No, these are all interesting questions, but of the sort that can largely be ignored until they become relevant. Cf. DC's Invasion, which was keyed to Earth's status among alien races.

I would probably say that Earth's status among the stars is like Belgium's among the nations of Earth: Not especially important, not negligible, and, crucially, possessed of its own sovereignity. We're not a colony and we're not unorganized territory.

I'd probably assume that there's a "law of star nations" comparable to the "law of nations" that holds here on Earth. This would govern relations between nations like Kree, Skrull, Khundia, Shi'ar, Psion, etc. Basically, those nations which act like nations. Warworld would be a rogue nation, I suppose.

But I'd probably also assume that there are cosmic beings who are (or consider themselves) qualitatively beyond the "law of star nations". For instance, the Guardians send armed forces (GLs) to sovereign planets without permission, and have the armed forces utilize police power without authorization by the sovereign. (In a sense, the Guardians are a central federal sovereign over the whole universe in a system of dual sovereignity with the local planetary sovereigns and oh god I've bored myself to death.)

So the Xandarians probably say "The Nova Corps have jurisdiction anywhere in the galaxy," with the implication that if you disagree with Xandarian encroachment on your sovereignity, you'd better be prepared to go to war with Xandar.

Isn't Nova's experience kind of like Battle Beyond the Stars? He's an Earthling who gets sucked up into big interstellar conflicts that don't impact Earth and that don't follow him home.

But doesn't the most recent issue of Nova and the upcoming World War Hulk storyline sort of make these questions relevant? I mean, Nova's argument is that he doesn't need to obey this law because he's already a representative of an armed/police force from outer space. Since I assume Xandarian authority isn't recognized on Earth, that's a moot point... but is it reasonable or unreasonable for me to assume that? Has there ever been a reference to any of the many space nations in Marvel having any sort of relations with any Earth gov?

"and personally, I cannot believe I'm rooting for Nova to kick Iron Man's ass, but here I am"

You and me both, bro.

I think these are great questions and there are enumerable cool stories that could be told by exploring these ideas. Of course, what you run into pretty squarely is the fact that the status quo of the shared universe has traditionally tried to maintain its "world outside your window" veneer (which I don't have a problem with, generally) -- otherwise you'd expect to find the United States or the United Nations or someone saying to the Kree or someone, "Hey, we've smacked the Big G down a couple times and kept him off y'all's back, so how's about throwing some of your technology and science our way?"

Greg, that is essentially Nova's past, but now he's much more like a veteran Green Lantern (and currently, as it happens, he's the entire Nova Corps rolled into one as he has all their power). It remains to be seen how much he'll adventure on Earth versus space (if his series lasts), although I think fil or Ralf or someone mentioned another Annihilation thing in the works (which I'm not sure I dig -- I liked the first one all right, but can we take a break from all these events for a while? Okay, I know they make money, but-- oh, nevermind).

It didn't strike me like that. Nova was not saying "No, I won't register." He was saying, "I'm not just some random guy with a codename and a dream. I have been trained and I have superiors." He said he'd think about registering.

Matt, you're right, these should be relevant questions now, although I expect them to be largely glossed over.

What would be really fun is to find some issue of the Avengers from the 70's where the team somehow let themselves be deputized as intergalactic agents of some sort, with an at-least-implied code of conduct and actual regulations -- and then have Nova invoke that as grounds for him to arrest Tony Stark and haul him off to Space Court ("This court finds you guilty of being a space dick!" *gavel smack!*)

(Speaking of which, wasn't Ronan the Accurer's original shtick that the FF had somehow broken Kree law and he was out to get 'em for that?)

"And as punishment, Space Court sentences Anthony Stark to watch 1,800 hours of Space Law & Order (coming this fall to NBC)!" *gavel smack!*

The argument could be made that we don't get to think about complying with Federal Law. Either we comply or we don't. If he doesn't, either he's in violation of that law or he has some reason to expect immunity to it.

But at any rate I wasn't just talking about Nova vs. Iron Man, I was also talking about the broader ramifications. Here's a planet where aliens have contacted its populace on many, many occassions. Yet there seems to be little to no awareness on the personal or political levels that the Earth is but a small world surrounded by large galactic nations that often do things like imprison their worst criminals here. Greg's analogy of the Earth as Belgium seems to fail because Belgium's sovereignity is respected by the other nations of the world; Earth's does not seem to be so respected by those powers that surround it, and there doesn't seem to be any attempt to deal with that at all. No diplomats, no contact between them... hell, there's not even anyone trying to make a buck off of all this?

When Nova shows up, he's essentially a walking legal issue in a field I don't even know if Marvel has addressed, an intergalactic legal issue. Do alien police forces have the right to send their agents to Earth? Even if they're citizens of Earth? Hell, should they even be recruiting on Earth?

