I don't think I've mentioned this here, but I have two theories on Silver Age Marvel and Kang that I really wish that some Marvel Editor would listen to and consider.


Yes, I know they don't accept unsolicited story ideas, and certainly would not listen to any ideas for fear that someday, they might accidently use one of the ideas without credit/purchase...etc...

but hear me out...

 

Just as John Byrne and Roger Stern posited the interesting mini-series "Marvel: The Lost Years"... whereby an entire generation of superheroes was whiped out by a re-writing of time, PRE-FF and our current silver age....

I suggest that someone has been playing around with the time stream FOR YEARS, and trying to keep Captain America from being found.

That is, someone (like Kang) has gone back in time OR sent emissaries back in time, to try to disrupt the Original Avengers from either forming or finding Captain America. 

If we look at the original 16 issues of the Avengers, clearly five or six of them involve either time-travelers, or someone later shown to be an agent of a time traverler....  Space Phantom, Enchantress, Kang, Immortus, etc.

 

I would suggest that these seemingly independant stories that Lee and Kirby did, are uneven and so random because each one represents another effort by someone trying to prevent the Avengers from finding Cap and either missing the target time (issues 1-2-3) OR having to disguise their efforts.


I would suggest that the REAL story of silver age original Avengers hasbeen rewriten and we may never know the correct sequence of what happened, or should have happened...alll we have is Stan and Jack's version.

 

 

I have a seceond theory as well... that the ancestor that found the plans for Doctor doom's time machine was NOT a decendent of Reed Richards, as we were told by Pharoah Rama-Tut in FF #20 or so... but rather that it was a decendant of Tony Stark...


We have seen Tony Stark mess around with the time platform before....he dismantled it to prevent anyone from using it...and there appear to be more links between TONY and KANG than anyone else.

 

Who's to say that history didn't get screwed up by the time Rama-Tut found the plans, and that the original owner'sname wasn't lost...that it was incorrectly ascribed to Reed, but was really Tony.... or that the history is incomplete...saying that Reed used the time platform at times, but that the decendant is really TONY's herrs....


It certainly would make more sense than to think that it was a decendant of Dr. Doom or Reed's... doesn't it?    (At this time, we only know of Reed having kids...though Tony has been tom-catting and playboy screwing around for years.... we know of Iron Lad...who looks like Tony and is supposedly Kang... and we saw that awful Crossing Line sage, after the Reaverse Avengers drama where teen-tony messed around....

 

What do you think, or have I overlooked something critical that would not alow these theories to be true?

 

PS: I found a copy of Omniverse #2 and it's on the way to me right now.  I intend to read it and the essay on Kang/Doom,Rama Tut, and learn what insight it has as soon as possible.

 

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  • Omniverse #2 arrived.  I've read the Dr. Doom/Kang article on the relationships between them and RamaTutt and Scarlett Centurian.

     

    It certainly was well researched and footnoted... and summarized everything that had happened, up to that point in 1977,

     

    I enjoyed it, but was surprised to discover another article on Sherlock Holmes that I will have to call to my daughter's attention.  I will read it myself later tonight.

     

    Has anyone else read this important issue of the Omniverse fanzine?

  • Hi Kirk. Have u read Kurt Busiek's Avengers Forever? It explores a lot of the ground u mention above. However, it kind of showed that resolving gnarly continuity problems, while fun for discussions, doesn't necessarily make for great comics.
  • Actually, when it  came out, I turned my nose up at the overpriced maxi series, but then later, as the issues continued to come out, I realized that they were doing important stuff with Kang and Immortus, and explaining a lot of early continuity errors, and contradictions away... and realized I should have been on it.


    So, I picked up the specific issues that deal with "The Secret History of the Marvel Universe" (loved the talking scepter that Hawkeye threatens to snap over his knee!)  and then realized I needed to read the whole thing...  So I bought the trade, and have frequently re-read it.   I sat in on a panel discussion about how that series came about and realized that it was somewhat haphazard at first, but became very important.

     

    I like most of the take, except I think the interpretation of  Wanda's kids as being the most important in the  universe to be a bit heavy...but given the weight the Young Avengers are placing on them, especially in "The Children's Cruisade", I'm thinking maybe they were right!


