Issue(s): Fantastic Four #337, Fantastic Four #338, Fantastic Four #339, Fantastic Four #340, Fantastic Four #341
Cover Date: Feb-Jun 90
Title: "Into the time stream! / No matter where you go ... there you are!" / "Kangs for the memories!!! (or Guess who's coming to dinner!)" / "Visit to a large empire!" / "Double trouble" / "The ultimate solution"
Credits:
Walt Simonson - Writer
Walt Simonson - Penciler
Walt Simonson / Walt Simonson, Al Milgrom, & Bob Wiacek - Inker
Mike Rockwitz - Assistant Editor
Ralph Macchio - Editor

Review/plot:
The lettercol in issue #343 says that Al Milgrom and Bob Wiacek were brought in to help with deadline issues for issue #341.

Undeterred by his removal from Avengers, Walt Simonson picks up the pieces and returns to the Kang & Nebula story that he began in Avengers #295-297, except now he is drawing (and inking).

Simonson has been writing this title for the past three issues, but not drawing, and i wonder if that was because he had already begun work on these issues before finding out that he was going to have to delay things because of Acts of Vengeance.

In any event, this is a really fun and epic story, probably the highlight of the post-Byrne Fantastic Four until... well, i'm still waiting, personally, although i know many people would put Mark Waid or Jonathan's Hickman's runs up there (a mere decade+ away).

The Fantastic Four wake up to a sound of an alarm in Four Freedoms Plaza, and trace it to a room previously known only to Mr. Fantastic. The room is actually a tesseract accessed from a door that would have otherwise led outside the building (43 stories up). The alarm was indicating the presence of an intruder, and when the Fantastic Four get to the room, Reed detects a bomb.

The Invisible Woman uses her forcefield to protect everyone from its detonation.

Reed then determines that this attack is related to the above Avengers plot, which he learned about afterwards when he and Sue briefly joined the team. He explains the story to the team. To briefly recap, the Council of Kangs have located a time bubble "fifteen years long" that they've been unable to penetrate. They believe that within the bubble is a renegade Celestial that is creating a powerful weapon, which the Kangs want. By watching the time stream, the Kangs believed that a team of Avengers would be able to penetrate the bubble. To go a little further than the recap provided, the Kang Council was infiltrated by (someone seeming to be) the Avengers villain Nebula, who manipulated the Avenger Dr. Druid so that she would be made a member of the team, theoretically allowing her to enter the bubble. "Nebula" was stopped in the aforementioned Avengers story, but she and Dr. Druid and three Kangs were left floating in the time stream, and of course the time bubble is still 'out there'.

For the rest of this entry, for convenience, i'll be referring to "Nebula" as Nebula, but she'll eventually be revealed to be Ravonna, Kang's primary love interest. At the same time these issues were being published, the real Nebula was appearing in Avengers, and while that story did acknowledge the previous Avengers story by having Nebula react with confusion when the Avengers referenced it, neither story explains the dual Nebulas at this time.

It's due to the nature of the bomb plus its target that causes Reed to determine that it was related to the time bubble issue. I love the scripting here. It's expository, but Reed and Johnny each have a distinct voice and the scene is used to illustrate their personality differences even while providing readers info on the bomb and introducing the tesseract.

The reason the room is a tesseract is because it needs to contain Reed's latest device. Years ago, Mr. Fantastic created the Radical Cube, which allowed the FF to access the Negative Zone. Now, he's created the Radical Dodecahedron (Rad-D for short).

This device will allow the FF to travel into the future. This device was the bomber's target. Reed also notes that the effect of the bubble is increasing; it's no longer possible to send objects into the future. So they can't delay dealing with the issue much longer.

The FF do take a break to prepare for the journey. Reed falls asleep working on the Rad-D, and in his dreams Nebula attempts to seduce him. She took possession of Dr. Druid's mind the same way. But Reed's love for Sue gives him the ability to resist.

Johnny Storm, however, proves more susceptible.

