Incredible Hercules #116
Prelude to Secret Invasion: Metamorphosis
California, Now
After eluding SHIELD, Hercules and Amadeus Cho have gone to the home of Athena, who warned them of a coming war.[1] The trio (along with Cho’s coyote pup) then hop into a SUV and head to San Francisco. While Herc and the pup slumber in the back, Athena passes time by quizzing Amadeus Cho to gauge his intelligence.[2] This is all a means of figuring out when Amadeus is about to do something bad, such as when he tried to take down SHIELD. She tells Amadeus that as a mortal he needs to learn the right way of using his great intelligence.
They soon arrive at the site of the Dreaming Celestial that has appeared in Golden Gate Park.[3] She tells him that his intelligence is based on pattern recognition and that his one blind spot is noticing the patterns in himself. That will lead to an imposition of patterns that are not there. With Hercules awoken, he complains about this being another one of his half-sisters long winded lessons. When she explains their need to prepare for the coming war, Hercules says he always is ready for battle. That’s when she reminds him of Kyknos….
Macedonia, 1268 BC
Kyknos was the son of Ares and a mortal woman who had decided to make a temple to honor his father, the god of war, by using the bones of travelers that were killed crossing his path. This proved to be a mistake when Kyknos crossed paths with Hercules and decided he would be his next victim. While most people at the time would have fled from the demigod, Kyknos was too much like his father and fought.
Observing this from Olympus were Zeus, Athena, and Ares. Ares demanded permission to go to Earth and assist his son in battle. Zeus wanted to consult with the Moirae who foretold that Hercules would slay Kyknos. Ares went to Earth to intervene, only to have Athena follow him to assist Hercules and even the odds. Ultimately, Ares fled after being injured in battle, and Kyknos was slain in the end.
Now
Hercules barely remembers this and then goes off to take a leak. Amadeus doesn’t understand why Athena didn’t just kill Kyknos herself. She explains that as the goddess of heroic endeavor it is her purpose to provide inspiration and guidance to warriors. However, she isn’t entirely sure that her lessons were fully learned by Hercules.
Meanwhile, Hercules arrives at a nearby outhouse and is annoyed to see a long line up. He decides to go and piss in the woods. There he is interrupted mid-stream by Ikaris and Thena of the Eternals, who mistake him for Gilgamesh.[4] Hercules recognizes them and says he is not Gilgamesh. However, the two Eternals aren’t entirely sure. They explain how their people have forgotten who they are and are living in false identities thanks to the machinations of the Eternal known as Sprite. Hercules insists that he is who he is and is questioned about his past. He tells them that he is the son of the mortal woman known as Alcemenem the Princess of Mycenae. His father, Zeus had impregnated her while posing as her husband, Amphitryon of Thebes while he was away fighting the pirates of Taphos. When he mentions that this was so written by the playwrite Euripides, it convinces them further that Hercules is Gilgamesh.
When Hercules continues to refuse this, Ikaris unleashes a cosmic eye-blast. Suddenly, Herc seemingly starts believing that he is Gilgamesh. But this is merely a ploy to get Ikaris close enough to land a punch, sending the Eternal flying. Seeing that there is a fight happening, Athena changes into her battle armor and charges into battle, telling Amadeus to stay back.
As Hercules and Ikaris continue to fight, Ikaris — in further efforts to convince Hercules that he is Gilgamesh — mentions the other names he has gone by: Hero, and the Forgotten One.[5] That last name, Hercules remembers, as he fought the Forgotten One when the Eternals had attacked Olympus.[6] Ikaris then mentions how Gilgamesh previously claimed to hold the world on behalf of Atlas and cleaned the Aegean Stables. Two things that Hercules finds impossible because he did those tasks… Didn’t he?
Elis, 1272 BC
For his fifth labor, Hercules had bet one half of King Aegeas’ stock that he could clean out his stables within a day. He made this boast without seeing the state of the place and was disheartened to see that the shit was stacked up to the ceiling. As he started shoveling he came to realize that this would be an impossible task. Suddenly, a torrent of water from a diverted river came crashing into the stable and washed all the much away. Looking outside, Hercules saw the silhouette of a man standing by the river bank waving. He didn’t get a good look at who that was and eventually came to consider this a case of divine intervention, as such things were common in those days.
Now
This revelation gets Hercules to start doubting who he really is. Meanwhile, Athena continues her battle with Thena to try and get to Hercules and snap him out of it. This becomes both a battle of both strength, and conflicting ideologies as the two women come from different worlds — one of myth and one of science.
When its looking like Athena will be defeated, Amadeus Cho decides to intervene. Using his intellect he determines the right trajectory to throw a shard of Adamantium that he pocketed during the war with the Hulk. It manages to cut Thena’s cheek, prompting her to turn and unleash a eye blast. Amadeus leaps out of harms way and the blast ends up striking the foot of the Dreaming Celestial. Before she can apologize to the space god, Thena is struck down.
