So I decided to read Kang Dynasty because of the movie announcement, and in it Kang the Conqueror fricking takes over the world for several weeks after making their governments surrender, nukes Washington DC, puts thousands into concentration camps, and basically causes untold death and devastation throughout the globe, but it isn't undone by time travel by the end like I assumed it would be. This is worse than 9/11 or even WWII. Why the frick have none of the events of this story ever been referenced anywhere else, not even in Avengers books?
Because at the time Jemas didn't want other books referencing other things
Basically and
Busiek wasn't one of the Jemas/Quesada era's favored creatives and seen as part of the old guard so they put more emphasis on hyping up Ultimates
Busiek has since revealed that he and his editor were trying to get Bryan Hitch to be the new Avengers artist and management put him on Ultimates instead, cementing that they thought that was the "real" Avengers book (and killing their attempt to get back into the top 10 after George Pérez left, because they never found another artist who lasted more than 6 issues).
Where did he say this?
The bird website
This makes me wonder how far back the Ultimates was being planned, sketches were published around November 2001 in Wizard (and even had different story concepts that didn't make it into the final one). I know Busiek objected to them doing a comic titled Ultimate Avengers because he felt they'd just put all the marketing on that book instead of the main Avengers title.
He might have fudged the date a bit, so it could have been after Alan Davis's brief run which lasted through the first 3 issues of the Kang arc. Hitch would have been the logical choice for the new "Avengers as global army" thing they were doing. (Because it was still basically an old-school Avengers run, it's easy to overlook that Busiek suddenly abandoned a lot of the traditional Avengers tropes like the small rotating lineup.)
Well he doesn't really say much in that tweet; just that he (and probably Brevoort who was editing Avengers at the time) were trying to get Hitch but Hitch got placed on Ultimates instead.
Perez's final issue was released in October 2000; by then Marvel was probably working out what other Ultimate titles they wanted to do (USM was already on its second issue, UXM was going to be out in December 2000)
Davis' first issue of Busiek's Avengers was out in January 2001
It could well be possible they planned to try to get Hitch to draw Avengers after Perez, got rejected, and then Hitch got placed on Ultimates months after.
Sometimes the easiest answer is also the most correct. This really is just it.
But Jemas left a long time ago, plenty of writers and editors have had the chance to bring up this story but won't, not even in new Kang stories.
That second part is covered by
Plus Busiek went over to DC after he wrapped up his Avengers run
The Quesada/Jemas years really killed Marvel's sense of history and continuity, and how books deal with their own past history. Most writers now tend to only reference stories from before their own runs if it's something from the previous run that's directly impacting their own stories, or if it's an older story that's been officially designated as one of the most important moments in that book's or that character's history, and something writers are almost obligated to keep referencing.
There are occasional exceptions, Spencer's Spider-Man took a deep dive into material from some old runs that had never even been reprinted, but that's the exception, not the norm.
Why would they bring it up? It would only confuse readers who had no idea something so huge had happened.
As someone who actually subscribed to Busiekvengers and read it as it came out, I found the Stamford disaster pretty underwhelming as a pretext for Civil War, though, lol.
>I found the Stamford disaster pretty underwhelming as a pretext for Civil War, though, lol.
Seconded
Well let's see who were the writers after Busiek
Johns: Would likely reference it, but he eventually bailed to go to DC
Austen: I'm not even sure he would
Bendis: This guy was on the book for eight years, drags shit out, and can't even remember his own continuity much less other people's. Did you really think he was gonna reference it in a meaningful way?
Hickman: Would rather do his own bodycounts that get glossed over rather than acknowledge other stuff happened
Past Hickman I'm not sure many people at Marvel had read Busiek's Avengers by then.
Johns' first story did show Washington DC being rebuilt, but there were no other references to it.
You're right, it went on for over a year of Avengers issues alone. But it stands out as a story with such a worldwide scale that it feels like it should have been an event that other books tied into, instead nothing else really mentioned it at all. But it's just the way Marvel were then. Crossover stories between just two books were very rare in the early Quesada years and full Marvel wide events didn't happen between Maximum Security in 2000 and House of M in 2005.
>plenty of writers and editors have had the chance to bring up this story but won't
Because they probably haven't read them, most talent only knows the Civil War/WWHulk/Bucky Cap era going forward and doesn't seem interested in anything else except Ewing who just throws references out for the sake of it.