Meanwhile, Ms. Marvel and (the still human) Ben Grimm go to the Avengers to let them know what's going on. Thor and Iron Man decide to go with them.

Also meanwhile, Franklin Richards is dropped off with the Power (Pack) family.

With all of that settled, the expedition gathers. They'll be traveling via a timesled created in part using technology from Dr. Doom's time machine. The sled is called Rosebud II. I can't tell you what movie that's a reference to because i wouldn't want to spoil it.

Some more fun moments as they get ready to go. Reed and Sue's banter is great. And Johnny's facial expression is comical.

I do wonder if the fact that Nebula was able to affect Johnny but not Reed is commentary on Johnny and Alicia's relationship, or if it's just that Johnny is younger, a hothead, and hasn't been in a relationship with Alicia as long.

Anyway, off we go. I love the phrase "We're losing some of our probability!".

The sled flies through the timestream, passing Nebula and Dr. Druid. Nebula has Dr. Druid transfer her mind into Johnny.

One silly thing that i love is that Ben's hat stays on through all of this.

Rosebud II is able to penetrate the time bubble. They wind up in the New York City of the future. Man, New York sure gets high tech looking 30 years in the future, huh? Let me think now. 1990 + 30... we'd better get cracking.

However, everything is frozen due to the time bubble. But now that the FF have penetrated the bubble, it seems others can as well. And that means the first appearance of Death's Head in a US Marvel comic.

Death's Head's history is a little convoluted. He started off as a character in the UK Transformers series (he was actually first published in a one-off story published in other Marvel UK books to ensure that Hasbro wouldn't own him), and then had his own 10 issue series that ran in 1988-1989. The story mostly took place in the future, so it's not part of my project, but for issue #9 he appeared in the present day and met the FF (and then in issue #10 met Iron Man 2020). In between the Transformers and his solo series, Death's Head was shrunk from Transformer size to human size while visiting the Dr. Who universe. So there's a lot that isn't quite canon if we're thinking about Death's Head as a Marvel character, and a lot more that won't be covered in this project since it's part of future timelines. The fact that he's a time traveler also means that his present day appearances might not be in order. In much more recent comics he's appeared in his pre-shrunken form, for example. And there's also a Death's Head II.

But all that said, this appearance is relatively straight-forward, yes? And takes place after he's already met the FF.

Death's Head is currently working for the Time Variance Authority, who we learned about in Walt Simonson's Thor #371-372. The TVA is interested in the time bubble. Death's Head assumes that the FF and friends are responsible for the bubble, but before the conversation goes further, they're attacked by (a) Kang.

The Kang is shot down by Death's Head, who confirms that it's a Kang of the Council of Crosstime Kangs, which Death's Head describes as a rival counterpart of the TVA.

Intimidated by Death's Head, the Kang reveals what we already know, that the Council has been trying to get into the bubble to get the renegade Celestial's weapon. It says that the reason that the Kangs thought that it was the Avengers that would penetrate the bubble was because of the presence of Iron Man and Thor. It does seem like they jumped to a conclusion there; especially Nebula, who went through a lot of trouble to get herself made a member of the Avengers.

To investigate the situation further, Thor creates a vortex that teleports the group away from future New York and to the source of the disturbance, which turns out to be a giant construct out in deep space. Before they can investigate further, though, they are attacked by more Kangs, including the weirdly bearded chairman that was in the Avengers story.

Death's Head works with the heroes to fight the Kangs.

But his probability generator gets hit, and he's zapped back to the time period he came from.

Then the Human Torch - really Nebula - kills one of the Kangs.

The chairman recognizes the Torch as Nebula and dives into the "weapon" instead of facing her.

The "weapon" and in fact the entire giant construct that they were fighting in front of, turns out to be just a portion of a component held by a giant (even by regular standards) Galactus that is sucking in the entire universe through a black hole.

Because of the black hole, the next issue blurb warns that issue #339 may just be 22 black pages, but really it's only a couple.

