tales of SILVER AGE TIME TRAVEL
The Final and Definitive Ranking!
—Hello, true believers! Did you know that during the 1960s, Marvel published exactly 830 superhero comics, not to mention 13 issues of their zany Not Brand Echh! comic. By my count, 39* of those 843 comics involved some form of superhero time travel, although only thirty separate stories because several of the adventures spanned multiple issues. Of course, I loved them all, then and now, even though I enjoy ranting about all the paradox opportunities that they missed.
* The count of 39 does not include stories of prophecies (e.g., “Death Comes to Thor” in Journey into Mystery #102) or suspended animation (e.g., “Guardians of the Galaxy” in Marvel Superheroes #18) because I don‘t count them as real time travel. As always, though, tell me about any others that you spot!
I want to deeply thank Craig and Time Travel Nexus for giving me the opportunity to ladle out my praises, color some images in the dot-by-dot style of the 1960s, and vent my rants on the first nineteen of the thirty stories. It’s been a lot of fun for me to remember the stories and the people I read them with. I feel that now, on the first day of May in 2019, that I may have said all that I have to say about those particular comics of the time, and I have certain other projects that some of you know about on my back burner. So, I thought a good way to wrap up my Tales of the Silver Age would be to present none other than the final and definitive ranking of those thirty Marvel Superhero Time Travel Stories of the Silver Age. I hope you’ feel some eagerness to see the top five, but don’ ignore the other 25 yarns too much.
And tremendous thanks, too, to Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Larry Leiber, Frank Giacoia, Bob Powell, Robert Bernstein, Sal Buscema, Denny O’Neil, Bill Everett, Mike Esposito, Gil Kane, Johnny Romita, Archie Goodwin, George Tuska, Werner Roth, Flo Steinberg, and the rest of the Marvel bullpen. And my Grandpa Main and little sister Linda.
30) FANTASTIC FOUR #34 (1965)
“A House Divided!”
by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
—method: Gideon’s Time Displacer
—initial travel: the present to . . . the present?!
Sadly, Gideon’s time machine, modelled after the one that Doom built, never really got used, or at least not to any effect, because Reed Richards was so quick at shutting it off. Really? Reed quick?!
29) AVENGERS #28 (1966)
“Among Us Walks . . . a Goliath!”
by Stan Lee and Don Heck
—method: The Collector’s Temporal Assimilator
—initial travel: present to an unknown time
The Collector, who collects superheroes (among other things), has a time machine of his own design, but he uses it only to escape after being soundly thumped by the Avengers.
28) STRANGE TALES #129 (1965)
[Doc Strange]
“Beware . . . Tiboro!”
by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
—method: Doc Strange’s mystic power
—initial travel: to earlier that same day
This story is one of the worst uses of time travel: rewinding time back to a point where none of it ever happened. I expect more from the Master of the Mystic.
27) STRANGE TALES #123 (1964)
[Doc Strange]
“The Challenge of Loki!”
by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
—method: Doc Strange’s mystic power
—initial travel: Thor’s hammer back to when Loki stole it
What’s this? Thor and Loki in Strange Tales and drawn by Steve Ditko? That combination did provide some enjoyment, as did the question of whether there’s an alternate timeline where Thor Doc Strange never sent Thor’s hammer back through time to save the god of thunder.
26) AVENGERS #56 (1968)
“Death Be Not Proud!”
by Roy Thomas and John Buscema
—method: Doom’s Time Platform
—initial travel: present to World War II
This issue was exciting because it we got to see Cap’s WW II sidekick, Bucky, and Cap finally accepted his death. However, from a time-travel standpoint, I initially felt that the story had some weaknesses. Why is it that the four time-traveling Avengers must be mere observers in the past (which I don’t count as actual time travel). And what was it about Janet falling asleep at the controls that shifted things so that they could interact with Zemo and the other Nazis? Once they’d done that, I wished the story would addressed the long-open question of whether time travelers in the Marvel Universe could change history. Once they could interact, the Avengers tried and failed to save Bucky. What would have happened had they succeeded? Boy, oh boy! This story came close to cracking open the change-question. But the actual crack had to wait until a sort-of continuation of this story in the 5th-best time travel story of the Silver Age of Marvel Comics (Avengers Annual #2).
25) MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #20 (1969)
[Doctor Doom]
“This Man . . . This Demon!”
by Larry Leiber, Roy Thomas, and Frank Giacoia
—method: Doom’s Time Platform
—initial travel: present to the end of Earth
As you undoubtedly know, my favorite hero of the Silver Age was Doctor Doom. I dressed as the noble, but misunderstood, Doom for Halloween way back in 1962. So, you can imagine my excitement when he finally got his own story in Marvel Super-Heroes #20. Not only that, but my older friend Irving—who by 1968 had become a cashier at the 7-Eleven on 164th Avenue and 8th Street in Bellevue, Washington—gave me a heads-up that Doom used his Time Platform in the issue. Man, oh man, this could be the start of something big! Unfortunately, it was a disappointment in two ways: First, the only use of the Platform, it merely sent Doom’s foe to the end of time (or at least to the end of Earth). And second, issue #20 proved to be the final non-reprint issue of Marvel Super-Heroes, and we never again saw Victor von Doom headline his own story in the Silver Age.
24) THOR #140 (1967)
“The Growing Man!”
by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
—method: Rama Tut’s (aka Kang) time machine
—initial travel: far future to present
The Growing Man was a created minion of Kang, the Conqueror who was stashed in our time so as not to draw the notice of Kang’s foolish opponents in the future. By my count, Kang was conquering (or attempting to conquer) one thing or another in eleven of the thirty Marvel time travel stories of the ’60s, but I didn’t see the point of him appearing in this story at all. The use of time travel was merely a plot gimmick to get some cool, evil technology swinging at Thor, but in the Marvel Age of Comics, that seems like a poor use of a time machine.
23) JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #101–102 (1964)
[Thor]
Reprise of Zarrko, the Tomorrow Man!
by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
—method: Zarrko’s time machine
—also via: Thor’s hammer
—and: The Well of Centuries (used by Loki to send thoughts)
—initial travel: A. D. 2262 to present
This was the first two-part time travel story that Marvel ever published, but to me it was a disappointment in being just another Alpha Centauri syndrome*story that added nothing to the earlier Zarrko story. In fact, I was so disappointed that I can’t bring myself to show you even one panel showing Zarrko blackmailing Thor into being his slave in the future or showing Thor knocking the snot outta Zarrko and his robot before returning to his own time. But the Journey into Mystery issues did have one redeeming feature, which was the Tales of Asgard story at the end of #102. That story had no time travel, but it did have the related phenomenon of the three Fates (correctly!) predicting young Thor’s death in the future. So, it’s that young-Thor story that you see in the panel above.
[*Alpha Centauri syndrome: a time-travel story in which the time machine might as well be a spaceship taking our heroes to an alien planet rather than to the far future. Even by 1964, it was evident that the best time travel stories involved some paradoxical aspect of time travel that would never arise in a spaceship.]
22) AVENGERS #23–24 (1964–1965)
Once an Avenger . . . from the Ashes of Defeat!
by Stan Lee and Don Heck
—method: Rama Tut’s (aka Kang) time machine
—initial travel: present to A.D. 4000
Kang nabs the three new Avengers and whisks them off to the future to (among other things) help him with his love life. Fortunately, Cap figures out what’s happened by using a machine to view the recent past, so he then angrily shouts at Kang, who foolishly responds by dragging Cap to the future as well. Like the previous story, this one also suffered from Alpha Centauri syndrome.
21) NOT BRAND ECHH #2 (1967)
“Magnut, Robot Biter!”
by Roy Thomas and Don Heck
—method: Bony Stark’s time machine
—initial travel: present to A.D. 4000
Once Marvel became an icon, they branched out in a lot of directions, the first of which was the satire comic Not Brand ≡Echh≡. You kinda had to be there to understand Brand ≡Echh≡ and to see why it was so hilarious when Bony Stark (aka Ironed Man) heads to the future to fight Magnut, Robot Biter, in a time machine made of atomic sun-dials, whatchamacallits, and frammistats.
20) STRANGE TALES #134 (1965)
[Torch and Thing]
“The Challenge of . . . the Watcher!”
by Stan Lee and Bob Powell
—method: uncertain methods of Kang and the Watcher
—initial travel: 25th century and present to Camelot
There’s always some pleasure in a time travel story that takes a Connecticut Yankee (or any other traveler) to an historic period, and Marvel had a handful of such stories in the middle of the Silver Age. For the most part, though, such stories merely have the fun of going to another time as if it were a just a reenactment—let’s call it a time-travel field trip—without considering the potential features and pitfalls of time travel. It might as well be in a holo-suite.
By the way, the original Connecticut Yankee did make use of at least one time travel feature, when Hank Morgan takes advantage of his foreknowledge of the total eclipse. To me, the original story is also interesting because of Hank’s introduction of technology to Camelot. Sadly, the Marvel stories rarely had such nuances, and I was also disappointed when the Watcher seemed in a hurry to get to the past. I do long for a time travel story that would actually have a model where being in a hurry to get to the past actually made some sense.
19) STRANGE TALES #124 (1964)
[Doc Strange]
“The Lady from Nowhere!”
by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
—method: Zota’s impulse transmitter
—also via: the Ancient One’s mystic power
—initial travel: circa 35 B.C.E. to present
This Ditko masterpiece is the second of the Silver Age Marvels to feature the Queen of the Nile (see also #13 on the list, Tales of Suspense 44).
18) AVENGERS #10 (1964)
“The Avengers Break Up!”
by Stan Lee and Don Heck
—method: probably Rama Tut’s (aka Immortus) time machine
—also via: The Enchantress’s spells
—initial travel: probably from Kang’s time to present
I liked Immortus, even if he was just a short-lived nom de temps of Kang in a story that’s again falls into the category of time-travel field trip (Rick Jones and Captain American are sent back to the Tower of London, described as 18th century, but looking quite a bit earlier) combined with a reverse field trip, i.e., bringing historic characters to the present day. In all, we got:
- Rick Jones furiously fighting Attila the Hun
- Giant/Antman and the Wasp battling a biblical Goliath
- Iron Man taking on Merlin
- Thor vs. Hercules!
Then, as the story ends, the Enchantress pulled the rewinding time trick to erase it all. Sigh.
17) JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #122 (1965)
[Thor]
“Where Mortals Fear to Tread!”
by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
—method: Thor’s hammer
—initial travel: present to the Cretaceous Period and the far future
When reporter Harris Hobbs discovers Thor’s secret identity (as mild-mannered Dr. Don Blake), it’s not enough for the god of thunder to scare Hobbs into silence by threatening physical harm. No, instead, he takes Hobbs to the time of T. Rex and to the far future, and tells him that if the secret is revealed, Hobbs will be left in one of these places forever. I don’t know whether the most honorable of the Avengers would have followed through on the threat, but it made for scenic Jack Kirby panels that were reminiscent of his pre-Thor stories in Journey into Mystery and elsewhere.
16) STRANGE TALES #111 (1963)
[Doc Strange]
“Face-to-Face with the Magic of Baron Mordo!”
by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
—method: Doc Strange’s mystic power
—also via: Mordo’s mystic strength
—initial travel: a race “thru time and space”
Steve Ditko’s second-ever story of the master of the mystic arts includes one panel that, based on Stan Lee’s caption, involves time travel. In this panel, as Stephen Strange and Baron Mordo race, we are told that Unseen by human eyes, the two mighty spirit images race thru time and space . . . Even though it was just one panel, it got me wondering (back in the Silver Age) whether the phrase race through time could possibly have a meaning. What would it mean for one time traveler to arrive at the final destination before another?
15) AVENGERS #11 (1964)
“The Mighty Avengers Meet Spider-Man!”
by Stan Lee and Don Heck
—method: Rama Tut’s (aka Kang) time machine
—initial travel: A.D. 3000 to present
This story is as close as Spidey ever got to time traveling in the Silver Age. He didn’t travel himself, but he did meet and battle Kang’s time traveling Spider-Man robot. On top of that, Don Heck gave us some interpretations of Ditko art taken directly from the pages of the Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1. Can you tell which is which?
14) FANTASTIC FOUR #23 (1964)
“The Master Plan of Doctor Doom!”
by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
—method: Doom’s Time Platform
—initial travel: the Cretaceous Period to present
The time travel in this ish is a 3-page vintage FF side-story where Johnny and Ben’s bickering leads to the accidental use of Doom’s Time Platform to bring a poor, frightened dinosaur to the Baxter Building. As for Reed’s reaction to the mishap: “Don’t make a federal case outta this, Stretch!” By the way, in returning this dinosaur (looks like a velociraptor to me) to his or her own time, no butterflies were harmed.
13) TALES OF SUSPENSE #44 (1963)
[Iron Man]
“The Mad Pharaoh!”
by Stan Lee, Robert Bernstein, and Don Heck
—method: Magic Chariot of Time
—also includes: suspended animation
—initial travel: circa 35 B.C.E. to present
I suspect that Stan was taking advantage of the Liz Taylor craze that swept the nation in 1963 when he brought Hatap, the mad pharaoh to the present via a long sleep, and then Hatap used some magic to bring Tony Stark (with his Iron Man suit) back to the time of Cleopatra. The story missed some interesting potential plot developments: What would have happened had Tony Stark taken his chance to bust open Hatap’s tomb back in Cleopatra’s time? The thought of that potential self-defeating paradox never even occurred to the Golden Avenger. Nor did Cleopatra, who is actually in the Marvel Universe on Venus in the 20th century, ever think about looking up Tony Stark. These omissions made the story a lightweight, but enjoyable, time travel field trip.
12) JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #86 (1962)
[Thor]
“On the Trail of the Tomorrow Man!”
by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
—method: Zarrko’s time machine
—also by: Thor’s hammer
—initial travel: A. D. 2262 to present
Zarrko, a mad time-machine-building scientist from the 2262, believes that our nuclear weapons will enable him to take over the world of his time. The plot suffers from Alpha Centauri syndrome, but seeing the emergence of Kirby’s high-perspective artwork gives this issue a boost in the definitive rankings. In addition, the story provides a powerful image of the pre-Vietnam cold war era and its prevailing assumptions about the roles of women in society.
11) FANTASTIC FOUR #19 (1963)
“Prisoners of the Pharoah!” [sic]
by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
—method: Doom’s Time Platform
—also by: Rama Tut’s time machine (based on Doom’s Platform)
—initial travel: present to circa 2500 B.C.E.
—and: A.D. 3000 to circa 2500 B.C.E.
The story is not brilliant, but it does introduce Marvel’s ubiquitious time traveler Rama-Tut, a.k.a. Kang the Conqueror, a.k.a. Immortus—even if we have no clue all that is in his future. I also liked the deterministic causal loop in which Rama Tut builds the Great Sphinx of Giza and takes it back to ancient Egypt precisely because he knew it was there.
10) AVENGERS #69–71 (1969)
Endgame!
by Roy Thomas and Sal Buscema
—method: Rama Tut’s (aka Kang) time machine
7)—initial travel: present to A.D. 4000
No, this isn’t the Endgame you’re thinking of—this is your grandpa’s Endgame, an entertaining three-part Avengers story spanning the final three months of the Silver Age of Comics in which Kang pits the Silver Age Avengers against the Golden Age Squadron Sinister! Also featuring the Black Knight and three Golden Age heroes who don’t know an Avenger from a Volkswagon. The only thing that woulda been better is if Silver Age Cap had met Golden Age Cap. Then again, maybe that wouldn’ta lived up to its potential (see #26 on this list).
9) STRANGE TALES #148–150 (1966)
[Doc Strange]
The Book of Vishanti Trilogy
by Denny O’Neil, Roy Thomas, and Bill Everett
—method: the mystic powers of Kaluu, not to mention the Ancient One and Doc Strange
—initial travel: the Book of Vishanti is sent to ancient Babylonia
When Kaluu triumphantly sends the all-powerful Book of Vishanti back to the time of its origin, it falls to Doc Strange and the Ancient One to banish it to a timeless period so that it will never again fall into the wrong hands. I wish that Denny and Roy had turned this story into a bootstrap paradox where the Book was sent back to its origin precisely because the act of sending it back was its origin. But alas, faithful readers, a bootstrap was not in the books, so to speak.
8) TALES TO ASTONISH #75–78 (1966)
[Hulk]
I, Against Time!
by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Mike Esposito (as by M. Demeo), Gil Kane (as by Scott Edwards), Johnny Romita, and (surprisingly!) Bill Everett
—method: Bruce Banner’s T-Gun
—initial travel: present to the far distant future
The Hulk is sent to the far future by Bruce Banner’s T-Gun to battle against an entire world. Meanwhile, in the present, Rick Jones is forced into revealing that Bruce Banner IS the Hulk! Once again, there coulda easily been a bootstrap paradox in here with the Hulk bringing the T-Gun back to himself, but no.
7) AVENGERS #8 (1964)
“Kang, the Conqueror!”
by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
—method: Rama Tut’s (aka Kang) time machine
—initial travel: present to A.D. 4000 and back again
Technically, this wasn’t Kang’s first appearance, given that we’d seen Pharaoh Rama Tut battle the FF more than once, but it still felt like a significant turning point in the Marvel Universe.
6) IRON MAN #5 (1968)
“Frenzy in a Far-Flung Future!”
by Archie Goodwin and George Tuska
—method: Cerebrus Rebels’ Time Probe
—initial travel: present to far future
Apparently, Tony Stark was a literary forefather of Miles Dyson, the father of Skynet in The Terminator. You see, it was Stark’s invention of Cerebrus that evolved into the 24th-century machine that enslaved all mankind. So now, the rebels of the future have used their time probe to kidnap Stark before he invented Cerebrus. Their plan: Kill Stark now to prevent Cerebrus from ever being invented. It’s a pleasant self-defeating grandfather paradox, although that aspect of the plot is never explored.
5) AVENGERS ANNUAL #2 (1968)
“. . . And Time the Rushing River . . .”
by Roy Thomas, Don Heck, and Werner Roth
—method: Doom’s Time Platform and probably Rama Tut’s (aka the Scarlett Centurion) time machine
—initial travel: World War II to an alternate future
It seems that while the Avengers were in the past trying to discover Bucky’s true fate (see Avengers #56 at position 26 in this list), Kang managed to do something to the Wasp (who was passively at the time machine controls), which caused the time travelers to change the past, which caused Kang (in his guise as the Scarlett Centurion) to convince the original Avengers that the only way to save mankind was to rid the Earth of all other super-powered beings and put Immortus in charge of everything. Thus . . . (dramatic pause), the Avengers of 1968 return to a world in which the only super-powered beings are the original Avengers (and Immortus, I suppose).
This was a key issue because it established once and for all that time travel in the Silver Age of Marvel Comics was spinning off alternative universes. And apparently, the way it works is that if you’re in the past and you do something to change the future, then when you return, you’ll return to that changed future, even if it doesn’t contain you. There’s no mention of whether this new timeline is a branch that occurred when the time travelers first caused the change (in which case, the original timeline may be continuing without the travelers). Instead, the time travelers feel that it’s up to them to fix the corrupted timeline by defeating the original Avengers in the new 1968.
They do so, and somehow (don’t ask—just accept that “men call him the Watcher”), things go back to normal, but again, we were pressented with a missed opportunity for a bootstrap paradox. You see, during the battle, the Scarlett Centurion encapsulates Cap in an iceberg. What if the Avengers had then sent that iceberg back to 1964, and it was that iceberg that the original Avengers found and thawed out rather than the iceberg that contained the Golden Age Cap. And when they thawed him out, he knows enough about the alternate future to stop the Centurion from taking over their world of 1964. That woulda been cool!
4) FANTASTIC FOUR #5 (1962)
“Prisoners of Doctor Doom!”
by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
—method: Doom’s Time Platform
—initial travel: present to circa A.D. 1718
We all know that Doc Doom is far too smart to think the most profitable way to use his time platform is by sending three of the FF into the past with orders to bring back Blackbeard’s treasure (while keeping the fourth member of their team captive). And yet, the story has a charm that stems from the bootstrap paradox of Ben Grimm’s presence in the past actually causing the legend of Blackbeard.
3) FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #2 (1964)
“The Final Victory of Dr. Doom!”
by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
—method: Rama Tut’s time machine
2)—initial travel: probably 2500 B.C.E. to present
Yikes! Doom becomes Rama Tut?! Or is it Rama Tut who becomes Doom? Or—as I was pretty sure in 1964 that it had to be—both of those things had to happen in a neat bootstrap paradox. I wish that Stan and Jack had read Heinlein’s “&mash;All You Zombies—”.
2) SILVER SURFER #6 (1969)
“Worlds Without End!”
by Stan Lee and John Buscema
—method: the Surfer’s board
—initial travel: present to far future
So, Avengers Annual #2 established without a doubt that there are multiple timelines in the Marvel Silver Age Universe, possibly branching timelines, and possibly with a bootstrap paradox or two. Who else but the reflective Silver Surfer would you choose to ponder the philosophical ramifications of all these self-contradictory stories? You see, by racing around the Earth faster than the speed of light, the Surfer has found himself in a future where an evil overlord has killed billions. The Surfer knows that he must not only correct this wrong, but also ensure that it never happened in the first place, even if it means making sure that the Overlord had never been born with his horrible powers:
For me, it wasn’t so much the stop-Hitler-as-a-babe story or even the self-defeating paradox that drew me to the story, although those aspects were enjoyable. No, not those things. Instead, it was that last panel with the Silver Surfer’s musings [click the panel to enlarge] that I read over and over again. Indeed—“Can a future that was—be forever erased?”
1) FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #3 (1965)
“Bedlam at the Baxter Building!”
by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
—method: Doom’s high-frequency emotion charger sends emotions through time, unknown methods of Kang, Doc Strange’s mystic power, and the Watcher’s sub-atomic time displacer
—initial travel: charged emotions sent to all times
How’d this story end up an #1? Certainly, time travel doesn’t play that big a role in the whole affair. Could it be that this one issue was the most sought-after issue of the Silver Age at good old Fort Crook Elementary School? Where else are you going to find darn near every Marvel superhero in one spot? What other issue could command such a high ransom in trade value had Irving at the soda fountain not managed to save a copy for you? And where else can you find Reed Richards making such a fool of himself, doing the whole rewinding time business yet again?
Or is there a more likely explanation about this issue landing in the top spot? Perhaps if you look at what happened after Reed rewound time, you’ll notice something odd about Reed:
Yep. There it is in plain blue-and-white, obvious to all who have sight (and probably to Alicia as well): Reed’s left hand is attached to his right arm in an awkward, backwards position. How could that be unless when Reed rewound time, Doom managed to cause his own body to be swapped with Reed’s. In the process, he also made sure that his hands were swapped, as a prearranged signal to the love of his life—Sue—that she wasn’t marrying that dastardly Reed Richards, but instead she was marrying the love of her life, a.k.a., Victor von Doom.
So, Sue and Doom were married and lived together happily for the rest of the Silver Age. And to commemorate the event, Doom manipulated the timelines so that Fantastic Four Annual #3 ended up at the top of this list without me ever suspecting that he was behind it all. Of course, I could rewind time and fix it all, perhaps ending up with Silver Surfer #6 in the top spot—but I refuse to abuse my time travel powers in that way.
’Nuff said, and thank you much for coming on this journey with me through the Silver Age of Comics.
—Michael