Who is Kang?

Celestial Madonna Saga

Woman, have you not seen that you are to marry that tree?

Avengers #129-135, Giant-Size Avengers #2-4 [Steve Englehart, Roy Thomas, Sal Buscema, George Tuska, Dave Cockrum, Don Heck, Joe Staton, et al, 1974-75]

Yeah, this story is pretty epic and pretty confusing. One of the all-time great Avengers stories, but not easy to untangle. We tried to pull out the Wanda/Vision bits for our Wandavision post, and we’ll try to pull out the Kang/Rama-Tut/Immortus bits now. The gist of the story is that Kang wants to marry the Celestial Madonna (who turns out to be Mantis), whose child is prophesied to be some great universal savior. When Kang reached the age of 60, he saw a great void in all his conquests, and decided to become Rama-Tut again and return to Egypt to this time rule well and with compassion for a decade. But then, reflecting on the mistakes of his past, he decided he should travel back to the 20th century to teach his younger self how foolish he is being. He had long since destroyed his time machine, so he placed himself in suspended animation to awaken in our century. Kang and Rama-Tut battle and plunge into a time vortex, but are rescued by Immortus. Immortus reveals himself to be an even older version of Kang and Rama-Tut. He reveals to the Avengers the true origins of both Mantis and the Vision– the Vision was rebuilt from the body of the original android Human Torch. Immortus is the ruler of Limbo, and his one subject is the Space Phantom, who does his bidding. In the end, Immortus presides over the strange dual wedding, of Vision to Scarlet Witch, and Mantis to an alien plant in the form of the dead Swordsman.

Avengers #140-143 [Steve Englehart, George Tuska, George Pérez, Vince Colletta, and Sam Grainger, 1975]

Today, and forever… there is one less god.

Immortus takes Thor and Moondragon to Tombstone in 1873, where they find Hawkeye has assembled the old Western heroes to stop Kang from conquering the 19th century. Kang dies fighting Thor, and thus the circle is broken. He will never become Immortus, so Immortus will never be. Immortus fades out of existence, having achieved his goal of preventing Kang’s future atrocities.

Thor #243-245 [Len Wein, John Buscema, and Joe Sinnott, 1976]

…time is but a circle. From the ashes of the final holocaust, the universe will begin anew. Those who sleep are our gift to the future– three beings who are knowledge incarnate– and will teach those of the next cycle to avoid the errors we made.

The Time Twisters were created at the end of the universe and spiral backwards through time on a journey to its dawn, destroying worlds as they go; their destructive path intersects Earth every 3000 years. Thor attempts to stop their advance in the 50th century, but he fails and a world is lost. He travels forward in time to stop the Time Twisters in their past, finding the Temple at the End of Time and meeting He Who Remains; the eggs from which the Time Twisters emerge would soon hatch. He Who Remains had created the Time Twisters to bring the accumulated knowledge of time back to time’s beginnings that the next cycle of the universe could avoid this one’s mistakes. But they had become a corruption of his intentions.

Thor #282 [Mark Gruenwald, Ralph Macchio, Keith Pollard, and Pablo Marcos, 1979]

Thor travels to Limbo and learns that Immortus lives. His life is not a circle, but more like a tree. Culling one branch does not affect the whole. He has lived and studied time for millennia, settling into ageless Limbo, but he met even wiser beings, a trinity from the end of this time cycle, who charged him to monitor time travel in this sector of time and untangle the multiplicities. His first battle with the Avengers alongside the Masters of Evil had been to help him understand how Kang had impacted the development of the Avengers. As a result of his adventure in Limbo, Thor’s hammer loses the ability to travel through time.

Marcus

Avengers #199-200 [Jim Shooter, George Pérez, Bob Layton, David Michelinie, and Dan Green, 1980]

We come to the most infamous Avengers story. A full four people claim plot credit, perhaps so we won’t know who to blame. I blame them all.

Ms. Marvel–Carol Danvers–mysteriously became pregnant and gave birth to a child, who quickly grew to manhood, as different eras of time all seemed to collapse. Immortus had once saved a drowning woman, and taken her to Limbo to be his bride. They had a son, Marcus, born in Limbo. When Immortus faded from existence, Marcus was alone. To escape Limbo, he brought Ms. Marvel to Limbo, seduced her with the aid of machinery, then returned her to time to give birth to him. Since his presence in time was causing the disruptions, he had to return to Limbo. Ms. Marvel didn’t remember her time in Limbo, but she did remember the feelings she’d developed for this man, her lover/son (or perhaps abuser is more apt), so she gave up being a superhero to go to Limbo and marry Marcus. The Avengers hoped she lived happily ever after.

Avengers Annual 10 [Chris Claremont, Michael Golden, and Armando Gil, 1981]

You screwed up, Avengers. That’s human.

Marcus dies in Limbo soon after returning. Ms. Marvel escapes, but then gets her powers stolen by Rogue. She chastises the Avengers for letting her follow Marcus, when he had clearly taken control of her will.

Dr. Strange #53 [Roger Stern, Marshall Rogers, and Terry Austin, 1982]

Dr. Strange was present in Ancient Egypt when the Fantastic Four met Rama-Tut. Soon we’ll be asking who wasn’t.

