanos immediately began fighting. However, within seconds, Thanos overwhelmed Mar-Vell and, as Mar-Vell lay on the floor, Thanos began pummeling him.
(Captain Marvel I#33) - After striking Mar-Vell with several powerful punches, Thanos became distracted when he heard a clap of destruction that resounded without. Looking out the window, he watched as one of the space-raiding ships he had sent against Earth crashed into a nearby building. Looking upwards, Thanos saw that the battle above Earth's atmosphere was raging brightly and fiercely, and he concluded that the Avengers must have risen to his bait. Talking to himself, Thanos spoke of how his outcast band would most probably perish in the insane assault against Earth that he had ordered, and that they, like the Avengers, could not comprehend his new power and so had never asked why a god should even consider conventional warfare. Stating that, since Captain Marvel had proven to be no true threat, Thanos used his power to will the inferno caused by the crashed spaceship to be extinguished, and then disappeared as he moved on to other matters of more pressing concern.
(Avengers I#125 - BTS/Captain Marvel I#33 (fb) - BTS) - Thanos used his power to shift the entire Earth and everything on it into a space/time continuum that was one heartbeat ahead of normal. Being off-planet when Thanos did this, the Avengers were now out of phase with the planet but had no way of knowing it.
(Avengers I#125) - With the battle now taking place in space close to Earth, the Black
Panther noticed a patch of solid black directly ahead of the Star-Cruiser. Realizing that it couldn't be
a natural phenomenon and that the invaders might (literally) be behind it, he fired a full charge from the
Star-Blaster at it. When the attack did nothing, the Black Panther realized that the blackness was a force
force and contacted the Quinjet whose occupants had also seen what happened; four of them (Mantis, the
Scarlet Witch, the Swordsman and the Vision) were already preparing to investigate while Cap remained behind
to fly the Quinjet.
After some soap opera-style emotional drama, the foursome exited the Quinjet, with the humans wearing helmets and plasti-garb coverings, and they all jetted clear of the Quinjet. Then, while Cap, the Black Panther and Thor drew the raiders' fire, the Scarlet Witch cast a probability-disrupting hex that shattered the flow of the force field, enabling the foursome to pass through the barrier and see the huge spacecraft that had been hidden behind it (see main image). After the group landed on the hull without being seen, the Vision used his powers to reach his arm through an airlock and open it from the inside, enabling them all to enter the spacecraft.
Once inside, the four Terrans had barely enough time to remove their spacesuits before they came under attack by about twenty armed aliens, one of whom cried out, "The humans should not have been able to find this ship! It is vital they die!" As he battled multiple foes, the Vision wondered aloud about why this multi-racial horde was speaking English. Soon afterwards, the Scarlet Witch's hex power brought the battle to a close by collapsing part of the ship's infrastructure down onto last of those aliens.
Now that they had, for the moment, taken control of the craft, the Terrans looked around. The Vision soon spotted the words "Universal Language Equalizer" written on part of the ship that the hex had collapsed. He then told his companions, "And see what the craft is! Now that we have the time for study, I discern it to be one enormous machine! -- A machine with a name -- clearly inscribed in English!" Mantis reacted to this statement by replying, "English? This one reads the words in Vietnamese!" Realizing what that meant, the Vision stated that the machine must cause anyone within its range to perceive words of any language in his or her own tongue. When the Swordsman stated that this was how all those different races communicated, the Vision agreed. The Vision then spotted a secondary device that was clearly labeled "force field." While commenting that probably only Thanos knew in what language those words actually were inscribed, the Vision pulled the lever to deactivate it.
After donning their spacesuits again, the four heroes left the spacecraft and discovered that they could see the stars again. Realizing that this meant that the entire ship would now be visible to their comrades, the Vision contacted the Avengers, but both spacecraft were already on course for the huge ship which they quickly blasted, causing it to explode.
(Avengers I#125) - The destruction of the Universal Language Equalizer had an immediate effect
on the Thanos-thralls. Suddenly, Aakons could not understand Skrulls, and pilots could not understand navigators,
causing some of the ships in the fleet to collide with each other. Their inability to communicate caused enemies
to not understand enemies and friends to not understand friends, leading the Thanos-thralls to begin fighting
amongst themselves because fear could not understand peace, and violence could not understand anything.
While
their enemies were thusly preoccupied, the Avengers went about blasting the invaders.