The group manages to bust out of the black hole. Once they can take a breather, Reed and Sue address Johnny's killing of the Kang. Thor, of course, is ok with it.

Reed's warning to Sue will go unheeded, unfortunately.

The group then turns to the question of what to do about Galactus. Ms. Marvel is aware of the Shi'ar, and suggests that they might have the weaponry to destroy his device.

So Thor brings them into Shi'ar territory. As in New York, time is frozen, so the plan is to go to a weapon depot and help themselves. Love Sue's face in the sequence below.

It turns out that one person is unaffected by the time freeze: Gladiator of the Imperial Guard, who (as a Superman analogue) can move so fast that he's able to stay in sync with the time travelers.

We're treated to a few pages of Gladiator vs. Thor.

But Ms. Marvel ends the fight, convincing Thor and Gladiator that if it continues they'll wind up destroying the weapon depot. Gladiator then realizes they're speaking English, and then recognizes the Fantastic Four. He listens to their story and confirms it with his hyper-vision. One funny thing is Nebula in the body of Johnny checking Gladiator out.

Gladiator agrees to help them, using his authority as the regent for the "Child Emperor Charles I".

Nebula/Johnny sabotages Gladiator's ship, meaning that he arrives later than the rest of the weapons being brought from Shi'ar space. Which works out well for him.

While all of this is going on, we occasionally jump away to computer circuits comically talking to each other.

These circuits are part of a computer system monitoring events for the Dreaming Celestial. When it seems like there's a chance that the FF and friends will stop Galactus from devouring the universe, the Celestial is awakened.

The Celestial arrives at Galactus' black hole...

...and takes the Shi'ar weapons that the Fantastic Four were going to use to stop Galactus, and instead feeds them to him.

The FF have taken their sled to Gladiator's ship at this point. As the Celestial slowly turns towards them, Mr. Fantastic warps the ship away.

A nice giant monster movie feel to that.

Thor and Iron Man recognize the Celestial as the Dreaming Celestial, and they know that its resting place is supposed to be the Diablo Mountains in California. So the group pilots Gladiator's ship back to Earth. The plan is to find a way to stop the Celestial or at least learn what's going on, but first they have to fight their way through a horde of Deviant guards that have been "stored" in a dispersed atomic state until intruders arrive.

Ben Grimm does not use his Thing exo-skeleton in this arc.

With the Deviants taken care of, Mr. Fantastic is able to talk to the computer that we saw earlier, and he tricks it into giving up details of the Dreaming Celestial and its plans. Some of it we've heard before. The Dreaming Celestial performed some act (in this story, it's speculated that it was the creation of the Deviants, but i don't like that) that caused the other Celestials to turn on it.

For revenge, the Dreaming Celestial reached out to Galactus and modified him (this happened when Galactus was on Earth, dying, during John Byrne's run) so that his appetite would continue to increase until he'd have to consume the entire universe in an attempt to satisfy it.

While this is happening, Nebula/Torch gets the Invisible Woman alone and knocks her out. Then the computer realizes that Mr. Fantastic has been deceiving it. More Deviants are activated, and the Dreaming Celestial starts returning home. Thor and Gladiator had been waiting above in space, and it's decided that Gladiator will take the final Shi'ar ship and use it to destroy the Celestial's base (which is also said to be its power source). Reed is unable to find Sue, and Ben has to knock him out to make him leave. Gladiator, Johnny, and Sue are presumed dead.

Reed seems to go crazy, calling Thor a windbag and cursing the Dreaming Celestial, talking in villain-speak.

This does cause the Celestial to chase them.

And it turns out Reed is less crazy than he seems.

Although i'm not sure if Thor taking off his pants was part of the plan.

The chase has actually led the Dreaming Celestial into Galactus' black hole. Thor warps the heroes away at the last second. Reed says he'll really shed his tears in private. He is a 1960s scientist man, after all. You don't show emotions in public.

The energy from the Dreaming Celestial briefly restores Galactus' sanity, and a symbol flashes in his eyes.