Nathaniel Richards

Fantastic Four #271-273 [John Byrne, 1984]

The team journeys to a parallel earth to find Reed’s lost time-traveling father. They find an earth where technology advanced much more quickly, humanity having reached the moon 1100 years earlier. But these advances eventually led to war and devastation. To these devastated lands came the scientist Nathaniel Richards who helped to restore technology, and took a bride. But soon he became the evil Warlord, interested in war and conquest. Or did he? Turns out the Warlord was his wife Cassandra, manipulating him. Women, eh? When she dies in the conflict, he rededicates himself to restoring peace and prosperity to the world. And succeeds. A descendent of his born in the year 3000 grows bored of that peace and becomes the man known as Kang.

We had assumed Kang was descended from Dr. Doom, since we knew his ancestor built a time platform, as Doom did. But now we’ve learned Nathaniel Richards built a time platform before Doom did, and that Kang is not from our future, but the future of a parallel timeline. Kang is descended from Reed’s half-brother.

Squadron Supreme #2 [Mark Gruenwald, Bob Hall, and John Beatty, 1985]

On another world, the Squadron Supreme are the greatest heroes, and the time-traveling Scarlet Centurion is one of their many enemies, always seeking to conquer the world from his base in the 41st century.

Council of Kangs

Avengers #267-269 [Roger Stern, John Buscema, and Tom Palmer, 1986]

How does time work exactly? Maybe best not to ask. But we’ll pick up some tidbits anyway. We learn now that all this time-traveling is creating branch realities. In particular, there are a lot of versions of Kang out there. A Council of Kangs has assembled to kill off the most troublesome Kangs. However, one Kang on the Council kills off the rest of the Council as well, to make himself the only Kang and claiming all their dominions, thus having conquered not only across space and time but also across realities. This Kang comes from a branch of time where Ravonna was not injured, but lives as his bride. For ease, we’ll refer to this guy as Kang-with-a-cape. The last other remaining Kang still mourns for his comatose Ravonna.

Kang-with-a-cape’s earlier battle with Thor led him to discover Limbo, and the corpse of a dead Immortus. From Limbo, he could alter his past to save Ravonna, but in doing so he himself died. Really, a divergence of himself. He set about killing his divergent selfs in Limbo, where their deaths would not spawn new realities, manipulating the most resourceful Kangs into joining him instead. After Kang-with-a-cape kills the other, Immortus reveals that he still lives, one final Kang divergence, and has been manipulating Kang all along with Ravonna’s help. He drives Kang-with-a-cape mad and lets him wander Limbo.

West Coast Avengers #17-23 [Steve Englehart, Al Milgrom, Joe Sinnott, et al, 1987]

Dominus uses Doom’s time platform to send the West Coast Avengers back into the Old West. The machine is broken, so the Avengers can’t use it to travel forward in time. But they can use it to travel backwards. And they think that if they use it to travel to Rama-Tut’s time in Ancient Egypt, they can find a time machine to take them home. See, I told you everybody was in Egypt back then.

Nebula

Avengers #291-297 [Walt Simonson, John Buscema, and Tom Palmer, 1988]

Kang survived his apparent destruction and returns to his sanctum, only to find himself in battle with other Kangs, one a child and one a woman. He is taken to a chamber with an audience filled with Kangs, the Council of Cross-Time Kangs. Guess they’re not all gone. They’ve all chosen a new name so as not to call each other Kang all the time. The woman is named Nebula. Ours decides to be called Fred.

Nebula has been psychically visiting Dr. Druid, appearing as a beautiful and scantily-clad woman in his dreams, seducing him, and manipulating him into claiming leadership of the Avengers, which he does with psychic vote manipulation. She seeks a Celestial weapon within a time bubble and needs the Avengers to retrieve it. In the end, Nebula falls into the time bubble, and an enamored Dr. Druid jumps after her. In the fallout of the battle, the Avengers disband.

Obviously, Nebula should not be confused with the other Nebula, the granddaughter of Thanos, even if both are blue. And even if she also refers to herself as the granddaughter of Thanos. And even if we see they sometimes dress the exact same.

West Coast Avengers #42-47, Avengers West Coast #48-62 [John Byrne, Fabian Nicieza, Dann Thomas, Roy Thomas, Paul Ryan, Mike Machlan, Dan Bulanadi, et al, 1989-90]

I’m citing 20 issues, so a lot happens here, much completely unrelated, some only indirectly related to Immortus. And we covered these issues in the Wandavision post. The Vision is deconstructed and rebuilt, Wanda’s children turn out to never have been real, and Wanda goes a bit mad. Immortus has long been manipulating the Avengers and had told the Avengers many lies in the past, particularly about the Vision’s origins and connection to the Human Torch, for his own reasons. We see Immortus culling divergent timelines, such as a universe where Mary has Elizabeth beheaded, or one in which the Avengers West Coast die in battle with Hydro-Man.

Agatha Harkness uses her magic to learn the true origin of Immortus. After becoming Immortus and retiring to Limbo, the Time-Keepers approached him and gave him knowledge of time and custodianship over the period 3000 BC – 4000 AD, with the task of monitoring time travel and untangling the divergences created by Kang. Scarlet Witch is important to his schemes, for she is a nexus being, one who belongs equally to all divergent timelines. But for all his planning, he cannot control Wanda in the end, and the Time-Keepers punish him for his failures by freezing him into an immobile state. The Time-Keepers’ ultimate purpose is their own existence: to ensure the flow of time in such a way that they are born at time’s end.

Continued on Page 3!