    I don't care for the idea that Kang and Immortus split right in front of our eyes, but yes, it does give us the dicotomy that we need to have the rest all make sense.


    But as for how there can be BOTH Human Torch AND Vision... well, I wish they would have left it alone.

     

    I STILL say that Kang/Rama Tut's ancestor is Tony Stark...not Doctor Doom.  I suspect a talented writer like Kurt Buskic  could make sense out of it, saying that history has lost some info, but saved some details... that it was a man with scientific briliance...looking forward to the future...built or used a Time Machine...had the pieces taken apart...wore a suit of armour...and was from the Silver Age...

    that would make it IRON MAN, not Doctor Doom who is the ancestor.

    And the fact that Young Avengers has played the card that Iron Lad is young Kang...well, just adds more fuel to the fire!

  • I always enjoy reading other fans pet theories (I’ve certainly posited enough of my own over the years). Consequently, I regret throwing a monkey wrench (or two) in yours. John Byrne established that Kang was not, in fact, a descendant of Reed Richards but rather of Reed Richards’ father in FF #273. Also, Much of this ground has been covered by Roger Stern (“The Council of Cross-Time Kangs”) in Avengers #267-269 and by Walt Simonson in his run on FF.

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  • Yes, I recall some of that... certainly, I recall some of the appearances, if not all the details.

     

    I still think that any contradictions can be wiped away by excusing the inconsistances to "poor record keeping" between now and then.

     

    Besides, we've learned not to trust Reed's father now, haven't we?

  • Skull the Slayer is a kind of "guilty pleasure" character of mine. If I were given the chance to write any Marvel character of my choice (yeah, right!), Jim Scully would certainly be in the running. I'd like to ignore his (relatively) recent appearances in the Hawkeye limited series, but the challenge is incorporating all previous appearances and moving forward from that point.

     

    And that's not particularly aimed at anything you said; I'm just musing.

  • I don't know why you shouldn't put a proposal together for a one-shot or a mini-series involving this minor character.

    Marvel is FAR more likely to allow a new writer an opportunity to pollish up a dead or sagging minor character, than to give anyone a crack at one of their money-makers.

     

    I understand the process is to pitch four proposals or concepts for a story...and then let the editor pick which one they want to see a full synopsis on before hiring a full script.  Keep copies of EVERYTHING submitted, so you can reference it, or turn around and re-use it later... or with a different editor.

    And NEVER send an unsolicited script or story proposal out of the blue...cause every fanboy has done that and been ignored.

     

    But what the heck... GO for it.  You just might hit a HOME RUN!

  • I think there are legal issues for the comics companies involved in accepting and even reading unsolicited proposals.  If they don't respond, but bring out a story similar to it later, then they expose themselves to the charge of using someone's ideas without paying them.  Thus they have to be able to show that they NEVER read unsolicited proposals, and actively discourage them.

     

    I think times might have changed in recent years, Kirk, and Lumbering Jack's route is more the way to go these days. 

     

    Jeff has to get that self-published 4-issue original mini-series out there first, send it to Didio and Quesada, and from there the lofty heights of Skull the Slayer custodianship await.

     

    Come to think of it, we should all each produce a four-issue miniseries anyway.  Why the hell not?

  • Good info.

    I'd love to make a submission or two of my own.

    I'd love to clean up a dangling plot thread from Avengers #95 and Amazing Adventures #6 when Thor seemingly kills a Black Panther wannabe with a bolt of lightning.  The charge of murder was never dealt with.  I would have thought that something that serious (as opposed to Dark Phoenix eating a sentient planet of asparagus people) would have been screaming for redress... but I don't have any invitation to submit a proposal, and there's no real entry point for a 55 year old fan-boy like me.

    Yet.

  • I recently read the Submission Guidelines at the Dynamite Publishing website.  (The company is located only about 20 minutes from my house, but it might as well be on another planet.)  I'm kinda resigned to the idea that if I EVER, somehow, were to work for these guys, it'd be as artist only, because it seems to me that would be the easiest way to get thru their screening system. (Somehow I'm at a point where I no longer seem to care at al about ever writing someone else's characters-- only my own.  More freedom that way.)
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