ᴛᴀʟᴇṩ ᴏғ ṩɪʟᴠᴇʀ ᴀɢᴇ ᴛɪᴍᴇ  ᴛʀᴀᴠᴇʟ Kang,  the  Conqueror!

tales of SILVER AGE TIME TRAVEL
travel back to AVENGERS #8 (SEP 1964)

—For appearances’ sake, I thought it would be best to start off this month’s blog with a bold lie about my relationship with the AVENGERS. But as you know, never once have I successfully pulled the wool over your eyes; given that fact, I think it’s best for me to just admit two truths right off the bat:

(1) I managed to survive the first big Avengers housecleaning, in issue #16, when all of the original gang left and that Steve-come-lately, CAPTAIN AMERICA, took over the reins along with newcomers WANDA, QUICKSILVER, and HAWKEYE. In fact, despite my heartbreak, the new gang of four kind of grew on me. But that honeymoon lasted just one year, at which point the lineup changed again, adding back a GIANT MAN that I didn’t even recognize. That was it for me, and I swore I would never again give my heart to such a fickle faction. Yep, for me, #27 was the last of the true Avengers. Everything afterward was mere pretense.

(2) And yet . . . there was one later issue—not even a Silver Age issue!—that caught my eye way out in ’76 when I was a student in Scotland. I spotted this issue in a giveaway bin at a newsagent in a tiny town called Bridge of Allan, and it immediately grabbed my attention:

It was one of the cheap U.K. weeklies, and this one—dated 20 Oct 1973—had none other than an oversized, black-and-white partial reprint of my first exposure to the Avengers and their arch-nemesis KANG, who was “destined to rank as one of the most unique villains of all time!!” Not merely unique, but most unique (well, one of them, at any rate).

The reprint’s cover was a RICH BUCKLER homage to the JACK KIRBY / DICK AYERS cover of Kang’s original appearance back in Avengers #8. Nicely done, Rich—you were an artist extraordinare, and my coloring of your work is my homage to you, who died just last year.

As for me back in the 70s, not only was Kang a time traveler, but the reprint was a bargain-priced time machine as well, taking me right back to ’64 when over the soda fountain at the PX, when IRVING had handed me a copy of Avengers #8. “This one’s right destined to be a classic, Mike!” he’d said.

Indeed, looking at the Kirby splash page back in ’64, I’d had no trouble seeing that Irving was right; and somehow, seeing Buckler’s reprint more than a decade later, it seemed appropriate that his splash page (and the rest of the story) was all black and white. I mean, if you climbed in a time machine and went back to the ’60s, it just wouldn’t feel right if everything was in color, would it? [Note to self: Write time travel story where the past is monochrome as a logical consequence of the time travel mechanism itself.] Then again, maybe it’s the other way around: By the mid-’70s, my memories of the ’60s were all in black-and-white, but that is just because they were memories. Were I to actually travel back in time, everything would be in full color . . .

So there they were, the five Avengers of ’64 along with Cap’s sidekick RICK JONES, all being hailed as heroes on the streets of New York. I liked how the WASP is kind enough to stop mid-flight to sign autographs. But of course, there are more important things to do than parade down Madison Avenue! Officials at the Pentagon are waiting to show the fabulous five a video tape of a strange U.F.O.!** Unidentified Flying Object—your friendly, neighborhood editor, helpful Craig

And before long, the crime-fighters meet a full-color, purple-clad Kang the Conqueror show, whose purpose was, um, conquest, of course.

As I read the Wasp’s dialogue today, it seems that she was conquered in at least one sense, and I wonder, when did STAN LEE finally ditch the my-isn’t-he-handsome worldview of women’s thought processes? Back then, though, I was immersed in a 60’s childhood, completely unaware of the way that comics reflect their culture. All I saw was the remarkable effectiveness of Kang’s button: Its anti-grav ray is even stronger than IRON MAN’s power jets! Nowadays, it seems almost quaint that the same button also sent the mighty THOR’s hammer into subspace, but trust me, there was nothing else like it on the comic stands or elsewhere for a nine-year-old in that day and age—and I say that even knowing that Kang’s classy ship is actually a time machine! We readers learned that fact as the Avengers continued to battle Kang (curiously with no clear sign that the Wasp is even present), all while Kang conveniently relays his own origin to them and to us.

Back to Avengers #8! The Wasp finally does make a bid to topple Kang, but to little avail:

Janet van Dyne (aka the Wasp) then escapes with Rick Jones, while the four full-size Avengers are all captured and placed into stasis by Kang. And indeed, the two sidekicks do come up with a plan in which Rick and his Teen Brigade carry out an exciting rescue of the four captured Avengers while the Wasp . . . well, see for yourself:

Wow, Janet, you sure did it. Now don’t you worry your pretty little head while I take over from here.

I hope the ending to this story doesn’t turn you off to the Silver Age completely, and that I’ll see you back here on the first Wednesday of September, when the Avengers once again run into the one supervillain who has our timeline’s most volatile identity.  And meanwhile, let’s continue to send good vibes back to the 60’s for Janet van Dyne.

Hymenoptera Apocrita Assemble!

Coming Soon!
See the MIGHTY AVENGERS face the truly different villainy of the evil IMMORTUS —
in a full-length adventure from The Avengers 10!
Don’t miss it on the first Wednesday of September!