Original Sins?

[Chris Mortika]

Could somebody please fill me in on the summer Marvel cross-over Original Sins? I understand it's a mystery, about who killed the Watcher and stole his eyes. But I haven't read any of the issues or cross-overs or support ancillaries.

A certain amount of snark is necessary in most discussions about current comics, but I'm more interested in the facts of the storyline and anything you think is cool or well-done, rather than the ways that the series indicates that Marvel has jumped the vibranium shark.

If it turns out that the Watcher was secretly married to Elongated Man, I'll be disappointed.

[SeeDarkly_X]

I don't think you'll have to worry on that last point since Elongated Man is a DC character...

I don't know how much detail you'll want, but I'll put this next bit under a "spoiler"

Original Sin Spoilers?:

The premise seems to be a means by which Marvel can introduce a number of ret-cons that allow them to tell a lot of new stories in the framework of "This was always a secret but the Watcher saw it and remembers."
Those secrets get revealed and have implications that seem to affect many of the Marvel Universe characters, ranging anywhere from "I have a sister" to "my friend made me a monster" and so on.
Essentially, one moment triggers multiple other storylines while the central story continues.
One secret revealed is very directly related to Nick Fury (not Jr.) but that is revealed as part of an investigation separate from the aforementioned singularity.

[Velcro Zipper]

Initially I was only going to collect it because Moon Knight is in it, but it's a decent story even if ultimately, like all event series, none of it will matter.

Basically, the gist of it is somebody murdered The Watcher, stole his eyes and a ton of Ultimate Nullifier-grade weapons from his vault and pretty much every hero on Earth gets involved in finding out whodunit.

Here be Major Spoilers:

Two groups of heroes begin separate investigations into the death of The Watcher. All the A-list characters find out three Z-list villains (The Orb, Dr. Midas and Exterminatrix) and a pack of mindless ones have something to do with the murder. The Orb has one of The Watcher's eyes and seems to be able to communicate with it, and exposure to the eye has given the Mindless Ones free will which sends them all into a spiral of depression and uncontrollable rage. One of them steals the Ultimate Nullifier and tries to kill himself with it. He succeeds, obliterating a small chunk of New York City (For a weapon that Galactus fears, the damage was actually pretty unimpressive.)

During a later battle, The Orb exposes all the A-listers to the eye and half of them freak out and leave the fight because they've just had horrible secrets revealed to them (Tony Stark is apparently responsible for Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk, Thor has a sister, Johnny Storm totally pooched Ben Grimm's best and possibly only chance to permanently revert to human form, etc.) Meanwhile some B-list heroes (Moon Knight, Punisher, Doc Strange, Bucky, Black Panther, Emma Frost, Gamora and Ant-Man) split into teams and are sent by a mystery guy to investigate a series of similar murders involving other super powerful beings (a living planet, a demon lord, some subterranean elder monster thing.) (Teaming up Punisher with Dr. Strange turns out to result in some funny dialogue.)

The B-listers eventually steal The Orb away from A-lister custody by throwing Wolverine and the Hulk off of Stark Tower and wind up following their clues to a space station where it turns out the real Nick Fury (the mystery guy) has been hiding for a few decades surrounded by an army of LMDs that help him assassinate threats to the universe before anyone knows they're threats (in one panel it's shown he once nearly killed a teenaged Peter Parker but changed his mind at the last minute.) Nick, it turns out, has been doing this on the sly since he was a young SHIELD agent after accepting the job from a previous world-saving assassin who died in the process of killing an entire race of invading aliens. Now, Old Man Fury is dying. The Infinity Formula in his blood ran out years ago and he's rapidly deteriorating. The B-Lister team, he reveals, are people he selected to be potential replacements for his mission.

Nick also says he and The Watcher had a complicated relationship. The Watcher witnessed every murder, act of genocide and crime against nature Nick perpetrated over the years in order to save humanity and it pissed him off because Uatu never once spoke to him or did anything to intervene or assist. Before he can reveal whether or not he killed The Watcher, the A-listers show up and start tearing up the space station in an attempt to make Fury answer for his alleged murder of Uatu. Nick reveals he has the other Watcher eye and steals the one the Orb had, but only The Orb knows how to make them work. Nevertheless, Fury suits up in an exoskeleton armed with god-killing weapons and prepares to take on everybody (It's funny that he tells his LMDs not to hurt the B-listers, but says nothing about sparing Iron Man, Cap, Thor or anyone else who showed up with the Avengers.)

While all this is going, Dr. Midas, Exterminatrix and their Mindless Ones, having escaped the A-listers, prepare to return to Uatu's sanctuary on the moon. Dr. Midas says the eyes are changing them and they were foolish to leave in the first place. It's still unknown if they killed The Watcher, but it's apparent they and The Orb were either witnesses to the murder or showed up right after to steal the weapons.

It might be worth mentioning that in Original Sin #0, Uatu shows the new Nova, Sam Alexander, that his father Ikor, once proposed The Watchers should use their knowledge to help fledgling races. This led to the death of an entire planet and caused Ikor to develop his race's Prime Directive-esque rules of non-interference. The memory of his father's shame constantly haunted Uatu who has broken Ikor's rules over 400 times.

And that's what's happened so far. I haven't read any of the tie-in books so I can't say if they're any good.