Am I being punk'd?
Kang fell into irrelevancy. Only showing up to be a time travel mcguffin or get outplayed by Doom. Last worth while thing he did was raise ahura for a little bit.
Did all the Government owned sentinels get destroyed in this event as well?
Kang has always been a lame villain.
Physically he is a slightly less effective Doom but with a time gimmick. And Doom has had a time machine since the earliest years of FF too so that's also kind of superfluous.
looks like a masturbation cover
>time travel that doesn't reference events in history, for a villain that has plot armor
checks out
Ultimates started right after Busiek run
Hey at least it gives cover for A-gays to use when X-gays start whining about Genoshia
How exactly?
Multiple X-writers have used Genosia as a club to smack around Avengers, annoyed by this some fans have found out what was going on during the Genosian Genocide which was the Kang Dynasty event
Ironically, the Genosha genocide itself is something that Morrison's run and other X-Books running at the time didn't make that big of a deal out of even though it was the biggest genocide ever and it killed the vast majority of mutants. It wasn't elevated as a big tragedy with big cultural impact to the mutant community until years later.
I think this is mostly true. It was barely mentioned outside of Morrison's own book at the time, and didn't really start getting treated like that until writers started having Emma use it as a stick to beat the Avengers with for "not being there". Between that, and Wanda getting used as the plot device to cause the Decimation, and being demonized afterwards, Marvel were putting effort into getting X-Men readers angry at the Avengers, like they were always planning to pit the fandoms against each other for AvX.
Another Avengers story that was oddly never brought up again was Avengers: Red Zone. In it the Red Skull posing as the Secretary of Defense launches a biological attack in the American midwest that spreads a cloud of a viral version of his dust of death that kills thousands.
ironically only a new busiekwould start referencing these arcs
This never really got brought up again afterwards except for the Invaders comic Marvel launched shortly afterwards being another thing the Red Skull had set up. The only fans that bring up the story much are people bringing up how Wanda contained the gas cloud as one of her biggest and most heroic feats before Bendis ruined her.
>puts thousands into concentration camps
>spreads a cloud of a viral version of his dust of death that kills thousands
>thousands
That...that was a lot of people back in those days, wasn't it?
>That...that was a lot of people back in those days, wasn't it?
This was back when people were getting influenced by The Authority and its huge body counts (and arguably it also kind of started with JLA, in some ways)
So all these comics that came after just had to make these big widescreen battles where hundreds to thousands of people die and most get glossed over.
To Busiek's credit, at least he showed the aftermath during his run even if nobody else was really acknowledging it.
I mean it still is just we've become so desensitized to mass death events in media.
>Red Skull is extra racist towards blacks in this story
>Black Panther punches him in the jaw so hard it's hanging off
And nobody brings it up in current storylines? Really?
Also they don't bring this story up because it brought back Marcus, the guy who raped Carol to impregnate her with himself.
Geoff Johns left Marvel and got entrenched at DC so it's not in Marvel's best interest to keep bringing it up, so the shills don't bring it up
> Also they don't bring this story up because it brought back Marcus, the guy who raped Carol to impregnate her with himself.
Not the same Marcus, but it’s too confusing to explain the connection between them.
Best part is that Red Skull's disguise as the Secretary of Defense was the blatant anagram Dell Rusk.
It's amusing how X-Men writers in the Krakoa era have gone out of their way to ignore pretty much everything that happened between Secret Wars and House of X, and with good reason frick the Inhumans. Kid Cable was the only plot point that managed to endure for a little somehow.
>implying any pre-Hickman 2010s X-Men stories other than AvX ever get referenced
But keep on seething about the Inhumans anyway, you know you're going to do it for the rest of your life.
I imagine it must have been frustrating at the time, since it was way too long of a story and none of the other books mentioned it, but most people since then have read it in collected editions, where you don't have to wait a month for each installment and it doesn't really matter what was happening in other books.
I don't think it would have been a better story if Kang taking over the world had been forced to be a thing in other people's stories. We'd just have more stories interrupted by a "Kang takes over the world" crossover issue.
That explains why they didn't tie in at the time, not why they haven't referenced it since then.
