This May Be Over My Head

'If life wins, it'll be just as bad as if death was victorious. Different bad, that's all.' - Maelstrom, Guardians of the Galaxy #11.

I've been mulling over that quote for awhile, trying to figure it out. If death wins out, then that would mean everyone would die, and the universe would be empty, in terms of living organisms anyway. There would probably still be stars and planets, there simply wouldn't be any life of significance around.

So what's the end created by life winning? It seems as though, if life wins, there would be too many organisms. Even in something so vast as the universe, there are only so many resources to go around. The more organisms there are, the greater the demand placed on the available resources, the greater the competition, and typically, the organisms best suited to gathering/using those resources thrive, and the rest die*. With sentient beings, especially galaxy-spanning imperialistic beings, the death probably comes in the form of war, and golly gee, the Marvel Universe just so happens to have a big war between two galaxy-spanning empires going on right now**!

But really, competition, or war, just leads to death, probably a lot of it, so it's hardly a different end, is it? Is there a difference between people dying gradually, a few at a time, of sickness, old age, accidents, and people dying in large numbers because some Looney Tunes Emperor just blew up an entire planet? Is it, that when death wins, the living are gone, but there are still raw materials left behind, so one could start again, but when life wins, and things go south, nothing is left?

That's what I think Maelstrom's getting at. After all, he was an agent of, as he put it, 'Cosmic Finality', which I think means the end of everything, which is not the same as being an agen/avatar of Death, as Thanos was. If Thanos uses the Infinity Gauntlet, and kills half the life in existence, that's a big win for Death, but there's still the other half to pick up and go on. If Maelstrom gets his way, everything's gone, and there's nothing to rebuild from.

And that's where I think it's going. Sure the Kree and Shi'ar have gone to war before, but Vulcan's crazier than any leader the Shi'ar have ever had, and he's all about the Scorched Earth. Meanwhile, the Kree have the Inhumans, with Maximus making new, better weapons, that are powered by Black Bolt. They've actually escalated what was already a ridiculous powerful struggle. Plus, the barriers of the universe are weakened, Lord Oblivion clearly has something planned for Phyla, I still say the Magus will be popping out of that coccoon soon, and Talon and Blastaar will both be in the Negative Zone, and who knows what either of them will get up to. And let's not forget, there's the Badoon, emerging as a threat a thousand years ahead of schedule.

There's other things I meant to talk about, but, I'm supposed to be going to the Wolverine movie with coworkers, so I have to wrap this up now. Chime in, if you've got some ideas to help me pull this together, 'cause I could use the help. Until tomorrow.

* Of course, some times, it isn't about who has genetic, or in the case of sentient beings I suppose, technological advantages. Sometimes, it's about luck. If you subscribe to the theory that a meteor strike helped kill of the dinosaurs by causing a massive amount of soot and such to be thrown in the air, which made breathing difficult for the "terrible lizards", while the tiny mammals were safe, being low to the ground and all, well that isn't the mammals have better genes, so much as they were lucky. Circumstances shifted and they suddenly had an advantage they hadn't before.

** And it was kicked off by the Inhumans pursuing remnant Skrull forces, who had attacked the Inhumans and Earth because they wanted to be there, and didn't think they'd be allowed to live there peacefully. Once again, a resource being competed over.