TIME TRAVEL IN COMIC BOOK UNIVERSES: A STRUCTURAL OVERVIEW

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TIME TRAVEL IN COMIC BOOK UNIVERSES: A STRUCTURAL OVERVIEW

By M. J. Norton

FOREWORD


Theoretical mathematicians, perhaps the only true cosmologists in a modern context, show us a map of a universe in which faster than light effects happen all the time - albeit on a sub-sub-atomic particle level - and multiple universes with quite likely arbitrary physical laws are in play. Against such a back-drop the following examination of time travel in comics is lent a faint air of respectability.


This paper stakes no claim to being a comprehensive overview of time travel stories in comics, as its use as a plot device has been rampant, and my readily-available source material is my private collection. In making my selections, I've tried to collect as many of the recurring conventions, attempting to establish theoretical frameworks to encompass them in a small number of groups. Additionally, notable variations have been mentioned under the appropriate individual structures. Owing both to the relatively complete nature of my Marvel Comics collection, and my familiarity with it, I've largely restricted my examples to that comics "reality", though I've attempted to reach beyond those references in presenting a wide range of examples. I had made some small effort during the outline stages to include DC's 30th Century-based Legion of Super-Heroes, given their frequent traffic through time in both their pre- and post-Crisis incarnations, but decided not to include them due to my relative lack of familiarity with DC's "rules" for time travel - a matter on which they appear to currently have no strong editorial stance.


I have refrained from making references to uses of time travel in novels, despite that generally being the source material the comics writers drew upon. Similarly, other pop cultural references have been limited. Exceptions were made only when they appeared particularly useful in clarifying a structure or mechanism. These guidelines were followed in order to prevent a dilution of an already diverse topic. The unused references and notes on the same have been aside for possible use as the basis of a paper on the impact of science fiction on comic books.


Criticism of this paper is welcome, particularly notices of significant material which was overlooked, as I'm interested in not only eliminating errors but in developing it into a more comprehensive examination of the subject. A more comprehensive draft of this paper, expanded to include the neglected material noted above, is expected to be produced in 1998.


It is my sincere hope that the resulting paper will serve as a useful reference for future writers in the comic book adventure genre, when they contemplate working time travel into a story. Failing that, I at least hope it will spur some thought on the subject.

Michael J. Norton Croydon, PA August, 1997


Time travel has played a prominent role in a wide variety of comics stories. A few moments' consideration of the subject is all that is needed in order to understand why. The ability to travel backwards in time to witness, and perhaps even participate in, history is a thrilling notion. Similarly exciting, though not without an added dread of the true unknown, is the thought of visiting the world tomorrow will bring.


While both directions are compelling, the greater dramatic tension involves travel backwards through time. After all, while the visiting of tomorrow can provide a sense of future history, such knowledge is to no great avail unless one can go back in time to make use of it. It's in that backwards movement that the interesting things occur, and the conflicts arise with some force. One advantage, if such it can be called, of the majority of comics tales is that the reader is accustomed to a level of verisimilitude greater than is necessary for any other field of literature. Generally all a comics reader demands is an internal consistency. The reader is ready to believe nearly anything set down in a forthright manner, but it must follow its own logic, however peculiar.


This simplicity has brought about a variety of methods for various characters to travel through time. One of the most conceptually simplistic is the generally familiar method employed by Superman. When the fabled Man of Steel wishes to travel through time, he circles the Earth at a speed greater than light, traveling in one direction to reach the past, and the other to visit the future. The comics reader generally doesn't demand to know how he achieves such speed, but is more concerned that Superman employ the method consistently; difficulties would arise should he claim in one issue that Westward travel transports one to the future, while saying in another that that is the path to the past.


This trans-light speed has become a convention of a variety of time travel schemes, so it is worth taking a moment to consider. Relativity theory informs us that as an object approaches the speed of light, time slows down for that object. So, a person traveling at near-light speed would age minimally compared to those he left behind. The reason why this works is beyond the scope of this paper, but let it suffice to say that this is a scientifically verified phenomenon. This gives the reader some authoritative scientific base to at as a touchstone, so that he is usually unconcerned that stretching the theory to cover trans-light speed is a violation of that same theory. The reasoning goes that if time slows down approaching the speed of light, that if one goes faster it'll begin to move backwards. Never mind that the faster one goes the more massive one becomes, requiring more energy to move, what ultimately matters to the reader is that Superman does it, ergo it works.


A variety of time travel devices have been concocted over the years. Some make use of the faster-than-light idea, such as a treadmill device employed by the Flash. Many are vehicles of some sort, from Rip Hunter's Time Bubble, to Kang's time-ship. These time-ships usually give rise to analogies of time as a river, hence the nautical references and the tendency to treat disturbances in the "time stream" as if they were violent storms, buffeting the passengers of such vehicles about during the journey.