It's weird, it's a fairly popular story but except for "Marcus" turning up in one panel in Uncanny Avengers, nothing in it has ever been referenced again.
Kang suffered from classic villains not being cool enough for the 90s, like a lot of them, and was sidelined for more modern and edgy new characters. Or edgier versions of old characters.
Only a lot of classic villains came back when the 00s era movies made them popular again like Dock Ock, Green Goblin, Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, etc. Kang never really came back after the 90s exile.
And around this time, the early 00s, there were at least three Marvel stories by different writers that tried to make a Silver Age villain edgy again by having them commit worse crimes than usual:
- Kang murders millions (Busiek)
- Doctor Doom skins a woman alive and makes new armor out of her skin (Waid)
- Magneto becomes literally Hitler again (Morrison)
In the case of Doom and Magneto the writers were also trying to push back against the more sympathetic portrayals other writers had given them and shove it in our face that they're evil incarnate.
>- Doctor Doom skins a woman alive and makes new armor out of her skin (Waid)
Holy hell
How casual are you?
It's even worse than it sounds. The woman he skinned alive as part of a demonic sacrifice for more power was his ex-girlfriend Valeria. Yes, the Valeria that Valeria Richards is named after.
Notice how no writer ever brings this up when Val interacts with her "Uncle Doom".
Then it just turned into another by the numbers story of Doom getting a really big power upgrade for a few issues only to lose it and go right back to status quo again. Only really super dooper edgier than normal. Marvel repeats that one Silver Surfer story too damn much with the guy.
>In the case of Doom and Magneto the writers were also trying to push back against the more sympathetic portrayals other writers had given them and shove it in our face that they're evil incarnate.
With Magneto at least you could claim Kick (which was Sublime) made him do it.
With Doom I get what Waid was trying to do but it went too far in the other direction.
I'm guessing that now that Kang is gonna be the MCU Big Bad, he'll be getting a lot more exposure in the comics like what happened to Thanos in the 2010s.
I'm not sure that's accurate, Kang, Doc Ock, Green Goblin and various versions of the Brotherhood of Evil mutants all got used regularly in the 90s, though most of them did have attempts to make them edgier and more threatening. A lot of older villains like that saw less use over the 00s and 10s as Marvel focused more on heroes fighting each other.
Kang was in some big 90s stories, from Infinity War to Heroes Reborn and Avengers Forever. Even The Crossing was a big story, regardless of how it was received.
Goblins were very secondary to the edge versions in the 90s like Demogoblin, Demon Hobgoblin etc. Green Goblin was not really around until near the end of the decade again.
Dock Ock was unceremoniously killed off and replaced like a few classic villains of the time.
And the brotherhood was treated like more of a joke since the Riders of the Storm and Nasty Boys were the bleeding edge cool thing of the era. A few of them were also unceremoniously killed off for their aids adjacent story.
Demogoblin was such a fricking stupid idea. That was definitely a
>We don't think the older villains are "Cool" enough!
Kind of situation. While also inventing a shadowy character named Kane of all things to kill off several villains. Then shit like Spidercide showed up.... This was replacing Executioner with Bloodaxe all over again. Or fully masked magic construct Strange.
The mid 90s were just not good for Spidey villains. Some got a little bit of an update like Vulture being a young guy in armor, Lizard being more of a dinosaur man. But killing Scorpion, Dock Ock, Tarantula (Again), Killing Kraven, Retiring Hobgoblin after making him a joke through the first years of the decade, retiring Beetle, Making Sandman a hero but then taking him out of Avengers and sticking him with Silver Sable, but we got more symbiotes and people who wear tattered cloaks.
>That was definitely a
>>We don't think the older villains are "Cool" enough!
It's really more of a "trying to make the best out of a situation"
First there was the clusterfrick about who the Hobgoblin was gonna be which led to Ned Leeds dying and then being revealed to be the Hobgoblin after, while pushing in a new Hobgoblin who wasn't that effective.
Then they merged that new Hobgoblin with a demon. But he still pretty much acted the same after getting the new look and powers, up until when Todd McFarlane got ahold of the character he made Hobgobliln some kind of religious zealot without explanation.
Demogoblin was probably a way to get a "regular" Hobgoblin back while doing something with the demonic one.
>Kang suffered from classic villains not being cool enough for the 90s,
>Kang never really came back after the 90s exile.
