“In the Marvel Universe, gods walk the Earth.

Some side with heroes.
Others spread dread and despair.
One god cares for neither.
He is the Chaos King.
And he will stop at nothing to end everything with
Chaos War.”

Thus, with typical Marvel bombast, Greg Pak and Fred van Lente of Action Philosophers! and Comic Book Comics fame introduce the 2010–2011 “Chaos War ” storyline.

In many ways, “Chaos War” is a classic superhero comics event. It has the mandatory brawls between heroes who then become allies. It has the brains versus brawn tension and the triumph of ingenuity over smashing things that Marvel comics so often employ. It is also, like so many comics events, a massive weave of intertextual references: as always, it connects with established continuity in too many places to count and references to film and literature similarly abound. By virtue of the advanced age of many of the characters involved, there are a number of historical references (such as Sersi remarking to Thor that one fight “[k]inda reminds you of the siege of Paris by the Danes in the ninth century, huh, big guy?”). And, given its focus on gods, godlings, and pantheons, it also makes numerous implicit and explicit references to myth, story, and (what we can somewhat anachronistically label) theology.

But many of these references are arguably superficial. In most cases, “Chaos War” provides enough information for the reader to situate a specific god within the religious tradition from which it is appropriated, but there is not much of what we can call substance in those references. They have names that can be traced to one pantheon or another and an appearance that gives them the flavor of a place and (in most cases) a time, although there is a preponderance of gods in superhero-style garb. Thus, they are all interweaved and largely undifferentiated. The gods co-exist, they know each other, and some have banded together before the story begins, while others do so after. This mix gives the impression of a divine melting pot where all deities are superheated to become alike, so as to better fit the genre in which they appear. In this respect, it is significant that Amadeus Cho tells Hercules that he has “hooked [him] up with all-father powers” and that the hero is called a supergod more than once; even godhood follows the logic of power-levels and -types in the Marvel Universe.

The first issue certainly takes the chaos part of “The Chaos War” seriously; in a frantic progression of scenes, readers find out that Hercules is not dead as he was thought to be; the Dr. Strange villain Nightmare is killed by the Chaos King, the story’s main villain; Hercules returns to Earth, a “supergod” courtesy of his friend Amadeus Cho and his girlfriend Delphyne Gorgon (described as a “badass Amazon Medusa Chick”), and is quickly transported into the presence of the “Council of Godheads” (no names are given but the collection of  “all-fathers” with distinct Native South American, Chinese, and Egyptian appearances suggest that Osiris, Quetzalcoatl  [or Tezcatlipoca], and Huang are in the front row) to be judged, after which a classic superhero smackdown begins. Thor shows up and tells Hercules that they are on the same side, but that the “Lion of Olympus” must calm down. Hercules agrees and gathers Marvel’s heroes to unite against the Chaos King, saying that this is the day they earn their heroic epithet.

In helpful exposition, Hercules tells the heroes that the Chaos King – Amatsu-Mikaboshi to the Japanese – is not merely a god, but someone who was there before creation, who destroyed Olympus and killed Zeus, and then traveled across the universe “slaying alien pantheon after alien pantheon”. He aims for nothing less than the destruction of all reality. After his speech, Hercules leads the heroes into Nightmare’s realm, only to find out that the Chaos King has stolen the villain’s power “to destroy any mortal mind he touches!” That’s where the frantic first issue ends, with Earth’s mightiest mortal heroes floating lifeless in space.

Hercules and Amadeus return to Earth with the comatose heroes in tow, arriving at the “Olympus Group Building” in New York, where they meet up with such Grecian figures as Venus and other gods who are unaffected by the Chaos King’s powers. Hercules, unable to wake the human population, which is similarly slumbering, cites his lineage (importantly, tracing his roots to Cronus, father time himself) before he freezes time and stops plummeting airplanes from crashing to the ground.