(Avengers I#125 (fb) - BTS) - Within an hour, the invaders were in ruins and Thanos' space fleet had failed in its task.
(Avengers I#125 - BTS) - Having dealt the Titan-lord a sound and satisfying defeat, the Avengers returned to Earth aboard their two spacecraft, with Thor proclaiming that Thanos would soon fall before the combined might of Captain Marvel and the Avengers!
However, as they neared the rooftop where they were to land, Mantis spoke up, saying that her feeling of danger had subtly increased since their victory, and her empathy with nature was filling her mind with a gathering gloom. After they had landed, the Vision stated that he concurred with Mantis' misgivings because they didn't really know the limits of the Cosmic Cube and speculated that Thanos could have power to dwarf what they had just seen. The Scarlet Witch agreed but wondered what would be the point? As Wanda stated that she couldn't swallow the idea, none of them noticed Thanos lurking nearby, hidden behind a brick chimney. As he observed them, Thanos thought of Wanda as a fool because who could believe that he would sacrifice an entire fleet as part of his master plan? Thanos then thought to himself that, whether the Avengers won or lost, their mere involvement with his space-pawns had doomed the planet Earth!
(Captain Marvel I#33 - BTS) - As the Avengers approached the doorway leading to the stairwell, the still-hidden Thanos thought to himself that some among them had divined that the attack had been a fraud, but he congratulated himself that none of them could have conceived that the monumental reason why he had decoyed them into space was so that he could shift the entire planet Earth into a space/time continuum one heartbeat ahead of normal and that, since they had been off-planet, they were not shifted and would now discover that they were out of phase with it. As he thought those final words, the six heroes suddenly vanished from the rooftop.
Comments: Created by Steve Englehart, John Buscema and Dave Cockrum.
For those readers who want to know how this storyline ended: In that
room in NYC, Captain Mar-Vell and a holographic projection of ISAAC were joined by an image of Mantis.
She explained how Thanos had placed Earth in a different time phase from that of the Avengers but that
her perfect control of her mind and body was enabling her to maintain an inward vibration that held her
visible to his eyes. Elsewhere in the city, Thanos was bragging to his dark and deadly damsel about how
the gift that betokened his passion, the whole of planet Earth, would soon be laid at her feet, and how
they would soon ravage the universe. However, his gloating was interrupted by Drax who attacked him again.
When the noise of Drax's attack brought Captain Marvel to investigate, Thanos transformed from his physical
form to his giant translucent head in the sky form and threw a building at them while taunting Drax, telling
Drax that to destroy him now would be to destroy the universe itself and asking if he considered Thanos to
be greater than the universe? As Drax destroyed the building, Mar-Vell told Drax to stop feeding Thanos'
ego and stated that a god would only need a weapon as a toy with which to play with them.
Coming to a
realization, Mar-Vell told Drax to keep Thanos occupied while he left the battle and descended to a rooftop
where he met up with ISAAAC and Mantis. When Mar-Vell stated that he had had a wild idea, the other two
replied that they had also had one, and Mantis revealed that she had brought the Cosmic Cube to him. Mantis
then explained that, in normal course, a god must be worshipped in order to exist, but Thanos existed even
though no one worshipped him but himself. Mar-Vell stated that that was the same idea he had had, that the
fact that Thanos wanted worshippers so badly meant that his power couldn't be self-generating, so he must
still be drawing it from the Cosmic Cube. When Mar-Vell suggested that maybe Thanos had thrown the Cube
aside as if valueless in order to divert their attention from it, Thanos blasted at him with eyebeams while
declaring that he was seeking to know too much.
Warned by Mantis, Mar-Vell managed to dodge the
blast but dropped the Cube. As Mar-Vell tried to reach the Cube again,
Thanos warped the world around him in an attempt to stop him, but the
cosmic awareness that had recently been triggered within him by Eon
enabled Mar-Vell to approach the Cube. As Mar-Vell declared that he
would not falter while there was breath left in him, Thanos told him to
"Die!" and caused his body to rapidly age. Despite now being nearly dead, the
withered Mar-Vell managed to strike the Cosmic Cube as he fell, shattering it. With his link to the Cosmic
Cube broken, Thanos died and was claimed by his dark-robed companion, Death.