That seems to have been a message to Reed, who begins to take the sled to Galactus' home ship to get the Ultimate Nullifier. However, before they get there, they get a message from Sue, back on Earth. She and Johnny survived.

The fact that Gladiator is still dead doesn't get any attention, but i guess this is an alternate future.

Sue is actually possessed by Nebula at this point. But Reed hears Johnny muttering about a "blue woman", and we'll find out later that he remembers his dream from earlier and becomes suspicious. For now, though, they head to Galactus' ship.

For the record, this it Taa II (or maybe III, since II was eaten during Secret Wars?), the big sprawling homeship.

I mention that in part for comparison with Silver Surfer #15. That issue is not referenced in this story, but it uses a similar device of relying on the Human Torch's memories of being guided by the Watcher to get the Ultimate Nullifier in Fantastic Four #50.

In the Silver Surfer, the Ultimate Nullifier was inside Galactus' smaller round travel ship instead of Taa II, but the path to it was the same.

When they locate the Nullifier, Nebula reveals herself, introducing herself as a "former Avenger".

But it turns out that Reed suspected that something was wrong, so he had Iron Man put a trap on the Nullifier that zapped Nebula when she tries to use it. That disperses Nebula from Sue, but it does activate the device. Luckily, it wasn't activated for very long, so the void that it produces is contained...

...and Sue is able to pull it out.

They then bring it to Galactus.

In fact, the plan is to give it to Galactus.

Reed speculates that the Ultimate Nullifier is in fact a failsafe device that Galactus created himself (or at least kept) in case he ever went out of control.

If that's the case i feel like the device should have grown in size when Galactus held it, instead of remaining a human-sized gun-like object that we can't even see.

But the device does in fact nullifiy Galactus, and the entire universe.

If that doesn't seem like it's any better than Galactus eating the entire universe, it's said that by exiting the time bubble at the exact point of entry, they'll "seal the puncture and isolate the bubble from the rest of the time stream". I'm also not sure if this solution addresses the fact that Galactus had been tampered with in the past by the Celestial, so nothing is stopping this from happening again. I guess the idea is that the FF (and friends) will always go into the future to stop Galactus? Truthfully, as much as i enjoy this story, there's always something about time travel that shuts my brain down.

The sled passes Nebula, Dr. Druid, and the Kangs as they return back to the present. I guess this would take place "before" the Kangs were killed in the fight with the FF and Death's Head.

As the sled continues forward, Iron Man and Thor fall off. But when the FF get home, they turn on the TV and seemingly learn that the two Avengers have already made it home. If only they'd stuck around until the end of the news report.

This is really a perfect FF story. The science fiction element is just right for the group and it's even better that we're exploring Marvel cosmology as we're doing it, with a deeper look at the Celestials and an explanation for the Ultimate Nullifier. If there's anything that's missing it's that there's nothing on the human side. There are a lot of great character moments, with Reed's love of Sue being particularly important to plot, but there's no movement or development for the characters. That's not at all a knock; not every story needs to have those elements, and we almost seem to be past the point where characters' personalities can "develop" anymore (or at least, they'll regress to their original status quo with every creative team shift). But this really is a great adventure story, full of cool twists, surprising guest appearances, and fun moments.

I guess it's a safe bet that Simonson had plans to tell this story in the Avengers when he had Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman on the team, as a follow-up to the one in Avengers #295-297. Even if nothing changed but which book the story was told in, i think it works better here. The Fantastic Four are the explorers of the strange and the unknown, not the Avengers. A lot of this arc is the rest of the team sitting in the sled while Reed (and often, i should note, Sharon) figures stuff out, which is fine for the FF but less so for a team of traditional super-heroes like the Avengers. And definitely having Johnny and Ben along for the ride (even though Ben is powerless) allows those personalities to interact with Reed and Sue and give the book a classic FF feel. Of course on top of that we have Simonson's art, which is perfect for the cosmic epic scope of the plot, but - and i feel like this is often neglected - great with homing in on people's faces for those character moments as well.