That’s when Makkari arrives and stop the fight, saying that he mistranslated the information he had gotten from the Celestials. They didn’t mean they were expecting the Forgotten One, but a group called the Forgotten Ones.[7] With the battle now over, Hercules and Amadeus contemplate what have just happened. Herc admits that he has often found it hard to reconcile the fact that he was the son of Zeus, and admits that learning he was actually an Eternal would have made life make more sense to him. Cho sarcastically welcomes Hercules to the human experience.
With everything straightened out, Athena gets permission to stand under the shadow of the Dreaming Celestial. It is here that she and her two companions meet with the Council of God-Heads, a consortium of rulers of the various godly pantheons that watch over the Earth.[8] Addressing them all, Athena pulls out the severed head of a Skrull and informs them all that these aliens have already invaded the Earth!
Recurring Characters
Hercules, Amadeus Cho, Athena, Council of God-Heads (Alitjira, Ammon Ra, Anu, Budda, Hodiak, Hunab Ku, Inti, Izagi-No-Mikoto, Itzamna, Manitou, Ndrianananhary, Okonorote, Osirus, Shou-Hsing, Tame, Tezcalipoca, Tomazooma, Ukko, Ulgen, Virachocha, Vishnu), Eternals (Thena, Ikaris, Makkari), Dreaming Celestial, “Kirby” (in flashback) Kyknos, Zeus, Ares
Continuity Notes
Hercules and Cho escaped SHIELD over the course of the last four issues. This was due to their assisting the Hulk during his attack on the Illuminati. See World War Hulk #1-5 and Incredible Hulk (vol. 2) #106-112.
This unnamed coyote pup is more than it is seems. Unnamed here it is later given the name Kirby in Incredible Hercules #118. However, this is not Cho’s pup at all. In Incredible Hercules #119 we learn that it has been replaced by a Skrull invader circa Incredible Hercules #113. The pup was replaced ahead of a planned invasion of Earth that will primarily take place in Secret Invasion #1-8.
This story takes place shortly after the Dreaming Celestial came to Earth to judge humanity, as seen in Eternals (vol. 3) #1-7. Here it will remain until it is seemingly slain by the Exterminators in X-Termination #1.
Some facts about the confusion between Hercules and Gilgamesh:
Like many Eternals, Gilgamesh was confused for a pre-existing god during the days of antiquity. Specifically, he was mistaken for being Hercules. As told in Thor #291, Gilgamesh claimed credit for cleaning the Augean Stables, one of Hercules’ legendary twelve labors.
Hercules claimed to have done this himself, and we saw it depicted in Hercules (vol. 3) #1. This issue clarifies that while Herc did the backbreaking shit-shoveling, Gilgamesh diverted a river to wash all the shit out of the stables. Herc then assumed that this was divine intervention.
At the time of this story, the Eternals have been living false lives as mortals thanks to the machinations of Sprite, as seen in Eternals (vol. 4) #1-7. Thena and Ikaris have been searching for their missing people. We’ll see Gilgamesh again in Eternals (vol. 4) #3, where we learn he has been living the life of a Brazilian professional wrestler.
Per Eternals #13, Gilgamesh came to be known as the Forgotten One by the decree of their leader, Zuras, who deemed that he had interfered too much in the development of humanity of the centuries. Later, the Celestial known as the One Above All dubbed him Hero in Thor #287 after he risked his life to destroy a bomb created by the Deviants to destroy their creators.
I could be wrong, but as far as I can tell, the Eternals are referring to the Horde, a hive mind of creatures that consume entire planets that were first seen in Eternals (vol. 3) #6. The Eternals will fight their threat in Eternals (vol. 4) #1-9.
The Council of Godheads were first formed by Odin as a means of monitoring and defending the Earth from a judgement by the Celestials. See Thor #300 for the details on that. Not all of the gods are named here, they are all identified in appendix update for the Council of God-Heads that was published in the softcover edition of Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z #2.
Topical References
When quizzing Amadeus, Athena asks him what actors Matt Damon, Dennis Hopper, and John Malkovich have in common. The answer is that they all played Patricia Smith’s Tom Ripley. Tom Ripley was the protagonist in a number of Smith’s crime novels, many of which have been adapted to film. Dennis Hopper played the character in 1977’s The American Friend, while Damon played the character in 1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Malkovich portrayed the character in 2002’s Ripley’s Game. This could be considered a topical reference as you could replace the reference to Tom Ripley to a more contemporary fictional character who played multiple roles. On the other hand, Athena is quizzing Amadeus to gauge his intelligence, so you could argue that making a reference to such a specific subject would be a test of his knowledge.
Amadeus Cho states that he cut $100,000 out of SHIELD’s landmine budget for the refugees of World War Hulk. This dollar figure should be considered topical as it is relative to the era of publication. Adjusting for inflation, this amount would be worth $146 thousand in 2024 money.