Kang was heavily around during the 90s! He was involved with stuff in the Citizen Kang storyarc (1992 Avengers Annuals), Infinity War (1992) ; Avengers: The Terminatrix Objective (1993), was central to The Crossing (1995) in that Iron Man became his pawn, he was in four issues of Heroes Reborn Avengers (1996-1997), and was also involved in Avengers Forever (1998-1999).
Keep in mind back in the 90s, Doctor Doom was dead for like two years.
Plus Busiek's story was published in the early 00s, which was already past the 90s.
Cinemaphile doesn't read comics right here
No, just that one guy
At least he got roasted by the responses
I think Kang suffers particularly because his design is more goofy than most big villains, and because he's just too similar to Dr Doom (megalomaniac with super advanced tech). The only thing that makes him really stand out is the whole time travelling conqueror thing, but it's hard to write time travel well
I don't agree that Kang's costume is particularly goofy by the standards of 60s villains. Over the years, some elements of it got streamlined and the oversized helmet got toned down a lot. By the 90s there were several redesigns to modernize his look without making him unrecognizable.
He's not really the same as Doom. Doom is the king of a small nation, with ambitions to conquer the world, and genuine belief he'd be improving the world, but also motivated by an old grudge he can't let go of. Kang is more of an Alexander figure, more motivated by the conquering and the expanding of his empire than in ruling over it, usually doesn't hold personal grudges, and keeps coming back to the age of superheroes to pit himself against the most legendary warriors in history. The differences between them are part of why they make a great team up.
So is the MCU messing him up then?
Kang is in some desperate need of an update. I never really understood why he was never updated in the 80s and 90s to a way that stuck around. And especially for an armored guy post 00s when all other people mildly associated with armor gets a full redesign in almost each and every appearance.
He is one of those characters like Killer Moth where whenever someone does give him a redesign, the next artist on the book wants the classic 60s look back. And he is brought right back to the old goofy 60s thigh boots and green silk shirt. He just upgrades and downgrades over and over again.
If you care about pre Bendis Avengers Marvel hates you and wants you to forgot all of it. Except for the story in West Coast where Byrne destroys Wanda and Vision
But why?
I’m excited about Kang getting a Thanos bump bc I can just say anything I don’t like is a Kang from a different timeline
A lot of Avengers stories are like this. Konshu recently took over the planet.
No one cares or remembers.
Being fair I think everyone thought Caveman Avengers were fricking moronic.
Frick you caveman Avengers rule. But yes AaronVengers has been very strangely disconnected from the Marvel U. Like no one remembers turning into DC for a minute in Heroes Reborn.
Also yes his run is mostly bad but caveman avengers is my kind of stupid.
I mean that in like, it feels like something in a fricking silver age comic where the justice league go back in time and they just find versions of themselves wearing loincloths. Like it's cute as a concept but like they were a CENTERAL thing in the plot. Like this scary storyline about Khonsu ruling the Earth and the last time they were able to stop this was the fricking CAVEMEN. It's a plot that can only work in a comic book.
Marvel seems to have decided they want Avengers to be their Justice League, where most of the characters have their own books (this already started with All-New All-Different) and there's no real character development. Aaron seems to have rolled with it and just treated it as an excuse to do wacky dumb stories that don't have to have any ramifications.
It's a bit like a Jeph Loeb comic but, and I can't believe I'm saying this, Loeb was better at it.
Agree on that. He did do a Tony in caveman times story that I thought was alright.
I don’t disagree except for I don’t think Loeb is better and also there’s a handful of stuff I like in the back half of AaronVengers
>there’s a handful of stuff I like in the back half of AaronVengers
In the earlier parts of the run, I liked the idea of all the rival teams, new versions of the Squadron Supreme and Winter Guard plus an Atlantean team and a vampire team, but it didn't really amount to anything more than the separate story arcs where the Avengers fight each team, and none of the mattered past those arcs.
There was a similar idea late in Bendis' run with the Revengers and the second version of the Dark Avengers, but they both only lasted for one story each too.
Revengers is such a good genius idea to do a commentary on Bendis’ run that is totally ruined by it being written by Bendis
Blade as sheriff of vampire nation is such a cool fun idea that no one is using
>Revengers is such a good genius idea to do a commentary on Bendis’ run that is totally ruined by it being written by Bendis
It's not just commentary on Bendis' run, it's blaming the Avengers for everything Ultron ever did, it's acting like the Hulk and Wanda were always villains and blaming the Avengers for them.