Statement of Ownership Total Paid Circulation: Average of Past 12 months = 180,000. Single issue closest to filing date = 164,000.

Quality Rating: A-

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - first US comic appearance of Death's Head

Chronological Placement Considerations: The Power Pack cameo is between Power Pack #54-55. The MCP have Iron Man here between Iron Man #253-254 and Thor between Thor #414-415. Iron Man and Thor apparently make it back to regular Earth just fine, appearing next in unrelated stories. The Fantastic Four remain in the alternate timeline and shouldn't appear elsewhere before next arc. Note that i haven't included Gladiator, Galactus, or the Dreaming Celestial as Characters Appearing because i don't count the "locals" in time travel stories. By contrast the Kangs and Death's Head are also time-traveling, so they are listed.

References:

• Mr. Fantastic says that the story behind the bomb began "during the short time that Sue and I were with the Avengers", with a footnote saying "Back around Avengers #300". The story really began prior to Reed and Sue joining the team, in Avengers #295-297, as a footnote on the next page attests.
  
• Nebula infiltrated the Kang Council earlier than that, as seen in Avengers #291-294.
  
• The Radical Cube first appeared in Fantastic Four #51.
  
• Death's Head met the Fantastic Four in Death's Head #9.
  
• Mr. Fantastic saved Galactus' life in Fantastic Four #244. That initially is just brought up in the context of asking Reed if he regrets it now that Galactus is about to destroy the universe. But it later turns out that that was when the Dreaming Celestial was able to alter Galactus so that his appetite would continue to grow.
  
• The FF and Gladiator recognize each other thanks to Fantastic Four #249-250 (no footnote).
  
• Thor and Iron Man know the Dreaming Celestial from Eternals #12.
  
• The Human Torch knows the way to the Ultimate Nullifier thanks to Fantastic Four #50.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Couldn't agree more with this review. Love all of Simonson's FF run, but this and the return of Dr Doom story are my highlights. No-one's matched this fizzing of new ideas since. (haven't read hickman's run. waid has come the closest, though some of his run was great and some was a bit corny for me, it felt "DC" somehow.) And yes it worked for the best that he had to do this as an FF story instead of Avengers. Oh, and I was amazed at the time to see Death's Head in a US comic, totally unexpected. At the time there were some fun Marvel UK comics, Death's Head being my favourite but Dragon's Claws wasn't bad and there were some decent Transformers Uk stories involving time travel. I was gutted a few years later when Marvel UK suddenly got a big hype with a load of terrible comics (motormouth + killpower? Yeesh) and Death's Head got killed and replaced by a terrible "90s" version of himself.

Also, I'd never noticed before you pointed it out, but did Thor declare 1990 to be "No Pants Year"? He did the same in the other Nebula story. (Was she appearing in his dreams too?) That's at least twice so far, and the year is still young.

It's a common coloring mistake throughout the years. Some other examples here and here. Something about those godly quads that colorists just can't bear to cover up.

I remember Galactus' godly quads used to have the same problem. Still, this seems like a trend, and at this point I'm not convinced Thor isn't doing it on purpose. (Maybe he's seen Psylocke's new outfit?) If I remember correctly, by the end of the year DeFalco will introduce a super-SWAT team, Code Blue, who were formed explicitly to make Thor keep his pants on. "No-one should take his pants off in public", they will yell, "not even a Thunder God!"

The Simonson run was the last hurrah for the FF comics. It feels like if it were canceled when Walt left, would we have missed any epic stories or events from the Fantastic Four? The Lee/Kirby run, Byrne's run and Simonson's run are the required FF reading everyone should do at least once!

"In any event, this is a really fun and epic story, probably the highlight of the post-Byrne Fantastic Four until... well, i'm still waiting, personally, although i know many people would put Mark Waid or Jonathan's Hickman's runs up there (a mere decade+ away)."

love hickman's run love hickman's run love hickman's run
love hickman's run love hickman's run love hickman's run
love hickman's run love hickman's run love hickman's run

Excuse me. I don't know what came over me.