A lot of this could be crazily dull, of course, but it does have relevance post-Civil War. And it generally interests me as well, because after almost fifty years of comics Marvel hasn't really done anything with the idea that these guys know that they're not alone.

As for Tony Stark getting arrested, that would at least be an interesting twist to all this.

"Mass hallucinations"

"Some mutant causing trouble"

"just another supervillain"

Answers straight from Mr Marvel, Mark Gruenwald, as to why the general population doesn't know about alien invasions and such.

With all due respect to Mark, he's been dead for a decade. I don't know that he's the go to guy for this. And even if we accept his explanation, the governments of Earth know it's bullshit. They know there are aliens. They've had to deal with them. So even if the average person is blissfully unaware due to Mark's cop-out answer, it is not the case that the national leadership of every populated country on Earth shares their myopia: sooner or later someone has to come up with something to deal with the fact that the Kree can up and decide to invade any damn time they want.

A cynic might even postulate that the Initiative is a start at just such an authority.

These are interesting questions, but also ones that invalidate the basic premise of mainstream superhero comics which require that the setting of superheroes be very similar to the real world. You can do superhero stories that depart from that, but that would need to be a self contained series that could develop those themes. A comic designed to be published every month for decades cannot handle it because of its format.

I'm reminded of Kang's invasion of Earth in Kury Busiek's Avengers. He unleashes an invasion of this timeline that results in a massive war requiring NATO armies to defend army. Yet this storyline has had no or little impact on Marvel's world. This occured around 9/11, and the destruction of the World Trade Center caused massive change that was recognized in the comics. Yet Kang's invasion had little impact. Makes no sense.

All this proves is that writers of mainstream serial published superhero comics should avoid these types of questions. When such events occur, there needs to be something preventing the mass of population from believing it. Usually, this can be easily accomplished. I have no problem with the often repeated statement that the population believes Galactus (circa FF #48) was a holographic experiment by Mr Fantastic or that the Skrulls are an urban myth equivalent to "the Greys." After all, J Jonah Jameson tells his readers that (and he probably believes it too). Obviously, high level government officials or "secret agencies" know the truth, but that knowledge can remain safely hidden. What must be prevented is mass knowledge which would make the setting unrecognizable as our own.

I remember a foreword to the Deluxe OHOTMU #15 (20 years!) which had the aliens appendix. Mark Gruenwald mentioned something called "Project: Shockbuster" which dealt with the secret government program that dealt with the alien presence of Earth. I don't know if this has ever been mentioned in comics itself though. This would be the type of "reaction" Matt asks for.

It should be an editorial objective to veto or change stories that would destroy suspension of disbelief that the world could not continue as is. I am willing to give superhero comics a wider berth to keep the population ignorant than I would a sci-fi novel, but some effort needs to be made.

BTW, I haven't read the issue in question, but I would assume Richard Rider mentions Nova Corps membership as a means to tell Stark that SHIELD has no jurisdiction over HIM rather than Nova Corps has jurisdiction over Earth. I'm sure the governments of Earth don't believe that, but if that's Richard Rider's opinion then it absolves his conscience of complying.

I feel like a couple of these issues came up during the "Trial of Starfox" story in She-Hulk, but I don't have access to the comics right now to check. Does anyone remember?

The Marvel U would probably be strengthened by some indication that there's, e.g., a permanent UN mission for visiting aliens, or whatever.

But, as much as I am apparently enthralled with procedural law in the Marvel Universe, it makes for bloody awful superhero comics. I mean, the most you could possibly get away with without stunning the audience into crepulent submission would be to have a single panel of Ryder saying something like "I'll file my credentials at the UN Permanent Mission for Extraterrestrials. Now, go away. I'd like to finish dinner with my parents, please."

And even that is almost too boring.

All this proves is that writers of mainstream serial published superhero comics should avoid these types of questions. When such events occur, there needs to be something preventing the mass of population from believing it.

...why?

People are constantly arguing for 'realism' in comic books, or that stories are not 'realistic' enough, or that a godawful stupid idea is 'realistic' and therefore should be what happens. Why isn't anyone clamoring for a little 'realism' here? Not that I'm arguing there should be, because I'm not really that invested in it. But the idea that so many alien contacts with Earth could be explained away over and over again, yet the Hulk's latest teen sidekick knows there are aliens and can check Reed Richards' work... perhaps it's because of the nature of the plastic time in comic books, but it stretches credulity until it screams. Furthermore, it doesn't even matter: there ARE aliens. They DO come to Earth. It's NOT the world outside our window. And it doesn't need to be written as if it were.

But, as much as I am apparently enthralled with procedural law in the Marvel Universe, it makes for bloody awful superhero comics.

