Kang’s New Challenge Might Bring a Surprising Hero to the Marvel Universe

Kang the Conqueror is having one thing of a second proper now. Hot off the heels of serving to to determine the multiversal idea that presently holds court docket in Marvel Studios’ cinematic universe in Loki—forward of issues to come back within the subsequent Ant-Man and the Wasp movie—Nathaniel Richards can be the star of a brand new one-shot this week, Timeless, ringing out 2021 with a tease of what’s to come back. And a type of issues could be fairly the surprising arrival on the planet of Marvel Comics.

Timeless—penned by Jed McKay, coloured by Marte Gracia, lettered by Ariana Maher, and that includes artwork from Kev Walker, Greg Land and Jay Leisten, and Mark Bagley and Andrew Hennessy—is primarily a personality research of what actually makes the Conqueror tick. A form of twisted riff on Doctor Who with extra woolly mammoth wrestling, the problem sees Kang scoop up modern superpower professor Anatoly Petrov for an journey throughout time and area. It’s an journey Kang frames as an opportunity to see the height of humanity overcome not possible odds throughout temporal actuality, to point out the daring braveness, confidence, and energy he has to show him one of many best superpowered—if distinctly not superheroic—beings in all of existence. In actuality, it’s petty as all hell in a manner that’s as equally Kang-ian as is his love of thrill-seeking problem: it seems that Kang has discovered that Petrov is penning a thesis on twenty first century supervillainy that will dare to call Victor Von Doom because the defining face of superpowered evil, and Kang designs his complete timey-wimey enterprise as an excuse to show to Petrov that something Doom may do, Kang may do higher.

That temporal genitalia-waving contest is interrupted nevertheless, when Kang and Petrov are alerted to a significant temporal disaster: a rogue, decaying “pirate timeline” that’s looking for to stave off its entropic withering by stitching itself again on to the principle Marvel timeline. As Kang battles to point out Petrov simply how superior he’s to Doom—particularly when he learns that the potential instigator of the timeline disaster could be some model of Victor—we and Petrov alike are handled to flashes of tales to come back, ones we all know Marvel has already teased for its 2022 plans: flashes of Ben Reilly, Spider-Man; of a new position for the Punisher; of dire issues to come back within the Destiny of X. New Avengers, new faces in outdated mantles, the rise and fall of legends, it’s all there. But none of those are actually of specific curiosity to Timeless #1. Instead, it saves its most surprising and cryptic of visions for its remaining web page, when Kang believes all is effectively and carried out, his petty level confirmed, and drops Petrov again in his personal time with some… extreme notes about his e book. The one imaginative and prescient burned into Petrov’s thoughts isn’t of tales we’ve seen teased in Marvel solicits, however of an iconic superheroic image that nobody within the Marvel universe actually fairly understands: two angular M’s stacked on prime of one another.

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An emblem unknown to the denizens of the Marvel universe, however very a lot identified in ours because the superheroic emblem of Miracleman, aka Michael Moran, a reporter who’s imbued with huge cosmic energy to turn into Miracleman with a cry of “Kimota!” The character began out within the Fifties as author Mick Anglo’s makes an attempt to supply a British spin on modern comics icon Captain Marvel—not that one, however the then-Fawcett, now-DC Comics hero often called Shazam—after authorized points noticed Fawcett finish its Captain Marvel comics after DC claimed the character was a duplicate of Superman. Miracleman (then often called, with all of the subtlety of a brick, Marvelman) ran till 1963 within the black-and-white pages of L. Miller & Son comics within the UK. The character was reborn within the early ‘80s by then less-known scribe Alan Moore, in the days before Watchmen, and artists Garry Leach and Alan Davis, as one of the earliest mainstream deconstructions of the superhero genre, predating Watchman’s personal critiques to ship a darkish subversion of Marvelman’s historical past. But Moore and Davis’ sequence abruptly got here to an finish in 1984 when authorized strain from Marvel Comics concerning the character’s title and points between Moore and the sequence’ writer, and Marvelman, now Miracleman, was offered to U.S. writer Eclipse.

Eclipse started re-releasing the sequence beneath the brand new title, and finally continued new tales with Miracleman with then-upcoming fantasy author Neil Gaiman, and artist Mark Buckingham. Miracleman’s vaunted return was short-lived, nevertheless: Eclipse collapsed within the mid ‘90s. Its assets were bought by Image’s Todd McFarlane, and a prolonged authorized battle for possession of the work between Gaiman and McFarlane meant Miracleman pale into obscurity for many years, unprintable and ever-more-difficult to search out. It turned out years later, nevertheless, that Anglo nonetheless initially held the rights to the character despite a long time of authorized backwards and forwards, and he offered them to Marvel in 2009. The writer introduced plans to lastly reprint each Moore and Gaiman’s takes on the character, with Gaiman and Buckingham returning to proceed the story they’d needed to create a long time prior. But it by no means occurred—Marvel quietly scrapped the plans to proceed the sequence in 2017, after which reannounced its arrival two years later, just for nothing to look… till Timeless #1, that’s.

The seeming potential arrival of Miracleman as soon as extra, and never simply that, however as a personality throughout the existence of Marvel Comics continuity, holds fascinating potential—and, admittedly, potential that looks like it may draw parallels to a latest, alternate try and deliver an impartial subversive superhero story into the canon of a mainstream writer: Geoff Johns and Gary Frank’s Doomsday Clock, which tied Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and John Higgins’ seminal sequence Watchmen into the material of DC Comics’ then-nascent “Rebirth” universe. Just what Marvel has deliberate for Michael Moran proper now stays to be seen—however his arrival within the writer’s comics universe appears to be a portent of some difficult occasions forward for the material of Earth-616 and its many multiversal counterparts.

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