Who is Kang?

Time Variance Authority

Fantastic Four #337-341 [Walt Simonson, 1990]

The Fantastic Four recognize the threat of the time bubble to their future and join with the Avengers to investigate, sort of fulfilling the prophecy of the Kangs that the Avengers would pierce the time bubble. Dr. Druid and Nebula remain trapped in its perimeter, and Nebula sends her mind to possess the Human Torch. Several Kangs from the Council followed the Fantastic Four in. Death’s Head is investigating the Time Bubble on behalf of the TVA, the Time Variance Authority (sometimes called the Time Variant Authority). The secret of the time bubble turns out to be that the Dreaming Celestial was manipulating Galactus into consuming the entire universe. The heroes save the day and return Nebula to the time void.

Avengers Spotlight #37 [Dann Thomas, Roy Thomas, Bob Hall, and Winslow Mortimer, 1990]

In the heart of time, Druid and Nebula live as amnesiacs in love in a garden of eden. When their memories awaken, Nebula resumes her goals of conquest, and Dr. Druid realizes he must stop her, learning hard truths about himself along the way. He banishes Nebula into a far-off time and emerges from the adventure younger than before.

Fantastic Four #352-354 [Walt Simonson, 1991]

As we say at the TVA, “The buck bifurcates here.”

The Time Variance Authority arrests the FF for their various time shenanigans. The hearing is presided over by Mr. Mobius, Moby to his friends. The TVA monitors the omniverse, occasionally scrapping timelines when necessary. After introducing a virus that deregisters their entire timeline from TVA systems, the Fantastic Four head home on the Cross-Time Express.

Mr. Mobius was played by Owen Wilson in Loki.

Timequake

What If…? #35-39 [Jean-Marc Lofficier, Roy Thomas, Joe Phillips, Dave Hoover, Mark Pacella, Marshall Rogers, M.C. Wyman, Gavin Curtis, et al, 1992]

The Time Variant Authority recognizes that each universe has a nexus being who impacts probabilities and the future, and that universe’s survival depends on that nexus.

The Time-Keepers are three elder beings from the end of the current time cycle who seek to preserve the integrity of the timeline from their Citadel at the End of Time. He Who Remains, just before the death of the universe, created three final beings to teach the next universe about our mistakes. His first creation, the Time Twisters, proved a mistake. The Time-Keepers are the correction to that mistake.

The Time-Keepers had tasked Immortus eliminate nexus beings, like the Scarlet Witch. Based on Immortus’ failures, the Time-Keepers again find their timeline and their existence threatened. They recognize four nexi that Immortus had failed to deal with and plan to cull entire realties to deal with these beings. A mysterious entity called the Whisperer keeps interfering with their schemes and saving universes. As they fail, some of the Time-Keepers vanish, and the Time Variant Authority detects a Timequake. When the last of the Time-Keepers are gone, the Whisperer reveals himself to be Immortus, who now claims mastery of all time.

The Watcher and the TVA resolve the situation. After the appropriate paperwork was filed, of course. One tidbit we learn from the Watcher is Kang’s birthname: Nathaniel Richards, named for his ancestor.

Terminatrix

Captain America Annual 11, Thor Annual 17, Fantastic Four Annual 25, Avengers Annual 21 [Roy Thomas, Mark Gruenwald, Herbe Trimpe, et al, 1992]

The “Citizen Kang” arc. Going by Victor Timely, Kang had founded the town of Timely in 1901 to manufacture future technology that he would control for the era. The town is a gateway to Kang’s capital city, Chronopolis, which connects to all times.

Dr. Druid and Nebula–who he has renamed Temptress to stop confusing her with Nebula– team up with the Avengers and Fantastic Four to battle Kang’s Anachronauts. Nebula/Temptress is actually Ravonna. Grandmaster had rescued her from her stasis, leaving a double in her place to fool Kang. The Grandmaster revived her and helped her get revenge upon Kang for his choice to not save her after winning the game. The Council of Kangs turn out to be mostly imposter Kangs, people from many worlds who had defeated a variant Kang and assumed his place and mantle.

Kang is intrigued by the new Ravonna; he had once saved the old one through time manipulation, but eventually grew bored of her. She notes her many previous names (including Hectate) and assumes the name Terminatrix. She duels Kang, but in the end he sacrifices himself to save her, as she had once done for him. Now he hovers on the edge of death, while she assumes rule of Chronopolis. Immortus and his Ravonna observe all that transpires.

