Marvel Handbook 8/12/2004

Totally curious to see that that Marvel is bringing back the whole “Marvel 2099” world-concept- thingy. Now, it was …erm, quite a few years ago now (I can’t say for sure, but I guess they introduced it in 1999?) – but here’s the thing:

Funny, I’ve been reading comics the whole time and it wasn’t until this new series was announced that it started to bug me.

And *BOY* has it been bugging me… *grin*

(Interlude)

What bugged me even more was that someone managed to be even *funnier* with my material last week than *I* was. See, I made a crack about Nick Fury and Cable and all these deep-cover-black-ops-super-dooper-spy types who run around in comics like a plague, and how they all missed Sept. 11.

Yes, ha-ha ho hum, and I fully expected someone to bitch about me using tragedy as a joke, or at least return fire”¦

(send all complaints to Eric S – he can YAM ’em, and get mileage for his column. Oh wait; he’s gone now. I guess send it to Chris Hyatte, he lives for Flame Wa- err, no, he’s gone too, isn’t he… Ummn… I’m guessing it’s a lot easier to get a locker there at the 411 executive spa these days, aye…)

But back to the point, DAMMIT – my very Ex girlfriend Emma read my oh-so-humorous-line and immediately spotted the flaw in my logic, pointing out –

“Oh, you expect they can find Bin Ladin, a six foot arab on a dialysis machine, when they still – STILL! can’t catch the Red Skull, and it’s been SIXTY freakin’ YEARS now…”

“Let alone the guy’s got a flame-red skull. Is it too hard to pick THAT up going through airport security?? Oh yeah – those super-spy types are GOOD-!”

Ahem.

Err, “Yes, dear”… (oh wait – I don’t have to say that stuff anymore :-)

Goddamn I hate being out-funnied by her *sigh*

Tied into my question up top about Marvel 2099, and of course – OF COURSE! tying in to our ongoing debate over continuity…

(and bear with me; this is a little complex…)

Marvel 2099… less than a century away… ‘Days of Future Past’ – maybe fifty years away… Cable’s future – far in the future, where Apocalypse rules and is opposed by the Askani… (err… is this still canon? Or is ol’ Poxy-Lips still considered “dead”? ).

… It’s one of the staples of the genre – the TIME TRAVEL story. Every writer eventually gets into a time travel story, and if you think about them enough and the paradoxes (paradoxii?) inherent, you can give yourself a Grade-A headache… So most writers just ignore everyone ELSE’s “future” and write their own.

Now Marvel (wisely) give themselves an ‘out’ when it comes to time travel stuff (and you can consider this my “Continuity Hall of Fame” nomination for the week – see how it all ties together, people? *laffin*) – by pointing out that whenever you travel through time you run the risk of shunting off into a parallel dimension. A parallel universe, but perhaps so close to your own that you may not notice the difference. And while you may not change the timeline of the future of your OWN timeline, you can get hints and pointers of what your own future will be similar to if things continue as they are…
(still with me?)

Consider – to use a movie analogy – the Terminator movies. In one, computers ‘just become’ sentient. In the second, AI develops because of people trying to unravel the secrets of a computer chip from the future. In the third, it’s a network, a virus reaching complexity and –

Anyway, three different ways and means, all leading to similar futures. Or futures so similar that the same actors can be used *chuckle*

In one, Sarah Conner lives to be a hero of the Resistance. In another, she dies of leukemia… and the future barely registers the difference. The future IS different, but – what’s the old line – “There is NOTHING so powerful …as an idea whose time has come…”

Bringing it back to Marvel… the Xmen will FORVEVER be fighting the Sentinels to prevent ‘Days of Future Past’, as bigotry can’t be wiped out (sorry) and at some point artificial intelligence WILL be developed… The shape of the sentinels may change, the name may change but beware

“…an idea who’s time has come…”

ANYWHO… All of that was just the foreplay *laffin out loud*

The main point is that, for Marvel, ALL time travel stories are valid, and NONE of them are ‘legally binding’. Compare that to DC’s ‘Hypertime’ concept, which still hasn’t been explained to anyone’s satisfaction…

The REAL challenge is this – okay, assuming that all the “main” futures as put out by Marvel come to pass… anyone want to take a stab at putting together a rough timeline for the future of the Marvel U.?

Rules are-
1) Gotta stick with the “biggies”. I’ll leave it up to the readers to work out what that means (as in ‘no, I can’t think of any way to keep this fair and sensible, and not include every one-issue joke story, either…’)

2) Also – avoid stories that get ret conned out – and I’m specifically thinking of ‘Age of Apocalypse’, because at the end of that story everything is deliberately put back ‘to the way it was’. I think there was a recent Captain Marvel future that fits here too?

3) And – let’s not get into the past. This is hard enough as it is…
Here’s the bare bones. I *know* I’ve left out a lot of stuff, so… help me fill it in!