Since the Cosmic Cube had made
Thanos' conception of the universe a fact, his conception died with him and reality (the convergent universe
occupied by everyone else) was restored to how it had been, scarred only by memory. The six Avengers
reappeared in the world.
Exactly what happened at the end of Captain Marvel I#33 has been revised
a number of times since that story was published.
The truth of what actually happened is presumably some synthesis of these accounts, but Mar-Vell's theory that Thanos had deliberately thrown the Cube aside as if it were valueless in order to divert attention from it does seem to have been wrong.
How does the Universal Language Equalizer actually work?
When I decided to include a more detailed explanation for how the Universal
Language Equalizer worked, I thought that, by researching how similar devices in other fictional continuities
functioned, it would be fairly easy to devise an explanation. Unfortunately, this turned out to not be the
case. Either the translators were described as working in a way that was inconsistent with the U.L.E. (like
the Babel fish from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy") or they just worked without any real in-universe
explanation ever having been provided (like the Universal Translators from the various "Star Trek" series).
This has forced me to come up with my own speculation about how the U.L.E. worked.
Before getting to my theories, I'd like to mention a few things about the Universal Translators from "Star Trek." In the first episode in which it appeared, the Universal Translator was described as being able to "compare the frequency of brainwave patterns" of the speaker in order to "select those ideas and concepts (that are common to all intelligent life) that it recognizes, and then provide the necessary grammar" before translating the speech into English. When the non-corporeal being known as the Companion observed it in operation, she remarked that the humans were hearing her thoughts. However, this idea that the Universal Translator functioned by essentially reading the thoughts of the speakers was never mentioned again, and all other references to the Universal Translator instead rely on translation matrices that required sufficiently large databases before they could function, with no telepathic component.
Oddly enough, the one Original Series episode which showed how the Universal Translator should have functioned was "Spectre of the Gun" in which each member of the Enterprise bridge crew heard a warning message from an alien marker buoy in their native language (Kirk in English, Spock in Vulcan, Chekov in Russian and Uhura in Swahili). However, in that episode the translated nature of the message is specifically attributed to the fact that the aliens are "true telepaths" whose buoy had apparently projected the meaning of the warning directly into the minds of the crew which they then perceived as a message that had been spoken in their native languages. The Universal Translator wasn't involved at all.
As for all other Star Trek episodes, the Universal Translators are presented as being so ubiquitous that their presence is essentially ignored. With the exception of the small handful of episodes in which they malfunction, the translations they provide are presented as being so natural and seamless that beings who were unaware of them believed that all others who spoke to them were doing so in their own language.
Of course, these Universal Translators do have some issues that have never been explained. For example, how are they able to provide the listeners with instantaneous, real-time translations even as the speakers are speaking? Why do the listeners hear the translated words in place of the words that the speakers actually spoke? And, given that different languages can have differing syntaxes, how are they able to prevent the translated words from (sometimes) sounding like Yoda-speak?
Okay, let's get back to the Universal Language Equalizer. I've thought up two possible explanation for how the U.L.E. might work and will present them below. However, be forewarned that they both require extensive use of some form of artificial/technological telepathy and therefore seem somewhat (or very) implausible.
Explanation #1: The U.L.E. is equipped with advanced sensors
that can detect any mind within a certain unspecified radius from it. Once it has detected a mind, it
establishes and maintains a telepathic link with the brain housing that mind. It then scans that brain in
order to determine which languages that individual understands so it will have a record of which languages
will not have to be translated when that person hears or sees them.
The U.L.E. continuously monitors the signals traveling along the auditory and optic nerves
of every individual to whom it is linked, and, for every person, instantly analyzes those signals to determine
if they are in a language that that person understands. If they are, then the signals are allowed to continue
on to their respective brains as they normally would. However, if the signals are in a language that is not
understood by that brain, then the U.L.E. (somehow) deletes that signal and instantaneously replaces it with
an equivalent signal in a language that the person is known to understand.
Aside from the question of exactly how an alien computer would be able to remotely intercept signals traveling through nerves and selectively substitute other signals when needed, there are two other major problems with this explanation. The first is that it would mean that the U.L.E. would have to be able remotely monitor signals traveling through nerves and analyze (and possibly replace) those signals before they traveled from each individual's ears and/or eyes to the language centers of their brains. Given that the distance between a person's sensory organs and their brains are (at most) only a few inches while the U.L.E. was dozens or hundreds or thousands of feet away from those brains, it seems highly unlikely (or TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE) that the U.L.E. computer could receive the signals, analyze them and transmit replacement signals back to the brains before the original signals would have reached the auditory and/or visual cortices of the brains.