Top Ten's an awesome comic book. The secret is that the stories are still about people, ultimately. Imagine a murder mystery set in the UN Permanent Mission for Extraterrestrials, where it turns out someone hired Spymaster to slip some bugs into the mission to try and analyze the technology of the various ambassadors as they show up? You could do an entire storyline where the Avengers are assigned to the Badoon mission and determine that their guests are in fact working to ascertain Earth's defenses for a probable invasion (because the Badoon look at Earth the same way the US does at South Korea, dangerous nutcases with weapons of mass destruction... hell, Earth's the only planet to hold off Galactus, that's GOT to be a concern) and have to foil their plots without letting on that they know what's up for fear of causing a diplomatic incident. And none of this has to chance the day to day lives of the average person in the MU any more than the idea that years of Cold War between the US and USSR meant that the average guy in Flint, Michigan, knew where Azerbaijan was.

Narrative consistency would be strengthed AND we'd get new possibilities for interesting stories. Seems win/win to me.

Jonathan - sadly, I don't read She-Hulk, so I have no idea. Hopefully someone who does will comment.

I think the questions are worth answering, if only by a particularly clever set of handwaves (within the context of good stories, of course).

As Matt posits, I believe you can address the issue or issues while still maintaining the mainstream superhero status quo. It doesn't have to be boring -- the key to handling it would be the same as handling all exposition: Make the information important to answering a question or solving a mystery important to the protagonist(s); make the audience want to know the answer and then give it to them in a nice, brief blast of exposition, and then roll on to your next action set piece.

I would say that Top Ten is a police procedural in genre, in a superhero setting, but then cross-genre stuff is always hard to characterize.

Y'know, I'd like to read your stories set in the UN Permanent Mission for Extraterrestrials. (Who are the superhero characters assigned to the Mission? Hmm...Let's rob the old LSH Espionage Squad and yoink Mystique, Shadowcat, and Ant-Man for the job!)

But then, most of your stories I'd like to read. Superhero comics need you, Matt.

She Hulk has been made a magistrate with an interstellar judicial body that's operated under the auspices of the Living Tribunal. Before the whole Civil War thing came in and ruined stuff, she would alternate between Earthbound stories and popping off to some distant star to represent Justice there. So she probably has the legal authority (granted by one of the closest things Marvel has to God) to convict Tony of being a space ass. But Slott seems to have been told to forget about that whole angle for the time being and let Jen get pushed around by The System.

Matt wrote: "Greg's analogy of the Earth as Belgium seems to fail because Belgium's sovereignity is respected by the other nations of the world; "

Uh, except for all those times the great powers of Europe used Belgium as their battleground. It was pretty much Germany's shortcut to Paris. Twice.

The issue of comic books picking and choosing what constitutes 'realism' is one that's been preying on my mind recently. Personally I would be fine with the notion that the publishers came out and said something like 'Well, the superhero genre is based on taking the real world and adding a few fantastic elements, ignoring or suspending some real world rules in the process' and then perhaps listing a few of them. To some extent that's how all genre fiction works. That would be a good enough rationale for me as to why they don't explore topics such as interstellar diplomatic relations even though I personally would prefer that they did explore them - but I recognise that while other fans may share my tastes they might not be so sanguine about expressing their opinions. I suspect that it's easier for the creators to be able to sneer down their noses at people wanting to explore topics like this as anal-retentive fanboys rather than admit that these are creative judgment choices (and in the process selectively ignore the fact that a lot of the drama of their stories comes from the fact that they're not writing *realistic* interpersonal relationships).

Matt, there was something along these lines of your initial with a recent Inhumans series where the United States invites a number of adolescent Inhumans to visit as foreign students - but I never bought that series so I'm unclear on how far that idea was explored beyond being used as an excuse to get those kids to Earth. Other than that the only thing that I can think of that comes close is the Kurt Busiek written _Maximum Security_ miniseries, which (for those who may be coming in late) is when the various intergalactic powers got together to discuss to 'problem' of Earth. It didn't satisfactorily cover anything from Earth's point of view, but from those of the aliens it put me in mind of the way that the United States - having failed to succeed with military force in either Cuba or Vietnam - put economic sanctions on those countries and then tried to ignore the problem to death. If I were a writer in the Marvel U and (for some bizarre hypothetical reason) was explicitly not allowed to have the aliens start making diplomatic, cultural and trade contact [something I've been exploring in Legion of Net.Heroes and Dvandom has been doing likewise in academy of Super-Heroes] then I think I'd take the latter tack as a starting point, assume that the galactic powers are embargoing Earth, and then throw in a few stories about superheroes having to deal with alien smugglers. In such a case the restrictions created by an alien embargo make for conflict and therefore story ideas.

In any case, _Maximim Security_ was a bit of a cop-out in the sense that the aliens had to withdraw their attempts to enclose the Earth as a penal settlement. Granted, they has a slightly more realistic reason for doing to that the usual 'Earth's superhoes beat the crap out of them and make them stop' because the Kree/Rhuul had revitalised themselves and were attacking everybody's flanks, but it was still a convenient excuse for the whole matter to be forgotten as soon as the crossover ended.

