Originally posted by ODG
What's even more "clear as day" is the explicit art of Quasar's vortex on the right sucking in enough anti-matter to cover nearly half the Sun's surface:This isn't even the only panel. You actually see a panel-by-panel-by-panel progression of it actually happening in real-time: http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo326/OneDumbG0/Random/Quasar03.jpg So there isn't any issue of ambiguous art with a possibly poor angle/perspective of a tiny panel warping our view. So what you're trying to say is Quasar's vortex on the right isn't sucking in enough anti-matter to cover nearly half the Sun's surface.
Sorry, but that is absolutely preposterous. You can't just pretend that Quasar did nothing of merit. If War Machine's battle cpu told him that #1 he had a 2% chance of defeating two dozen surrounding exo-suits and that it'd take 30 minutes to defeat only one, then Iron Man swoops in with upgraded armor noting #2 Rhodey has no chance against even a couple of them, and starts ripping into them with Rhodey exclaiming #3 how amazing advanced the new armor is over his own, but then the panels show Rhodey separately destroying 9 of the 24 exo-suits in the space of minutes...
... you can't just pretend that War Machine didn't actually destroy 9 of those enemy exo-suits. His cpu's incorrect predictions, Tony's dismissive comments, and Rhodey's amazement with Iron Man's new armor doesn't make that feat belong solely to Iron Man.
If you're going to argue that the art is completely wrong, then just make that argument. Otherwise, the only thing that's actually "clear as day" is the panel-by-panel-by-panel progression of the scene in question.
Well for me the art wasn't so much as being wrong, but more not conclusive enough for one to say that Quasar did close to or exactly half the job. I mean come on, there was no 3D representation of what was fully going on. We just see more of what was going on in the surface. The on-panel statements by the characters themselves hold the weight of the story here.
On-panel narration or statements almost always trump the art. It's inherent in art to be sometimes too ambiguous or inconclusive. It should always be supplemental to the written story. For example, when characters throw punches that are stated on-panel to pulverize a mountain yet his opponent barely even moves, we can't assume that blow is no where near mountain crushing. The writer just told us that was the case and that is what we have to believe. (barring hyperbole of course.... we're all adept enough to know when hyperbole is used)
At the end of the ordeal, Quasar even goes on to say "I'm outta here! Wait! What about that being who was helping me--heck, who did most of the work...? I detect his presence behind me--, unmoving." He then proceeds to fetch her and high-tails it outta there.
The real question is how do we compare that with Nova's feat? I actually think it's comparable since Quasar went inside the sun itself (durability feat) to attempt it, plus the dark matter affecting the sun was very much larger than the one affecting the sun in Nova's feat.