If that weren't enough, the other problem is that this procedure would only be able to alter the signals that the brains received but wouldn't be able to do anything about the order in which those signals were received. This would cause a problem because, even among human languages, languages sometimes follow different syntaxes that determine the sequences in which the subjects, verbs and objects in sentences should be arranged. As mentioned above, this could lead to a translation having a sentence structure that sounded (or read) like something Yoda would say (or write). Although not a large enough problem to make the translation unintelligible, it would be enough to make it noticeable that a translation was being made.
Explanation #2: The U.L.E. essentially functions as a huge database that contains a complete understanding of every known language. When an individual comes within range, the U.L.E. uses its advanced sensors to scan that person's mind in order to learn which languages they understand. Then, after determining the total number of languages spoken by all the people within its range, the U.L.E. isolates those languages within its larger database, then establishes telepathic linkages between the more personalized database and the language centers of the brains of everybody within range. The presence of these linkages gives all those people a complete understanding of all of those languages, making them polyglots without having to have actually learned the other languages. Since the brains of those within range temporarily have knowledge of the words and grammar needed to understand those languages, they are able to immediately translate what they hear/see so easily that they actually perceive what they are hearing/seeing in a language with which they are familiar. Accordingly, if all members of a group can understand English, then everything they hear/see would be translated into English, but exceptions could occur if some members were more familiar with non-English languages.
On the face of it, this would perhaps be the best way to describe how the Universal Language Equalizer functioned. However, I'm a bit skeptical of the idea that it would be within the technological capabilities of Thanos to create a machine that could bestow an ability that some fictional communities call "All-Speak" upon others via some form of artificial telepathy. There's also the question of why, if the four Avengers heard everything that they and the aliens were saying as English, Mantis was the only one of the four to see that sign as being written in a non-English language. After all, since the Vision was an android and the Scarlet Witch was a Gypsy from Serbia (and the Swordsman was a Frenchman from Sin-Cong), wouldn't they each have "heard" what everyone around them were saying in their own native (and non-English) languages as well?
Other problems with "The Power of Babel!"
Aside from the question of how the the Universal Language Equalizer
supposedly functioned, I had two other issues with the events that were depicted in Avengers I#125. The
first concerned the speed at which the Avengers traveled through space while defending Earth from the
fleet of space raiders. Their two spacecraft are shown launching (from New York City) in panel 2 on
page 5, and the next three panels show them within those spacecraft, with Vision announcing, in the
last panel, that he has spotted the enemy "just above the Sun." Pages 6-7 are a two-page spread that
shows the two Avengers vessels facing off against the alien fleet in VERY close proximity to the Sun,
so close that solar prominences seemed to nearly arc over them. The next three pages show Thor, the
redesigned Avengers Quinjet and the Zodiac Cartel's rebuilt Star-Cruiser battling the starships of the
alien fleet, with the last two panels on the last of those pages showing the wreckage of a destroyed
alien raider that had just been blasted by the Quinjet crashing onto an Earth city (presumably NYC).
This means that the Avengers traveled from Earth to the Sun in a matter of minutes, and then began a
running space battle that took them back to Earth in a similarly short time. Since it takes a little
over eight minutes for light from the Sun to reach Earth, this implies that the Avengers must have been
traveling through space at about light speed (or a high percentage of light speed) the whole time.
Given that the distance between the Sun and Earth is usually about 93 million miles, a Quinjet's official top speed is Mach 2.1 (1,611.27 miles per hour) and the fastest speed ever achieved by humans in the real world (in the command module of Apollo 10) was 24,816.1 miles per hour, it would have taken a normal Quinjet almost 58,000 hours (or almost 2,405 days or over 6 years) to travel that distance, and even Apollo 10, on a straight shot to the Sun, would have taken about 156 days. Even for the fastest unmanned human vehicle, NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which achieved speeds of 244,255 miles per hour, the trip would still have taken about 380 hours (or almost 16 days).
While the Avengers have been shown to be capable to traveling even intergalactic distances in very short times, on those occasions Thor is usually shown using Mjolnir as a power source to allow them to travel so fast. Thor is not shown doing so on the sunward journey and he was outside the Quinjet battling aliens on the return trip, so Mjolnir could not have been responsible for the extreme speeds of both the Quinjet and the Zodiac Star-Cruiser.