Meanwhile, in Hades, Pluto, lord of the dead, sits on his throne, annoyed that Hercules stopped new souls from joining his kingdom when, suddenly Hela, the Norse goddess of the dead enters (violently) and asks her colleague to join her in fighting the Chaos King (after all, although they hate the world of the living, existence beats nothingness). Pluto agrees, freeing souls in his possession, among which are not only several dead superheroes and -villains, but also Ares, the Greek god of war and Zeus (who is killed again in the melee with the Chaos King’s forces).

Hercules tries to summon the personification of Eternity to aid in the war against the Chaos King and Amadeus Cho explains to Thor: “That’s the omnipresent abstract entity that represents the totality of all living things–”.  But Eternity cannot help, because the Chaos King is the void against which the entity is defined: “If I fight him, I fight myself.” As Eternity recedes, Hercules asks Thor if he understands and gets a no in reply. Amadeus does, and begins to explain, to which Hercules answers with a quick “skip it.” Instead of going to another cosmic entity Hercules chooses to turn to allies he can understand: Sersi of the Eternals, Galactus, and the Silver Surfer. These recurring Marvel figures, along with with Hercules, Thor, Venus, Amadeus, and Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan, join up to comprise a “God Squad.”

“Chaos War” #3 begins in the “Council of Godheads’” chamber, with the Norse god Balder calling on his fellow “kings and queens of the heavens” to follow him into battle against the Chaos King. But he is stopped because if he does, he can be traced back to the “Throne Room of the Council of Godheads,” which connects via secret portals to each divine realm. The Council’s caution proves to be for naught, however, since Hercules brashly calls them out and reveals their position to the Chaos King, who promptly sets out to destroy them all.

What remains of the world’s pantheons gathers in Hawaii to say their final goodbyes in issue four. Hercules and Amadeus have a falling-out over what to do. The god wants only to fight whereas the mortal wants to move every being that is left in the multiverse into a realm outside it and wait out the undoing of everything that is, a lifeboat as the world gives in to nothingness. Only after Amadeus leaves with Galactus to try and put the plan in motion does Hercules begin to see that his way is not always right. Finding himself with the help of Gaea, Hercules (in the guise of “bazillion foot tall glowing bearded guy in [a] skirt” befitting a god) fights the Chaos King while Amadeus tries to figure out who to save and thus decide who will be left behind as a consequence. In true Marvel fashion, however, inspiration strikes at the last moment and the Chaos King is banished into the realm where humanity and their gods were supposed to flee.

Although it is perhaps somewhat surprising, and probably not something that was considered beforehand, this use of divinity, of achieving ‘superhgodhood,’ does make sense to a certain degree. Although the occasional claim that superheroes constitute a “modern mythology” are somewhat overstated, there are similarities in how the two genres intersect in “Chaos War.” Marvel tells stories rooted in their own time and place. Their heroes are figures connected with the everyday. Greek mythology was only loosely connected with religion; it was a popular literary genre that contained a kernel of history or the present in which it was told. The great surviving epics (Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, for example) were secular texts, not revelation or scripture, and, as historian of Greek religion John D. Mikalson notes, presented “composite deities developed in literature quite independent from the local cult myths of the worshiped gods,” streamlining them to fit the format. “Chaos War” repeats this process, blending gods into a world where everything is possible and almost everything that human minds have dreamt up is real.

Perhaps most interesting about the event, “Chaos War” is, in a sense, close to Greek conceptions of what we can call (again, perhaps somewhat anachronistically) the divine. In the Greek mind, no god was discounted, all of them were real, so the event’s cross-pantheonic use of gods has a precedent in the central tradition referenced. Another “authentic” aspect of the use of these characters in “Chaos War” and other Marvel comics, is that in ancient Greek society, gods were regarded as taking a more active part in human affairs, if perhaps not as directly and physically as they do here. So, whether intended or not, “Chaos War” is both very far away from the epic and mythological material that floats on its surface and surprisingly close to it in structure and world-building.