Waid's run is pretty good too.

Personally I was never that impressed with Waid or Hickman's runs. Felt like they only seemed good compared to the vast amounts of garbage that Marvel has churned out over the last 20 years.

Love this issues more than words can express. One of my favorite FF stories ever. In my top 3.

Simonson wrote the best Reed. Whether talking on Congress, staring down a Celestial or dueling with Doom, he was always the guy who outsmarted everyone.

The energy, concepts and creativity just burst from these pages. Walt's run is criminally overlooked, but I think it comes in second only to Lee/Kirby. I even rank it a hair over Byrne.

He was the last writer to truly get Reed as a character. There have been decent runs since (Waid, Hickman) book has sadly never come close to these heights.

Thor and Galactus aren't the only characters to go pantsless- Wonder man also did in the final issue of the Eternals series.
It never made sense to me for Sharon to be the one to suggest going to the Sh'iar. She's the only one of the FF that HASN'T met the Sh'iar at this point. Maybe Simonson confused her with Carol Danvers?
I never liked the fact that we never found out how Thor and Iron Man made it home from the timestream.

They could say the Civil War Tony is an alternate and claim the real Tony is stuck in a parallel universe.

As to how they solved the problem of Galactus's growing hunger, I just assumed they told Galactus once they got back to the present and it was fixed off panel.

I'd argue the first U.S. appearance of Death's Head should give it higher historical significance.

I'm going to dissent from the general opinion and say I didn't care to much for this story. There's certainly good moments in there, but the central premise of a period of time no one can enter except an Avenger (except not really) is just a tad to nonsensical in my mind to truly enjoy it.

Cullen, first you lobby to get me to include Death's Head #9 (and i've added it to the What's Missing page) and now you want me to increase the significance here. First actual appearance, first Marvel universe appearance, first US comic appearance... how many first appearances does one character need?!

I agree, though; i've upped the Significance to a 2.

I won't be happy until you fully cover Transformers(UK) 113 + High Noon Tex, his other first appearances! They get 10s! ;)

It's a shame death's head 9 is the only one in the right timezone for fnord's project, it was one of the least good of the series. Geoff Senior was a fan favourite artist at marvel uk, but he didn't capture the FF very well. Back on topic, i also pondered about sharon's reference to the shi'ar. Did the avengers share their famous database with the ff? You could no-prize it and say sharon, worried about pulling her weight as a newbie, had been reading those files. I love simonson's writing of ben grimm in general, and his conversations with sharon. The whole "sharon becomes a thing" thing seemed a contrived idea at first, but it was totally worth it for her having to deal with a powerless ben in this run. Love it.

Nice to see Death's Head get some exposure in a US book so soon after his own Marvel UK solo. He never really developed beyond having a cult following, though, and, correct me if I'm wrong, it's mainly UK-born writers who grew up with the character (such as Kieron Gillen) who have used him in recent years?
Still, not bad for a freelance peacekeeping agent, yes?

Wow, Thor really was having troubles with his pants around this time! Must have been defective unstable molecules...

Kang Nebula checking out Gladiator while possessing Johnny is definitely good for some out-of-context fun.

Its interesting that the stuff with Kang-Nebula makes a 2nd time that Johnny has been portrayed as possibly being able to be tempted away from Alicia. Englehart had the love triangle with Crystal, although Johnny ultimately decided to honour his vows, he admitted that he did still love Crys and was going to quit the team to avoid temptation until Crys ended up quitting instead. And now this. Johnny is younger, and a well-established hornball, so it makes sense that he could succumb to Kang-Nebula whereas Reed was able to resist--I just find it interesting that it is becoming something of a pattern with Johnny.