Taken at face value, it's a story about a former Avenger losing it and starting his own rival team, and trying to shut the Avengers down by blaming them for a lot of things that aren't really their fault in the first place. But it's framed in a way to make it look like maybe he has a point if you don't think too hard about it, and don't notice that he's not proposing anything to replace the Avengers with either.
And also that the characters just seemed really out-of-character in that one.
To be fair, both Wonderman and Eddie Brock had past history of going crazy when the story calls for them to go crazy, and most of the other characters on the Revengers hadn't appeared much in years. We were deep into the modern approach to treating superheroes like celebrities, so about half of the Revengers motivation basically being like salty minor celebrities who were jealous of the Avengers' fame and success was funny.
>Also yes his run is mostly bad but caveman avengers is my kind of stupid.
I think I'd feel the same way if it was caveman versions of all the main classic Avengers, instead of the characters Aaron chose. I don't know how caveman versions of Iron Man or Vision would work, but I'd have liked to find out.
Well, MacKay’s Moon Knight does reference it semi-frequently, for obvious reasons. But other than that it’s been totally memory-holed, and correctly, because it was fricking stupid.
99.9% of crossovers and events in general. Then you get the ones that manage to stick around despite nobody wanting them like Original Sin and Watcher Fury.
For non-Marvel examples, there was the curious case of Sonic Adventure 2 in the old Archie Sonic comic.
Brevoort recently just talked about it
So who was supposed to be the artist after Alan Davis? Were they at least trying to get a star artist to keep the books selling?
Brevoort actually talked about Kang Dynasty a month ago on his Substack
>Twenty years ago today, July 3, 2002, Kurt Busiek wrapped up his long AVENGERS run with the release of this issue, the final epilogue to the long running “Kang Dynasty” storyline. (There was one further issue written by Kurt which saw print the following month, but it had been written as a stand-alone inventory story which I used to buy the incoming creative team some time; Kurt made some minor tweaks to the copy to bring it into line with the prior issue.) We were experimenting with our approach to the covers on AVENGERS at this time, attempting to draw more attention to the book by doing some non-traditional things. hence, the stark color scheme of this Kieron Dwyer image. Much of the issue revolved around the burial of recently-appointed Avengers government liaison Duane Freeman, who had clashed with the team on a number of issues while still being a fan of them and their work. It was revealed here that he had been killed issues earlier, during Kang’s attack on Washington DC. The Kang Dynasty was something of a reaction to what we saw going on elsewhere within the company. Marvel’s then-President Bill Jemas didn’t really like the traditional approach that Kurt and myself typically took towards making comics. He preferred a more cinematic, harsher-edged style, as seen in THE ULTIMATES, which had launched at around this point. It was pretty clear that the focus of the company, at least at the top, was squarely on this new ULTIMATE line, with the existing books often seen as being staid or out of touch or just a bother. It was in this environment that Kurt wisely decided to wrap up his run.
>Before he did, though, we had embarked on an extended story in which we brought back Kang the Conqueror and pitted him against Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to a degree and on a scale never witnessed before. (in part, this was, I think, a pushback against the Ultimates, attempting to show that the mainstream Marvel Universe could do stories just as epic and cataclysmic.) The story ran for a ridiculous 16 parts, and saw Kang not only completely taking over the present day, but annihilating Washington DC outright. The remaining Avengers were underground rebels fighting in a landscape that Kang had already conquered. And none of this was reset at the end, these events all happened and remained in place even after the story concluded. This bothered some fans, who felt like a story of such magnitude should have been reflected in other titles. And I understand that—but it’s always a double-edged sword. Half of the audience likes that sort of uber-continuity, and the other half just wants to read the comics they like in peace without having to worry about what might be transpiring in some other title they don’t really care about. We also wound up going through a number of artists in the course of the storyline, including one period of absolute scrambling when the guy who was supposed to take over after Alan Davis wrapped up his issue bailed on us at the last minute. So the look of the epic is not as consistent as I may have wished. But I’m pleased with how it all turned out and with the chances we took along the way. I expect that it reads even better in collected form, which is where most anybody who’s come to it over the past two decades is likely to have seen it, where you don’t need to worry about what might be going on in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN or DAREDEVIL at the same time.
https://tombrevoort.substack.com/p/let-freedom-ring
I dropped out of DC some moment after New 52 was left behind.
