Of all the Rocket Racers in the Marvel Multiverse, this is one:

This is all that we get of this guy. In this story the main Marvel Universe Deadpool is speaking about what he might be like in other alternate timelines where he made different life choices. In this case he wonders what would have happened if he was not driven by money, but was instead a superhero idol. While to regular Deadpool this is a hypothetical, he doesn’t mention any of the details we’re seeing (Black Cat, the symbiote, Bob himself), so one has to assume this is a glimpse into a distant corner of the Multiverse we’re seeing because it matches Deadpool’s wonderings.

So we have a single-page glimpse of that universe and in that single page glimpse, Rocket Racer is hanging out in the background. It ain’t much to go on, is it? Well, allow me to go on about it a lot.

First of all, what is Bob doing here? The main action is Deadpool and Black Cat fighting Modok and his AIM henchmen while Spider-Man follows like a fanboy of Deadpool. Fair enough. But then there’s three people who are loser criminals in the Marvel Universe, Rocket Racer, the Big Wheel (mostly covered by word balloons), and the Clown. The Clown is visibly fighting AIM, so he’s on Deadpool’s side. The Big Wheel seems to be opposing AIM as well, in a way that could appear unintentional but I am taking as a sign that he is also alongside Deadpool. Bob is kind of just watching, but his angle suggests he is storming the AIM goons alongside the Big Wheel. Pretty clearly, Deadpool has led these guys to this fight. In this universe he is a hero and this is his team. These guys are crimefighters here.

It’s notable that Bob here seems to just be hanging from the wall like a weirdo, his feet on a strange piece of some-thing-or-other that happens to be affixed there. But that is obviously supposed to be some kind of rocket skateboard that has been miscoloured and now blends into the wall.

Our regular Bob in the Marvel Universe has a history with the Big Wheel, who only came into being because of Bob. I have apparently not done a post about him yet, but I will. Bob has also had minimal revealed connections with Deadpool, and even Mercs For Money on which Bob would have definitely fit in.

In fact, I’ll say right now: if Marvel wants a new Mercs For Money book, let me at it! It’s a more likely place for Rocket Racer to find an audience than most of my other ideas.

And now we’ve reached the part where PDR is going to introduce a philosophical thought experiment about the social ties that bind us all:

Suppose a Supernatural Being came to you and explained to you that there was an impending cosmic doom that will be magically smiting every person on Earth who is not vouched for by anyone else, those people just turn into pillars of salt or whatever. This doom will happen in a matter of seconds, though time has stopped while the Supernatural Being gathers the information about who vouches for which other people.

The Supernatural Being explains the rules clearly: You are the first person, selected randomly from the entire population to go first, and you must vouch for two other people to survive the cosmic doom, and also those two people are each then given the same opportunity to vouch for two people. Nobody knows who vouched for them, or who has already been vouched for, but the Supernatural Being explains the last wrinkle: if someone is vouched for twice, that person gets a third vote and can select one more person. But that’s it. If they are vouched for again after that, they do not get a fourth vote. Each person who gets to vote has the rules clearly explained to them by the Supernatural Being so that there aren’t any mistakes or anything, but the voters can’t communicate with each other. We each make this choice alone.

So that’s the deal. What can we think of based on that? Who would you vote for? How can we strategize to ensure the most people survive and the fewest are left to fall for the cracks?

As of this writing, I’ve thought about this thought about this experiment more than anyone else, so I suppose I have to give my thoughts. Given the rules above, I don’t think this would spread to the whole world, sadly. If I were vouched for and got to vote, I’d probably go with my mother, whom I assume would spread vouches into the family, and some friend who lives somewhere else, to try to get survival spreading as widely as possible. But I see ways this could go badly. For all I know, my mother or that friend are the one who vouched for me, and for all I know they’ve each already been vouched for and had their third vote already. In that scenario I would survive, but I would be a dead end. That seems less likely than one of them still being able to receive a third vote, so survival would only get one more chance to spread, but the risk would still be there that they would then become a dead end. In fact, the more beloved a person is, the more people would be vouching for them and shattering their votes against someone who has already spent their three.

It’s a thought experiment I’d love to see mulled over and mapped by computers, to see how far it could spread. But mostly I just needed to get it out of my own head and into the world.

EDIT: I think one change could make sure it spreads a lot further: if you knew who vouched for you, it would keep a lot of duplicates from being made, and it would give you an idea of who else has already been covered.