Fnord didn't show it, but I love the bit of Shary breaking up the fight between Thor and Gladiator. Simonson gave it an amusing visual showing her head whipping back and forth to yell at both muscle-heads. Once again it falls on Shary to be the voice of reason and rational thought--which shows just how far she came during Englehart's run, going from unstable basket case to the stable, rational thinker of the group until Reed came back. I'm glad Simonson didn't just toss Shary aside when he took over the book; I grew to like her quite a bit over the course of Englehart's run.

This is a mad arc. In the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths and Secret Wars, grandiose threats to the entire universe (or multiverse or omniverse or whatever) became an all-too-common theme in comics.

The tie-ins here with earlier FF stories are somewhat interesting but rather strained, seems to me. The idea that the Dreaming Celestial modified the Big G into a universe-destroying weapon in FF #244 (which I already had significant issues with)? That the FF knows how to navigate through G's solar-system-sized space station right to the tiny UN from Johnny's visit in FF #49, even though The Watcher said Johnny's memories of that trip would fade and even though Simonson doesn't even draw the (new) station like the original Mobius-strip design?

We've seen that "symbol" in G's eyes (which have been drawn quite inconsistently over the years) before but upside down--see, for instance, the cover of FF #257. In fact, it goes back to one of the first panels of FF #49.

Time bubble, time travel, tesseract, super black hole, a mad Big G in the the thrall of the Dark Celestial. Throw in Nebula, Kangs, Death's Head, Gladiator, and Reed's relentless technobabble. It's quite a heady mix. (Found it quite curious, btw, that the FF would turn to the Shi'ar, who were helpless before Dark Phoenix, for a "solution" as if that were the most natural thing in the cosmos, when far more advanced entities and races exist within the Marvel Universe.)

Love the way Simonson draws the Dark Celestial's hands, among other things, but get tired of all the downturned mouths (see , e.g., image of Gladiator and Reed above). I relish a good cosmic story, but things like this make me want to reach next for something far more down to earth.

Any excuse for Simonson to write and draw Thor is good for me.

I have a higher regard for the Tom DeFalco & Paul Ryan run on Fantastic Four than other fans. However, just a few days ago I was re-reading this story in the Fantastic Four Visionaries: Walter Simonson, Volume 1 trade paperback. The writing and artwork were amazing, and once again just blew my mind. It was a near-perfect story.

This caused me to really appreciate how much of a long-term blow to FF it was that Simonson's run on it was cut short. Mind you, I certainly do not blame him for quitting out of solidarity for his wife Louise, as well as Chris Claremont, being forced off the various X-Men books.

Stuff like this really drives home just how short-sighted editors (as well as the corporate types above them) can be at Marvel. Harras shoved aside Louise Simonson and Chris Claremont to give carte blanche to Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld and Whilce Portacio. And what happens? Less than a year later those three artists quit Marvel to help form Image, meaning that now Harras was out his superstar artists *and* two of the best writers to ever work for Marvel, with the bonus of driving Walter Simonson off FF. Job well done, Bob!

In hindsight, considering this was the standard operating procedure at Marvel in the early 1990s, it's no wonder they went bankrupt just a few years later.

Every time I read the words "time bubble," I think of DC's Legion of Super-Heroes. I just can't help it. Every. Single. Time.

This is the story arc I was trying to find yesterday, about all the alternate timelines of Kangs. Now I'm looking forward to tracing it backwards, to Thor #371-372, for Simonson's Time Variance Authority, and to Avengers #291-297, for more of Simonson on the "Crosstime Council of Kangs."

With this to jog my memory, I've used the search utility to trace it back even further, to Roger Stern's multiple Kang storyline in Avengers #267-269. Thanks!

Can't a time travel story be told without Kang being involved? One of the most overrated and worn out villains in Marvel. I'm probably the only one who thinks so. I'm sure some of my thousands of alternate timeline duplicates think otherwise so no big deal.

Kang has yet to be revealed behind the Days of Future Past. Or Bishop's timeline or the Age of Apocalypse.

That just goes to show how good Kang is ;)