Avengers Back to Basics- canon?

[intp]

I've been reading Avengers: Back to Basics by Peter David.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that the first two issues, fun as they are, are probably not canon.

First of all, Thor knows that Hulk is Bruce Banner. However, Thor was plainly ignorant of Hulk's identity at this point (as were the rest of the Avengers). For example, in Avengers # 3, no one had any idea where to look for him; they only knew to try to ask Rick Jones, who was known to have a connection with Hulk.

Second, Tony Stark makes no attempt to hide that he is Iron Man, to a random person, and Pepper Potts knows his identity. But the only one who knew his identity fairly early on (and probably a while after Avengers # 1-2, after which Hulk quit the team) was Happy Hogan.

Any thoughts? I would love if these stories could be considered canon, but I don't see how.

[intp]

I was trying to figure out if this story could possibly have occurred at a much, much later time, after Hulk rejoined the team, but that was a fairly recent event, whereas the first part of the flashback says "way back when."

But Iron Man is in one of his newer suits of armor, which he didn't have until after Hulk quit the team at the end of Avengers # 2, so that's another inconsistency with the very early stories.

Can this story possibly fit somewhere much, much later? I haven't been reading recent Avengers stories (though I have the collected editions, still unread) so I'm not sure what other issues there might be.

[Clive_Reston]

The last couple of issues hang a lantern on the "errors" in the first couple of issues. Not to spoil anything, but the only parts of the story that "actually" happen are the bits with Kamala in her bedroom. (All-New, All-Different Avengers #7 explains the mechanism by which the story within the frame is being told--and that story, in-universe, is fictional.)

[intp]

Thanks for the response. I finished reading the rest of Avengers: Back to Basics, but I still don't quite get it. Is the idea that, in the last issue, Kamala's future much older self somehow uses Dr. Doom's time machine to send Kamala back to the very beginning, before any of the events of any of the stories herein occurred? Or did she just send herself back to the very beginning of # 5, before she goes back to the events of Avengers # 3 and tampers with the timeline? But how would that negate the earlier errors in # 1-2?

I skimmed All-New All-Different Avengers # 7 (I have the OHC, but haven't read the earlier issues), and there the Vision gives Kamala a device that 'interpolates from existing camera footage and data' to simulate Avengers history. But I still don't quite see how that story was fictional? Did it have something to do with Kobik, who was manipulating events in Standoff? (a story I only read a small part of).

This whole thing is very confusing to me.

Edit: is the idea that the 'interpolation' (which is really extrapolation, but whatever) is itself prone to errors, so none of the events she sees in virtual reality are reliable? I could kind of see that.

[Clive_Reston]

Oh, no, I put that badly: the story that Kamala watches on the goggles is fiction. The frame story of "Back to Basics" (which is the part that does happen in 616) is "Kamala puts on the goggles to experience stories about the Avengers' history from a first-person perspective. But the goggles don't work right: first they show her things that can't have happened the way they show them, and when she points that out, they show her a story that completely freaks her out, and once that one is over she takes them off and destroys them."

[intp]

Clive, that would explain a lot, but could you point me to where it says that? The only references I saw were to the Vision saying that Kamala could experience Avengers history firsthand. Thanks.

[Clive_Reston]

OK, so here's my reading of it:

ANADA 7: Vision gives Kamala the VR headset. "Immersed in virtual reality, it will be as if you were a participant in every recorded adventure." (Note the "recorded" there. Also note that, as we saw in the recent Vision series, some of the things the Vision makes don't quite work the way they're supposed to...)

A:BTB 1-2: Kamala puts on the headset and, after a flashback to the above scene, she asks to see something involving Thor and Ragnarok (the implication is that she wants to see something involving snowfall). Now, the obvious thing that a functioning VR set would do would be to show her something from Avengers 249/Thor 350, right? Instead, she gets the story that occupies the rest of #1 and all but the last few panels of #2--which is, as you noted, full of continuity errors.

The last few panels of #2 show someone who knows that Kamala is Ms. Marvel observing the headset.

A:BTB 3-4: Kamala, at the beginning, seems to be reading her old diary and putting on the headset again to get another story. It's also dubiously canonical. At the end of #4, the shadowy figure is again messing with the headset.

A:BTB 5-6: Kamala puts on the headset again, and asks for a really early adventure--specifically Avengers #3. But then what she perceives through the headset is herself inserted INTO the story--a "participant" rather than an observer--and she alters the story, butterfly-effecting stuff so that her mom dies before she's conceived. She points out some of the things that were errors in the earlier episodes. Kang shows up and tells her that she will cease to exist as soon as her birth date arrives. (Note that that is ALSO noncanonical: per the 75th Anniversary Special, Kamala was a toddler at the time of Fantastic Four #1.) Eventually Cosmic-Powered Kamala shows up and sorts things up; Kamala comes to in her bed (in the same outfit she was wearing at the beginning of #5), and breaks the headset.

In this reading, we don't know who the shadowy figure at the end of #2 and 4 is, but I think it's safe to say that the stuff that Kamala observed through the headset did not "actually happen."

[intp]

Okay, seems like a reasonable reading to me. I've gotta say, I'm kind of sorry I bought this one now if the stories are 'imaginary.' Probably needs to go in the 'to sell' pile.

[Midnighter]

Reading the last two episodes carefully, I came to a different conclusion.
The figure in the shadows in the earlier issues I think was the Kang that Kamala actually meets in the past, which is not just a simulation but an actual trip to the past (although there is the discrepancy about her date of birth).
Kang must have tampered with the visor so that Kamala was projected into the past when she used it.
When the intervention of the old Kamala with cosmic powers resolves the situation, Kamala wakes up in her bed vomiting water (which her mother also notices), a sign that she was indeed drowning in Gibraltar five million years in the past before returning to the present.
The canonical Kamala, 616, would be the one who materializes during the clash between Avengers, Hulk and Namor and has the Hulk turn into Banner and is then brought to the time platform by the Kamala who has already experienced that timeline.
So basically Kamala's timeline for issues 5-6 should be:
A:BTB 5 (1-6:3)
A:BTB 6 (14:2-20)