Avengers: The Terminatrix Objective #1-4 [Mark Gruenwald, Michael Gustovich, et al, 1993].

Ravonna Lexus Renslayer, the Terminatrix, was born as a princess in 4978, and now has usurped Kang’s 15-world, 8-millennium empire, which she rules from Chronopolis. Examining her borders, she finds a time barrier guarded by Alioth. Alioth controls the timespan prior to Kang’s dominion, stretching back to the beginnings of life on Earth. She grows tired of running Kang’s domain, pretending to be him while he lies comatose. Other Kangs recommend business like sending chrono-battalions against the Congress of Realities. Kang’s Anachronauts have abandoned her.

We met Alioth in Loki, where he served as guardian of the Void.

From the year 9999, Revelation plots against Ravonna. In seeking out Revelation, Ravonna encounters Marcus Immortus, who refers to her as his mom. He brings her along with 5 of her variants to Immortus on the day of his death, where he wants her to help him escape time’s tyranny. The Time-Keepers take an interest in events, but know it is dangerous to directly interfere. Did you know they had names? Zanth, Vort, and Ast.

Immortus and old Ravonna want to enter the next life together. Revelation describes herself as Ravonna’s daughter, sister, and as Ravonna herself. Revelation is the empress of the 5 thousand years after Kang’s era.

Here’s a useful map of time.

Avengers: The Crossing [I won’t bother to name the 30 issues involved, and the creators have asked to not be named. It’s from 1995 or so.]

Probably the single worst Avengers story ever. Do I dare crack open again these awful, awful comics? For you, dear reader. Only for you.

OK, Kang seems to have finally married Mantis, and they adopted two sons, Tobias and Malachi.

And someone’s murdering Avengers. It’s a mystery who. Then it turns out to be… Iron Man?!? Oh, Kang had some type of conditioning that had made him a sleeper agent early on. With Iron Man under his control, Kang is able to use the element of surprise to destroy the Avengers from within. Iron Man kills… Gilgamesh—yes, the one played by Don Lee in the films– and Yellowjacket–no, not that one, the woman. Then he gets serious and goes after… Marilla the nanny… and Amanda the publicist. Well, good plan decades in the making, Kang. How will the Avengers ever recover from the loss of such key personnel?

I changed my mind. This is too stupid. You can read it yourself. I think Iron Man becomes a teenager or something. It’s a 25-part saga (or so), but only a fraction of the comics involved tell you they are part of The Crossing arc on the cover or elsewhere. The rest are too embarrassed.

Rise of Apocalypse #1-4 [Terry Kavanagh, James Felder, Adam Pollina, Anthony Williams, et al, 1996]

We see the story of Rama-Tut’s rise to power in Egypt, usurping the throne from Amonhotep, leading to his conflict with the young En Sabah Nur. Yes, a young Apocalypse was also hanging out in Egypt at the exact same moment with the Fantastic Four, Dr. Strange, and the West Coast Avengers.

Destiny War

Avengers Forever #1-12 [Kurt Busiek, Carlos Pacheco, and Jesús Marino, 1998-99].

Perhaps the reason so many superhumans have risen of late is that humanity has great evolutionary potential, which may one day turn Earth from a backwater planet to the greatest power in the universe. Indeed, we see timelines where the Avengers become the foundation of a tyrannical order spanning galaxies and centuries. The Time-Keepers seek to cull these timelines and so Immortus is attempting to kill Rick Jones at a key moment. Rick is saved by Kang and some unlikely allies who recruit Avengers drawn from across the team’s history to fight in the Destiny War.

The Avengers find Immortus at war in Chronopolis, the Terminatrix slain, the Anachronauts mostly slaughtered. Immortus seeks the Heart of Forever, the one thing that lets you truly change the past. Immortus destroys Chronopolis and fuses its essence with the Heart to create the Forever Crystal, which will allow him to propagate temporal changes across all timelines.