Of course, the whole reason why the initial encounter between the Avengers and the alien fleet was set so close to the Sun seems to have been because it made that very impressive double-page spread possible. However, with the above facts in mind, that scene would probably have been just as effective if the Avengers had engaged the alien fleet as they were spotted flying up and over the horizon of a nearer celestial object, like, say, maybe the Moon? Sure, it still would have been impossible for them to reach the Moon in a matter of minutes, but it would have been somewhat less impossible and thus slightly more plausible.
The other issue that I had with "The Power of Babel!" is that many or most (if not all) of the Thanos-thralls in the space fleet must have died during their failed attack on Earth, and that means that THE AVENGERS KILLED THEM!?! Now, I may be wrong about this, but I believe that this might be the first story in which our heroes are shown inflicting fatal damage on their opponents. Yes, they were fighting a space war against ruthless alien mercenaries who would have killed them if they could, but this is still the first time that the Avengers were shown killing. Even during the Kree-Skrull War, when the Avengers blasted their way into the flagship of the Skrull armada, the Skrull crew was shown to all be wearing spacesuits to protect them from atmospheric decompression, but no such life-saving measures were on display in this space battle. Captain America, the Black Panther and Thor were shown blasting alien starships to pieces, and the team who boarded the U.L.E. also did some damage, with the Swordsman's sword slashing open some of the crew while the Scarlet Witch's hex dropped a catwalk on others. Plus, even if none of the aliens on the U.L.E. were killed by either the Swordsman or the Scarlet Witch, they definitely all died when Cap and the Panther blew up the huge spacecraft with them still aboard it. And that doesn't even cover all those aliens who died when their ships collided in flight once their crews could no longer understand one another...while the two Avengers craft continued to blast the now-helpless raider ships apart like they were fish in the proverbial barrel.
It's not the fact that the Avengers were shown to be willing to kill when facing overwhelming odds with the lives of everybody on planet Earth were at stake that bothers me. It's the fact that their actions didn't seem to have had any consequences. None of the Avengers who killed during the space battle have ever been shown experiencing any regret (or PTSD) over what they had been forced to do to defend Earth from the space raiders, and the whole space battle is never mentioned in later stories in which the Avengers declare that "Avengers DO NOT KILL!" and are willing to expel any member who does or those in which Captain America gets up on his soapbox and declares that heroes never kill because there's always another way.
Of course, the fact that all of the Thanos-thralls killed in that issue were aliens probably had something to do with why none of the Avengers seemed to be bothered by having killed them. In the Marvel Universe, the "heroes" from Earth have a long history of not caring too much if aliens die battling them. For example, Hawkeye (Clint Barton) and especially Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew) have been shown to be more than willing to kill Skrulls at the drop of a hat. Having said that, if a "hero" kills or injures an alien who has a close relationship with a human character, then that action if often considered to be as wrong as it would have been if the injured/killed person were a human.
Conflicting reactions
As I thought about the Universal Language Equalizer, I experienced a number
of conflicting reactions to the concept. I thought it might be amusing to list those reactions, both
positive and negative, here, in the order in which I had them.
• POSITIVE: Yay! We were finally told why so many aliens in the Marvel Universe seemed to speak English!
• NEGATIVE: Why did it take Marvel so long to introduce the concept? After all, Star Trek created their Universal Translator in 1967, over six years earlier. And why was the Universal Language Equalizer so huge? When Fantastic Four I#237 showed readers the Universal Translator that the FF had been using BTS for years, it was a tube about the same size and shape as the device from that Star Trek episode.
• NEGATIVE: Why did Thanos send a space fleet with such a glaring weakness to attack Earth? It was almost like he wanted the Avengers to destroy them.
• POSITIVE: Oh, that's right, he DID deliberately sacrifice that entire fleet as part of his master plan to decoy the Avengers away from Earth so that he could remove them as potential obstacles.
• NEGATIVE: Given how powerful the Cosmic Cube was, why didn't Thanos just use it to defeat (or eliminate) the Avengers? All it would have taken was a thought, and they would have been gone, without all of the effort that must have been required to create his fleet of "space-pawns."
