Iron Man: Avengers Villain Korvac's Endgame Is a Silent Apocalypse

WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Iron Man #7 by Christopher Cantwell, Cafu, Frank D'armata, and VC's Joe Caramagna, on sale now.

To put it mildly, Tony Stark is not in a good place right now. Chasing down Korvac and his acolytes has left Tony on the verge of death with a broken neck that's only being held together by an armor that he just powered up to dangerous proportions.

With how bad things are, it's only understandable that Tony would rather be anywhere else. To that end, he's about to get a preview of Korvac's proposed utopia on Earth to see if it's really all that bad in Iron Man #7. Not only is it a horrifying vision of the future, it might just be the worst of them all solely based on how dull it is.

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Korvac's campaign of madness has taken its toll on far more people than just Tony Stark, in particular leaving a deep impression on Patsy Walker. She and Korvac now share a mental connection that she has found more traumatizing than anything else, but Tony thinks that she can use it to turn the tables on their enemy. By putting their link to use by reaching out to Korvac first, Hellcat is able to enter the villain's mindscape alongside Iron Man. Korvac assumes that they have come looking for a fight, but Tony is genuinely interested in what Korvac's version of a utopian Earth would look like. He knows that Patsy has seen it, and it left her shaken, but the maniac's confidence and apparent concern for the well-being of all beings has left Tony curious. Luckily, Korvac is pleased to show his adversary exactly what he has planned, and he couldn't be more proud of it.

Rather than a future lorded over by Korvac, all living beings on the face of the planet will be reformed into one crystalline being known as the Aggregate. Without pain or hunger or really any needs in particular, the Aggregate will be a completely unified creature spanning as much of the world as it takes. There is no part of Korvac in this terrifyingly boring future, because all individuality will have been snuffed out in favor of bland, vaguely animalistic creatures bonded to the very same stock on which they graze. As Iron Man puts it, "Nothing things grazing on... nothing."

Both Tony and Patsy are quick to point out that this version of a utopia sucks from the ground up, much to Korvac's displeasure, but the two heroes are right in their assessment. In fact, even compared to some of the most horrific futures that Iron Man has lived through, Korvac's might be the absolute worst even without any bloodshed.

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The Marvel Universe has no shortage of alternate timelines and universes that could be considered far worse than the primary one in which this Tony Stark lives, though they all offer something beyond what Korvac's utopia does. House of M by Brian Michael Bendis and Olivier Coipel featured the alternate reality created by Scarlet Witch wherein mutants ruled over humanity. This universe saw Tony forced to fight his own father for mutant entertainment in power-suited gladiatorial combat in the pages of Greg Pak and Pat Lee's Iron Man: House of M. As humiliating as this was, he still had the opportunity to create his own armor and eventually strike back against the roving Sentinels that policed his world.

Almost every alternate world, from House of M to Heroes Reborn and Earth X bore witness to a world on the verge of collapse, but those worlds still gave their citizens and heroes the chance to live their own lives, and occasionally live them in a way that made things better as a whole. What Korvac is offering is indeed devoid of suffering and doesn't even allow for the possibility of pain, which also eliminates any chance of real happiness or fulfillment, and that's the worst thing besides complete and total annihilation.

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