On the subject of Belgium as Europe's football: Yes, but I wasn't really willing to work a history of Europe from the 100 years war onward into a discussion - the point is that if someone invades Belgium now, there's a system of diplomacy between the various nations to address it. Belgium has ambassadors, a UN representative, etc etc.

In the MU, if the Kree invade Earth, it's exactly as you describe it being for Belgium in the past, and that's something that you would expect someone to address, no?

Clearly, the interstellar community won't have anything to do with us because we're uncouth savages who keep saying "Belgium" in public.

Hmm ... the following raises more problems than it solves, but it's dramatically consistent:

1) Per Matt Rossi - The Earth's considered a real crazy, dangerous place. It's got living WMD's running around with no government control. One of the strongest beings in the universe (the Hulk) often simply wanders around smashing stuff. No self-respecting alien government wants to formally have a diplomatic embassy on such a rogue planet (though there's back-channel contacts and adventurers going by in both directions).

2) It's a backwater. There's a tiny elite which hogs the good technology for themselves, i.e. the interstellar-level tech, and the rest of the population is kept down at the native-level existence (this neatly, though not nicely, solves the paradox of the supers having the stardrives but nobody else - there's plenty of places in the world where a few ruling families have US-level cars, while almost everyone else walks).

3) It's got a kind of quasi-stable xenophobic arrangement with #1 and #2. The Earth governments don't want ordinary people messing around with the aliens. The aliens mostly don't want nutty terrans who might suddenly explode (as has been known to happen) bothering them. The supers are deeply suspicious of anyone outside their clique. So everyone in power is united in a common interest in telling the general population not to think about it.

So the average Earther is like a rural North Korean farmer - i.e. they may know there's Kree/Shi'ar/"America", where all sorts of world-changing stuff happens, but it's not a big factor in daily life.

Okay, after looking through the relevant issues of She-Hulk for the trial of Starfox for using his pleasure powers for, effectively, date rape (two issues, #6-7 set on Earth, two further issues, #12-13 set on Titan), what strikes me is that Titan doesn't think much of Earth civilization or Earth laws. Whether that helps extrapolate for Earth relations with the rest of the universe is something I'm unsure of because IIRC Titan is a monarchy of superhumans that has been at internal peace for millenia (with the exception of any unpleasantness involving Thanos, of course). I suspect the level of crime on Titan is simply much lower, and that consequently they'd look down on pretty much any civilisation in similar circumstances. Then there's the whole Titanian 'we are gods' conceit. Further, commentary in #12 that the Titanian Exoneration Trial is mainly for show and isn't binding on any other planet suggests that Titan may be 'in contact with other planetary governments' (cf The Death of Captain Marvel graphic novel) but could still be an insular backwater.

Whatever the case, Starfox's trial on Earth has Mentor fuminating about his son's treatment by savages whose jurisdiction he doesn't recognise. It's only because the current head of the law firm She-Hulk works at is actually the robot Z9 working for the Living Tribunal and the LT's Magistrati, and is able to browbeat the Titanians with the authority of the Magistrati, that the trail goes ahead based on the alleged crimes happening on Earth and therefore in Earth jurisdiction. And then when She-Hulk and Starfox get into an obligatory fight scene, Mentor simply teleports Starfox away. So much for diplomatic protocols between planets within the Sol system, let alone beyond it.

Perhaps more pertinently is another example of the Marvel Earth public being selectively aware of the presence of extraterrestrials. Issue 7 ends with She-Hulk making a comment to the press that Starfox's removal before the conclusion of the trial was a miscarriage of justice. It's explicit from her dialogue that Starfox comes from an extraterrestrial civilisation based on Titan. Given that it's the trial of a former member of the big name superhero team the Avengers its hard to see how the public could not be aware of extraterrestrial civilisations now, even in the unlikely event that they weren't before.

Another example of cop-out that occurred to me this afternoon was that of the Contract, an association of aliens who arrive at Earth to (IIRC) offer Earth membership back in _Star Masters_ #1. The various delegates of the Contract were then murdered and Quasar was framed for their murder. Quasar, the Silver Surfer and Beta Ray Bill all teamed up to reveal the true killers, and the whole subject of interestellar contact was swept under the carpet of the chase scenes and fight scenes.

For a while, iirc, Marvel Earth was under the protection of the Shiar Empire, so people stopped invading it or else Lilandra would send some cruisers after you.

Keith DeCandido (Star Trek and others novelist, as well as writer of 2 Spider-Man Novels) had pitched a Marvel U crime procedural, but you can pretty much rest assured that nothing like that will come along without Bendis or Brubaker running the show.