All in all, the whole idea of the space fleet with the U.L.E. as a built-in weakness to be exploited by the Avengers seems very contrived. It was just a way to have an Avengers issue devoted to the Thanos War without having to write a story in which the Avengers actually fought the Mad Titan. We readers wouldn't get to see a significant Avengers-Thanos face-off until three years later, in 1977, when Jim Starlin killed off Gamora, Pip the Troll, Adam Warlock and even Thanos in the two-part story presented in Avengers Annual I#7 and Marvel Two-In-One Annual#2.
Chronology notes:
In case anyone's interested, the events in Avengers I#125 (pages 1-3)
lead into what happened in Captain Marvel I#27-32 which is recapped on page 4. On page 5, the Avengers
launch into space and don't return to Earth until the last page, at least an hour later, in a scene that
is continued, only seconds later, on page 8 of Captain Marvel I#33. This means that the last five pages
of Captain Marvel I#32 and the first eight pages of Captain Marvel I#33 take place during the same time
interval as pages 5-18 of Avengers I#125.
Oddly, from the perspective of Mar-Vell and Rick Jones, the time that elapsed for them during those thirteen pages seems to have been significantly less than the time that the Avengers spent in space. When the Avengers launched from NYC, Mar-Vell was on Titan where he encountered ISAAC while battling animated but non-living demon-like creatures that Thanos had created to attack him. Inspired by something ISAAC said, Mar-Vell changed places with Rick who found that, with Mar-Vell gone, the creatures had frozen. Rick had ISAAC teleport him and the Cosmic Cube back to Earth and, when translucent head Thanos showed up there only seconds later, Rick taunted him enough to provoke the Mad Titan into returning to his physical body in order to prove that he could defeat Mar-Vell. Once Rick had changed places with him, Mar-Vell began fighting Thanos but was easily defeated and knocked out within seconds. As Thanos continued to punch his now-unconscious foe, his attention was distracted by the nearby crash of one of the space-raider ships he had sent against Earth. Realizing that this meant that the Avengers had taken the bait, Thanos extinguished the inferno caused by the crash and teleported away, leaving Mar-Vell to revive just as ISAAC appeared. It was some time after that that the Avengers returned from their space war and vanished.
Based on how they're depicted, the events on Titan and the encounter with Thanos on Earth would seem to have taken up very little time, probably no more than five minutes in total, far less time than the Avengers seem to have spent in space. So, what could account for this apparent difference in elapsed time? Well, there are two things. First, although the story implies that Mar-Vell regained consciousness immediately after Thanos left and states that it was some time later when the Avengers vanished, Mar-Vell's actions seem to contradict this, since he is shown speaking with ISAAC about the Cosmic Cube right after waking up but he isn't shown picking up the Cube until after the Avengers have vanished. This implies that Mar-Vell had just stood there, doing nothing, between talking with ISAAC and picking up the Cube, and that doesn't make sense. A more reasonable sequence of events would be that Mar-Vell had remained unconscious for a longer period of time and didn't actually revive until just before the Avengers returned from space and promptly vanished.
The second thing is how long it actually took Rick Jones to be teleported from Titan to Earth. In Captain Marvel I#32, the trip seems to have been instantaneous. In one panel, Rick is on Titan telling ISAAC what he wants him to do and in the next panel Rick is standing on Earth, with his body posed exactly as it was on Titan, listening to ISAAC confirm that he understands what Rick wants him to do. However, since teleportation usually involves the teleportees traveling at the speed of light, the fact that the distance from Earth to Saturn/Titan varies between roughly 1.2 billion km and 1.67 billion km, depending on where they are in their respective orbits around the Sun, means that light would take between 67 and 93 minutes to travel that distance. So maybe Rick just spent much of that missing time being teleported through space without being aware of any passage of time?
One thing that I've just noticed while reviewing those two Captain Marvel issues is that Iron Man, who was last seen unconscious on Titan in issue #32, is somehow among the Avengers who gather around Mar-Vell and Mantis on that NYC rooftop after Thanos was defeated. I know that the phase-shifted Avengers returned to Earth once Thanos's conception of the universe died with him, but that wouldn't have affected Iron Man, would it? Oh well, maybe he just regained consciousness on Titan a few minutes after Rick had been teleported away and had ISAAC do the same for him?
Profile by Donald Campbell.