15 years in the future: The Dreaming Celestial:

From Avengers 290? through to the team disbanding in 299? And issues of Fantastic Four, several years later…

In the future, there exists a ten-year bubble that no time travel device can penetrate. Nebula, granddaughter of Thanos, thinks she knows what’s inside it.

She steals technology from Kang and mind-controls the Avengers to help her breach the bubble…

(yes, it’s not really a ‘future’ as such, but despite the Korvac Saga, despite the Masters of Evil invading the Mansion, THIS is the best Avengers story I ever goddamn read. A real classic, it’s set in the future, and it’s my timeline, so it gets included. So there.)

50 years in the future: Days of Future Past:
Already covered above, though with one curiousity… where are all the humans? Mutants might be in concentration camps, but… what about normal people?
Which brings me to…

Also? 50 years in the future: Hulk – Future Imperfect
Well, Rick Jones is still alive, so it can’t be *too* far into the future. And I can’t remember anything that contradicts that both futures could be happening at the same time. Did the Maestro (an evil alternate future version of the Hulk) unleash the sentinels on mutantkind?

Just asking

100(ish) years in the future: Marvel 2099

1000s of years ahead: the Askani Wars
Scott Summers and Jean Grey travel thousands of years into the future to raise Scott’s son Cable; who’s mother Madeline was a clone of Jean Grey created by Mr Sinister to try and tap into the Phoenix force. Meanwhile, the enemy in the future is Stryfe, a clone of Cable created to try and save him from the techno-organic virus (which derives from aliens. I’m not sure if it was from Warlocks people? or the Phalanx?). Ahem. Who then travelled into the past to unleash the Legacy virus, for ummn, no reason. Just ‘cause he was a dick. Oh, and let’s not forget, there was also the Askani mother in the future, who was Phoenix. No, the OTHER Phoenix, Rachel Summers, Jean and Scott’s alternate daughter. From the future. No, the OTHER future. Days of Future Past. Who then travelled into her past, (our present) for wacky time travel adventures with Excaliber before travelling into the future to this mess. Oh, and Apocalypse is in there somewhere. He’s immortal. When he’s not dead.

I have a headache.

Also 1000s of years ahead: Guardians of the Galaxy

No seriously, people still bitch about the Clone Saga from Spiderman? Did you READ the paragraph above?

Yeesh… I didn’t even mention Scott’s dad, Cable’s grandad – he’s a space pirate. And sleeps with a skunk. Honest.

Millions of years later: Here comes the rain again…

This also falls under the “it’s my idea so I’ll include it if I want to” exemption. Long in the future, after the Sun has turned into a red dwarf and all life has been extinguished from the burnt, barren, lifeless Earth… Thor returns.

Bit of a strange one this; it’s a backstory from a Thor annual, it’s only like 5-6 pages long, has just two characters – Thor and Uatu – and features no dialogue at all… but it’s well worth the effort to track down. In a funny sort of way, it’s the most uplifting story I’ve ever read in comics.

Even when everyone you’ve ever known is long dead, when everything you’ve ever fought for has disappeared…
…life goes on.

The End: thanks for coming, hope you all enjoyed the show. Not even going to try and describe this – read Avengers Forever to see how everything REALLY turns out…
(Hint: the butler did it. Or possibly Kang)
*ahem*

I know due to obvious reasons time is condensed in the comic world, as a years worth of a book’s story line might take up a week, or even a day if thats what the story line called for. However, in ASM #509, I was surprised that they actually listed “June 2004” as the date on the stamp that was on Gwen’s letter (tipping Pete off on that this might not be what it seems to be)

Has the Marvel U ever revealed the year a story line takes place in (not counting 2099 or future storylines)

The issue of who isn’t/is a mutant brought back to my memory a storyline that I’m not sure was ever followed up on. In the X-Factor comic, back when it was Cyclops and company and they lived in the ship and Whilce Portacio drew them, Charlotte Jones was allowed entry onto the ship when many of her fellow police officers or not. I think it was implied that maybe she was a mutant, but do you know if this was ever followed up on?

I was amused by the “Cable jumping the shark” discussions, and I think it’s ridiculous, too, that he had a past with Wolverine. Surely they could have come up with some other excuse for the two of them to fight? What’s funnier is that this Cable, a mystery man, someone who seemingly came out of the blue when he stormed into the pages of the New Mutants, knew EVERYONE. In fact, this embarked the X-titles on an era of silliness when there was this core group of characters who all knew each other from the “past” and hated each other.

They were:
Cable
Wolverine
Gambit
GW Bridge
Weapon X/Kane
Sabretooth
Domino
Punisher
Omega Red

These guys ALL knew each other in “the past”, and if two of them met up, you could bet good money that the exchange of dialogue would go something like this:

“So. (Fill in name of character here). Been a while.”

“Yeah, (Fill in name of other character here). Not since that time in (Fill in place name here).”