New Year's Time-Tripping Part 2: Marvelous Time Pieces!

The nice thing about Sunday entries is I get most of my external life thoughts out of the way the day previous.  The only iffy thing about Sundays is that on days like today, where I feel like my subject matter is a WEE BIT too short of material, it's not exactly a lengthy read.  But hey, I'm the one that chose the material, so I have to be the one to work with it.  Consider normal entries to be a Progressive Rock track, and today's entry to be a lean-and-mean Punk Rock track.  On to some of the ways Marvel handled traversing the time-stream, in light of the New Year!

Doctor Doom's Time Platform, AKA Don't Breakdance on This at Home, or ANYWHERE:  Of all the early Stan Lee/Jack Kirby "Fantastic Four" issues, where they were freshly introducing new concepts to their budding Marvel Universe, one of my personal favorites is "Fantastic Four #5".  For not only did we see the debut of one of Marvel-dom's most VILE villains in existence... Victor Von Doom... , nor were we treated to the first time Ben Grimm as the Thing donned fake hair PLUS a beard as a disguise, but it was the debut of the Marvel Age's first time travel device, the Time Platform!  It was introduced as a means for Dr. Doom to send the male members of the FF back into the age of Blackbeard, in order to retrieve a sunken treasure chest... which puzzled the FF, since Doom is a leader of a NATION, and isn't exactly looking for chump change.  But this chest contained mystic stones used by the legendary Merlin; y'know, the chap that helped raise King Arthur, and was purported to be one of the most powerful mystics in legend.  (Note I said the MALE members, because it wasn't until the FF's title started reaching into the double-digit numbers that Stan Lee started making Susan Storm more active in their adventures, and not just "pretty eye candy" and essentially a "Pauline" to be put into peril.)  Every so often, Doctor Doom would make use of the platform to further his war against the Fantastic Four, but there've even been times where the FF have been in possession of the platform, itself, and have used it for their own time-crossing purposes.  And the time platform was integral to a loose "trilogy" of stories dealing with Iron Man and Doctor Doom clashing in the age of King Arthur! 

Cable, or the Man that is LESS Headache Inducing than Who's Next: I swear, writing this blog should earn me a share of the royalties that Rob Liefeld collects.  Seriously, his creations show up an INSANE amount of times for writing, and today is no exception.  Because in "New Mutants #87", the world was not only starting to see the public introduction to Liefeld's... er... "artistic stylings", it also got the first full story featuring the future-bred offspring of Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops, and Madeline Pryor, AKA the Goblin Queen and lover of revealing costumes, Nathan Summers... better known as Cable, or Askani'son, or Nathan Dayspring if you're NASTY.  Ready for a brain bender, that STILL makes a little bit of sense?  Okay... Nate was born to Scott and Mads, until Mads was revealed to be a clone of Jean Grey, and she turned evil.  Nate was raised by Scott and Jean, until he contracted a techno-organic virus from being kidnapped by Apocalypse.  X-Factor saved the boy, but couldn't cure him of his virus, and thereupon a time-traveler showed up to offer to take Nate into the future, where he would stand a chance to be cured.  To make a VERY long story short, Nathan grew up in the future with a society under the oppressive thumb of his clone, Stryfe, and the machinations of Apocalypse.  But in order to change his future, Nate found a program named the Professor to serve as a connection to "bodyslide" between locations and even timelines to help combat the twisted designs of the aforementioned deadly duo.  WHEW!  (The techno-organic virus was even managed to be kept in check by his NIFTY metal arm... whom my friend Chris B. is fixated upon.  Heh!)  Leading up to the birth of the character Hope, Cable was sent into the future on a fixed trajectory FORWARD to keep the first mutant birth after "House of M" safe in the future.  (That turned out to be a rather cruddy plan, since it led to a story where Cable could only travel FORWARD into the future, was pursued by an unconvincingly turned EEEEVIL Bishop, and came back to the present to be "killed off" in the "Second Coming" storyline.  But like all Marvel/ANY comic book character, he "got better".)  So, lengthy history of time-tripping, and due to his nifty post-apocalypse appeal, earns Cable his mention for the Marvel time-traveling portion of this blog!  But if you thought THIS was a mouthful, then feel free to join me as I bang my head against a table for my final entry on this particular subject...

Kang the Conqueror, or I Give Up: "Avengers #8", or "Fantastic Four #19", gave birth to one of the biggest headaches in comic history.  I don't know if you want to count his first appearance as Rama-Tut, or as Kang the Conqueror, but all that matters is that in the years following, the legacy of the character provided more insane twists than an M. Night Shyamalan film marathon.  I am REALLY not going to go into much of his history, because it gets altered WAY too many times in the character's history.  Apparently he began life as Nathaniel Richards, tying him into the Fantastic Four, but I just know him best as a 40th Century despot that felt his "FUTURE SUPER SCIENCE" would be enough to conquer the super heroes of the present day, and kept getting screwed out of his conquering designs because of his attachment to his beloved, Ravonna... who kept rejecting him and/or being killed BEFORE she could reciprocate such fond feelings.  It was later revealed to be that Kang ALSO time travelled under the guise of Rama-Tut, that he also adopted the identity of a super villain known as the Scarlet Centurion, would LATER in a timeless future-ish void become Immortus, and would inspire countless conquering types from all over the galaxy to form the Council of Kangs.  Oh yes... and Kang managed to score himself an action figure in the initial "Secret Wars" Mattel toy line.  Not bad for a character that I am SURE you need a few chemical substances to really "grasp" his timeline.  (Sorry, Kurt Busiek, but your efforts to try explaining the background of Kang REALLY didn't help me map out the hows and whys of this purple-and-blue pain in the you-know-where.)  At the VERY least, we know for sure he ISN'T a relative of Doctor Doom as he suspected himself to be, for a stretch of time.  I'm fairly certain Victor breathed a sigh of relief at that revelation...