CLARIFICATIONS:
The Universal Language Equalizer has no known connections to
The Thanos-thralls who had been stationed aboard the spacecraft that was
the Universal Language Equalizer. Some of them were presumably meant to operate the device while the rest
were there to either operate the spacecraft and/or provide security. The number of thralls aboard the
spacecraft has never been revealed but it is known that there were more than twenty of them and that
(at least) two of them were Skrulls. None of them were specifically identified (unless Tuareg was one of the Thanos-thralls as opposed to an epiphet or invoked being).
Although a team of Avengers and allies were able to reach the spacecraft without being seen, their actual entry into it through an airlock apparently triggered a silent alarm. In response, twenty armed aliens immediately headed for the airlock. After sighting the four intruders, one of the aliens cried out, "The humans should not have been able to find this ship! It is vital they die!" Three of the aliens then attacked the Vision, with one grabbing his left arm and a second holding onto his left leg. As the Vision wondered aloud why the multi-racial horde was speaking English, the synthezoid drove his partially-intangible right arm through the third attacking alien while the alien who was hanging on to his left leg called out, "Tuareg! The red one is not human! I cannot hold him!"
The Swordsman, who was fighting several other aliens nearby, heard those words and replied that holding him was not his foes' concern, but rather holding themselves together was. As he spoke, the Swordsman demonstrated what he meant by using his sword to slice open the uniforms (and probably the bodies) of several Thanos-thralls, including a Skrull.
Seeing that the battle was not going well for them, one of the Thanos-thralls called out, "MORE TROOPS! Someone alert the other TROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK!" However, this alien's cry for aid came to an abrupt end when Mantis delivered a flying kick to his face.
Meanwhile, standing on a nearby walkway, another Skrull had been studying the battle and had come to a conclusion. This Skrull then voiced his opinion, saying, "The scarlet-caped female avoids the combat! Unlike her sister assailant, she obviously fears us--" and then, as he opened fire with an energy-rifle, the Skrull concluded, "--AS WELL SHE MIGHT!" While dodging the ray-blast, the Scarlet Witch responded to those words by explaining to the Skrull that she had only been allowing her hex power to regenerate itself and, now that it had, she introduced him to the power of the Scarlet Witch! The Avenger then cast a hex bolt that caused part of the ship's infrastructure to collapse and fall onto both the Skrull and the walkway. The added weight then caused the walkway to fall on the three Thanos-thralls who had been beneath it, one of whom cried out, "NO! It's falling on ussss" before his voice was silenced.
With all of their alien attackers incapacitated (or killed), the Vision declared that it appeared that they had taken control of the craft for the moment. Then, within less than a minute, they noticed the sign that identified the enormous machine that was the spacecraft as being a Universal Language Equalizer and realized how this could be useful. The Vision was able to quickly deactivate the force field that had hidden and protected the spacecraft, and the four Terrans exited the spacecraft without any further encounters with its alien crew.
Those of the crew who were not killed by the four Avengers who boarded the spacecraft presumably died when other Avengers fired on the spacecraft and blew it up.
--Avengers I#125
images: (without ads)
Avengers I#125, page 13, panel 3 (main image)
page 11, panel 2 (Black Panther notices solid black area)
page 11, panel 3 (Black Panther fires at force field)
page 13, panel 2 (four Avengers pass through force field)
page 14, panel 3 (aliens speaking English?)
page 15, panel 4 (machine's name inscribed in English)
page 16, panel 2 (turning off the force field)
page 16, panel 3 (Avengers exiting)
page 16, panel 5 (Avengers attack run)
page 16, panel 6 (spacecraft explodes)
page 17, panel 1 (Thanos-thralls can no longer understand each other)
page 17, panel 2 (raider ships collide)
page 17, panel 4 (Thanos-thralls fight each other)
page 17, panel 5 (confused space fleet being reduced to ruins)
page 14, panel 2 (multi-racial armed horde)
page 14, panel 3 (thralls vs. the Vision)
page 14, panel 4 (thralls being slashed open by the Swordsman)
page 14, panels 5-6 (thrall being kicked in the face by Mantis)
page 15, panel 3 (thralls being crushed by the Scarlet Witch's hex)
Only Appearance:
Avengers I#125 (July, 1974) - Steve Englehart (author), John Buscema & Dave Cockrum (artists), Roy Thomas
(editor).
First Posted: 08/11/2024
Last updated: 08/11/2024
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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