Did they ever do something with that thing about having 3 different Jokers around?
Batman Destroyer storyline and villain showed Gotham was hiding the old buildings or some shit can't remember and blows up buildings turn the city into Burton style buildings and it changes look of Gotham from just typical modern city to gothic style city but No Man's Land just ends up destroying city all over and gothic looking style is lost again lol like majorly change look of Gotham and it all just kinda whatever and forgotten about and later just like wiped out.
Because of the sliding timeline, a few weeks later Antarctic Mecha-Nazis invaded and destroyed DC in Fear Itself, I think it was. At the end of that, Thor just wished Paris, which was destroyed as well, better, and it was better because he's a literal god. Also one time Canadian aliens took over the world with giant burrowing cities?
In the sliding timeline there's no single timeline hard canon. If something can't fit - like Spider-Man meeting the cast of Saturday Night Live when John Belushi was a) on the cast and b) alive forty years ago - then it's just something that must have happened in an alternate timeline. Rather than changing continuity retroactively this is changing what you read, retroactively, to have taken place in another timeline.
Which is fine. You read it, you enjoyed/bitched about it at the time, but it just happened somewhere else.
Like - Tony Stark. Originally he was the one who built the helicarriers for SHIELD - in the 1960s, when he was already middle aged. But thanks to the sliding timeline that became impossible as eg Cap had only been unfrozen "a few years ago" at any given time. So in the 1990s Old Tony died and was replaced with Teen Tony, from another dimension, who also died. Then they were resurrected in the Heroes Reborn universe as one dude with a whole other backstory (he went to college with a cow-guy, or possibly some kind of horse-man). When they returned to the 616 the resurrected heroes inherited the memories of their pre-death selves. Except Tony didn't exist, so should have all three sets of memories. Instead, he has a fourth, distinct set, where he was born in the 1960s or 1970s, has a secret brother, etc. He isn't any of those other guys, because nobody's reading those stories any more and his key character moments - Demon in a Bottle, Armor Wars etc - could have happened to any of them. So it's not important.
If it bothers you, anything prior to Chaos War is explained by Hercules fixing the universe.
>Because of the sliding timeline, a few weeks later Antarctic Mecha-Nazis invaded and destroyed DC in Fear Itself, I think it was. At the end of that, Thor just wished Paris, which was destroyed as well, better, and it was better because he's a literal god. Also one time Canadian aliens took over the world with giant burrowing cities?
I wonder if anyone actually put some hard thought into it. I'm gonna take an arbitrary starting point, 9/11, then go from there
>9/11
>Genosia
>Kang Dynasty
>Avengers Disassembled
>House of M
>Decimation
>Civil War
>World War Hulk
>Literal Norse Gods taking up residency in Oklahoma
>Secret Invasion a full scale world wide alien invasion
>Siege, where the opening salvo is a packed Soldier Field being reduced to ash
>Fear Itself
>AvX
>Infinity which lead to the Terrigen Bomb and world wide Inhumanism
>Secret Empire
>War of Realm, a world wide magical invasion
>King in Black, a world wide alien invasion
>Empyre, another world wide alien invasion
>Mutants colonizing Mars
>AxE
Thanks to the sliding timescale this is all in like five years not including things too small (IvX) and things way to big (Secret War 4), Marvel Earth should be a depopulated nightmare hell
honestly if they designated summer events Earth-621 and took what they wanted from them into 616 it wouldn't even matter
What does ITT Mean.
"In this thread". It's basically the OP asking Anons people to post other examples of whatever is in the subject line.
Do you know what happened to Paris during the feat itself storyline. The stuff Ironman went through was brutal and would have changed him completely.
I think Fear Itself was the point I realized civilian casualties in these comics were way too fricking high and way too dismissed
That fight was brutal. Every statue getting destroyed was once a person.
Yeah, showed that Grey Gargoyle could actually be quite dangerous, but sadly after this story he hasn't really seen much use, only other story since then I can think of he's been part of was in Spencer's ASM run as just another minion in Nefaria's Lethal Legion.