A captured Space Phantom, tells the Avengers the complete, and true, history of Immortus. The Space Phantoms are people from all worlds and times who get trapped in Limbo, and eventually change into this form; Immortus enslaves them to his bidding, as he does his work to maintain the timestream for the Time-Keepers. They are mentally conditioned to not know who they truly are; this Space Phantom really believed he was the advance scout for an alien race when he first fought the Avengers; he’d been sent by Immortus at the Time-Keepers’ direction to break up the Avengers before they became a threat. When Immortus sent Merlin, Goliath, and Hercules against the Avengers, they too were Space Phantoms. This battle, erased from the Avengers’ history by Enchantress’ magic, convinced Immortus of the Avengers’ bravery, and he decided to monitor and shepherd them, instead of outright destroying them. The goal of Immortus’ many deceptions and machinations–basically everything confusing about Avengers history was his fault– was to keep humanity contained to Earth, to stop the Avengers’ galactic empire from forming. The Time-Keepers consider humans to be the most dangerous race in the universe. Scarlet Witch’s offspring were destined to be supremely powerful. The Time-Keepers had ordered Immortus to kill her, but he instead reasoned that if he married her to the robotic Vision, then offspring would be impossible. Immortus has used the Forever Crystal to create a divergent Human Torch, one divergence becoming the Vision (which is how Vision and Human Torch co-exist). Immortus engineered the confusion about the Vision to weaken Wanda’s attachment to her children, enough to allow Mephisto to reclaim their souls, so they vanished from existence. And so Immortus continued to manipulate the Avengers, to change their future, until he realized that the murder of Rick Jones was necessary to prevent the Terran Empire from rising, which led to the Destiny War.

An older, tired, Kang, on the verge of becoming Immortus, reflects on his life. Much of it we know. Some confusing bits are corrected. Rama-Tut never thought he might be Dr. Doom; he told Doom that theory to confuse Doom. We also get a bit of– let’s call it clarity–on which stories featured this Kang, and which featured divergences. After the Celestial Madonna Saga, Rama-Tut saw a vision in Limbo of his future as Immortus, and rejected it, donning his Kang identity once more. His entire life has led him to this Destiny War, his battle against Immortus to stop himself from ever becoming Immortus. Because Immortus is too boring.

Kang Dynasty

Avengers #41-54 [Kurt Busiek, Alan Davis, Manuel Garcia, Kieron Dwyer, et al, 2001-02]

Concluding Kurt Busiek’s epic run on the Avengers. Kang is finally ready to conquer the 20th century, with his sword-shaped Damacles Base in orbit around Earth and his son, Marcus, the new Scarlet Centurion, at his side. Marcus reminds Carol Danvers, now Warbird, of the Marcus she had once been hypnotized into marrying. This Marcus also falls in love with Carol, but explains he is not the same Marcus, as his father is Kang, not Immortus, and he is from a different mother.

At one point, the Avengers and most nations surrender to Kang. But they eventually mount a resistance. Kang is defeated and captured, but rescued by Marcus. Kang then kills Marcus for having aided Warbird earlier. This was Marcus XXIII, and identical sons had previously failed and been slain by Kang as well.

Marvel Knights 4 #15-18 [Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Jim Muniz, Jim Royal, and Derek Fridolfs, 2005]

Mr. Mobius of the TVA asks the Fantastic Four to investigate some temporal anomalies. They are being caused by Ramades, illegitimate son of Rama-Tut, who has traveled to our time to conquer the world. A previously unknown fourth Time-Keeper is also involved.

Iron Lad

Young Avengers #1-6 [Allan Heinberg, Jim Cheung, John Dell, et al, 2005]

Kang doesn’t want to grow old and become the boring Immortus. Well, teenage Kang doesn’t want to grow up and become the evil Kang. So he takes on the identity of Iron Lad and assembles the Young Avengers to battle his adult self, who in turn wants his teenage self to turn evil sooner this time. The Avengers are ready to protect Iron Lad from Kang, but they realize that if he doesn’t become Kang, the present will be altered, and it turns out not for the better. After a pitched battle, Iron Lad kills Kang, altering time yet again. He realizes he can’t let history change and decides to go back to the future with his memory erased and accept his destiny.

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We’ll pause there, because that’s where I stopped reading Marvel regularly. I’m confident the last 15 years of Kang stories create no more confusion.

The above was a pretty comprehensive history of Kang, 1962-2007. Note we didn’t list every appearance, just the notable ones. For example, Kang also crashed the Fantastic Four Wedding, but who didn’t. Believe it or not, this post was heavily edited down from the first draft for length. Ravonna’s war against Zarrko in the pages of Darkhawk or Killpower’s first meeting with Rama-Tut had somehow felt essential when first drafting this.

A lot of research went into this post. Here is the bibliography: