Today, we look at the way that Doctor Doom influenced the creation of a Kang variant that technically took place BEFORE Kang became Kang!
In "Our Lives Together," I spotlight some of the more interesting examples of shared comic book universes. You know, crossovers that aren't exactly crossovers.
A few weeks back, I wrote about the impact that Doctor Doom had on the creation of Kang the Conqueror. As a quick recap, in 1963's Fantastic Four #19 (by Kirby, Lee and Dick Ayers), the Fantastic Four traveled to the past on a wild goose chase for a cure for blindness and then met Rama-Tut, a pharaoh who was actually from the distant future!
That issue ended with Rama-Tut headed back to his own time, and we left him at that. Rama-Tut was next seen in the 1964 Fantastic Four Annual #2. Back in those days, Kirby and Lee were still doing explicit recaps on how Doctor Doom survived his previous appearance (as most early Doom appearances seemed to end with Doom being killed. It was similar to how early Joker appearances would always end with Joker "dying" and then the next issue would have to explain how he survived, until they just stopped bothering, as I suppose they figured, "You get it, the Joker will likely survive somehow, right?"), and so in Fantastic Four Annual #2 (by Kirby, Lee and Chic Stone), we see that Doom survived his seeming death in Fantastic Four #23 by being rescued by Rama-Tut...
They have a trippy talk about how they're related to each other, or are they THE SAME PERSON!?!?
In the end, Rama-Tut sends Doom back to Earth and is inspired himself to go into the future and get into some Doom-style trouble and then almost DIRECTLY following the release of Fantastic Four Annual #2 was the release of Avengers #8 (the "official" release dates have them coming out four days apart, but I assume it was more like a week apart) by Kirby, Lee and Dick Ayers. The Avengers have to show up to take on the villainous Kang the Conqueror, and he reveals that he is Rama-Tut, picked up from the aforementioned Fantastic Four Annual...
He just overshot his journey into the future and ended up in the distant future. It is no coincidence, I imagine, that Kang's outfit is similar to Doctor Doom's, in terms of full face mask and sort of tunic-y style of dress, as it appears that Rama-Tut was vey much inspired by his brief interaction with his ancestor (descendent? Same person?).
A number of readers wrote in after that column to ask, "What about the Scarlet Centurion?"
I didn't include him at the time since, well, I was just talking about Doom's impact on Kang, but hey, now that we're here, let's do it!
Avengers Annual #2 in 1968 was a very unusual conclusion to a story that began in Avengers #56, where Captain America inexplicably decided that he REALLY needed to see how Bucky died back in the day. So he and the Avengers break into Doctor Doom's castle to steal his time machine to find out. Noted scientific genius, the Wasp, was put in charge of operating the device while the Avengers are traveling through time and she falls asleep on the job and the Avengers, who were meant to be immaterial in the past, turn out to be very much material and get involved in a battle that still results in the 1940s version of Captain America and Bucky strapped to a rocket that is set to explode and Cap returns to the present, content that he at least knows the truth about what happened to Bucky (of course, a later retcon suggested that Cap should have kept looking, as Bucky survived the rocket explosion).
When the Avengers returned to the present, though, they actually arrived in an altered timeline in Avengers Annual #2 (by Roy Thomas, Don Heck, Werner Roth and Vince Colletta) where the only superheroes left on the planet were the original roster of the Avengers, who had conquered the planet on behalf of their master, the Scarlet Centurion!
The newer Avengers had to go on the run and after discovering a plot exposition machine (that's not literally its name, but it's pretty close), we learn that the Scarlet Centurion came to the Avengers after the events of Avengers #2 and gets them to work with him to conquer the Earth to protect it (we later learn that the Scarlet Centurion was also using mind control, as, well, come on, why else would the Avengers go along with this ridiculous plan?)...
At the end of the issue, the Avengers defeat the Scarlet Centurion and basically wipe out this entire timeline and the Watcher reveals to us that the Scarlet Centurion was actually Rama-Tut and this was the first thing he did before heading back home to become Kang the Conqueror...
But because this timeline was wiped out, Kang doesn't remember ever becoming the Scarlet Centurion....
Of course, stuff like that never seems to actually hold to be true, right? Seriously, has there ever been a time when a timeline was "wiped out" and no one ever made a reference to it ever again? Maybe some obscure altered reality that no one really paid attention to? Like the Ages of Apocalypse, maybe? Anyhow, years later, in What If...? #29 (by Steven Grant, Alan Kupperberg and Al Gordon), we see the process of how Rama-Tut became the Scarlet Centurion and we see that he specifically credited Doctor Doom for inspiring him to use an armor to hold his weapons (something that he used as Kang, as well, of course)...
Of course, though, since the idea of becoming the Scarlet Centurion was always there in Kang's mind, years later, when Kang had a son named Marcus, he later attacked the Avengers during the Kang Dynasty storyline (by Kurt Busiek, Alan Davis and Mark Farmer) in Avengers #40 with Marcus now using the Scarlet Centurion name...
Okay, folks, if you have a suggestion for another interesting piece of shared continuity, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!
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