Some of the devices are relatively passive, though, such as the visually-intriguing time platform created by Dr. Doom. This device merely removes the travelers from one time as it applies them to another; the machine itself stays in "the present", though the platform reappears when it is programmed to.


In some instances, a device was used to shift time for a specific locality, though these are notorious for not working as planned. In one such story, an atomic-powered gyroscope, inspired by Superman's faster than light method of time travel, was constructed in an attempt to open a sort of window on the future. Instead, it began shifting time for blocks around it, mixing then modern-day Metropolis with one of its possible, post-apocalyptic futures. [DC Comics Presents vol.6, 64 (December, 1983)] In another instance, A city was walled off from the world and a special device meant to keep it safe and propel it into the future backfired by merely speeding up time within the city, the inhabitants of which experienced many centuries while the outside world saw only a matter of days pass.


The most simplified method of time travel the comics offer, though, is by magic. In that context, no pretense at an explanation is necessary; it simply works.


Reviewing the dramatic themes and operating structures of a broad cross-section of comic book treatments of time travel, it becomes apparent that there are four, basic approaches the writer can take to introducing the matter. While some of the following systems overlap, and are not mutually exclusive, generally one of the following is dominant in a given story.

Type I: No Going Back

This first type ultimately makes it clear that it is impossible to actually visit one's past. Any attempts to move backwards in time will result in the formation of an alternate reality. Under this scheme, the traveler can go back to 1492 and sink all three of Columbus' ships, and all he will have done is to create a time line in which North America's colonization proceeded later and somewhat differently. His own past and present remain untouched, no matter how strange the new timeline. He does not return home to find that there are tepees where his house once stood.

The dramatic use of this approach usually lies in the writer concealing this inability to change the past until the story's end. A character travels to the past to correct some mistake before it is made, or stop something from happening, he goes through the adventure with seeming success, only to return to his present and find it unchanged.


An excellent example of this involves Ben Grimm, the super-strong Thing of the Fantastic Four. Presented with a cure for his monstrous deformity, he is told it would have worked had it been administered long ago, shortly after his transformation. He uses a time machine to travel back to those days, meeting the embittered, enraged person he once was. Mistrustful, the earlier version fights back viciously, but the future version eventually wins out and administers the cure. It works, and the earlier version of the Thing reverts to human form while the time-traveling visitor returns to the present only to find that he and his world remain unchanged.[Marvel Two In One 50] In a later tale it's confirmed that that time line persisted, and that the lack of a Thing made a critical difference, resulting in that world's ruin. [Marvel Two In One 100 (June, 1983)]


In another story the complexities of time travel, even under this structure, were driven home in a story arc involving a council of time-travelers, all versions of the same person. Some of these characters decided that so many of them were making mistakes, creating awful, frequently embarrassing time lines with each new scheme, and so they moved to eliminate the lesser lights who simply bungled matters left and right.[Avengers #267 (May, 1986)]


The use of the immutability of the past as a source of a moral is common. In the above example concerning the Thing, for instance, the latter tale attempts to make a case for believing that one's native reality, while far from perfect, may have a reason for existing. If not that, then it reminds the reader that things can almost always be worse. While an emotionally unsatisfying moral, it is nonetheless a pragmatic one.

Type II: Time Traveler As Part Of History

In this approach, the traveler ultimately stands revealed as part of history as it occurred. The character can interact with the past with vigor, but when the traveler stops and looks, he sees that everything turned out the same it had always been. Prior to 1986's Crisis On Infinite Earths, this was the standard backwards time travel scenario for Superman. His attempts to alter the past were always thwarted in some fashion, and he generally came to realize that he was recorded as a natural or inexplicable force, or even as part of folklore after some fashion.

A specific instance of this approach involved Steve Rogers, Captain America. Repeatedly wracked with guilt over the apparent death of his sidekick, Bucky Barnes, he traveled back to the day of their final mission together. His intent was merely to watch what had occurred, and set his mind at relative ease by confirming if Bucky had indeed been killed, or had survived in some amazing fashion as he had. The trip proceeded well, if not without some emotional pain, as the wraith like Captain watched helplessly. Suddenly there was a surge in the machine's power, and the Captain gained substance in that time. Acting quickly, he moved to fight back, but ultimately only succeeding in severing the bonds of his younger self before being returned to intangibility. History played out as it always had, save that now Cap knew more of what had gone on, and that it had been the actions of his future self that saved his life.[Avengers #56]


As with Type I, the dramatic tension in these stories usually derives from the apparent success the traveler enjoys in attempting to affect the past. Unlike type I, however, the failure to change events is generally seen much more quickly. Consequently, these tales derive tension from the inability of the traveler, however powerful and competent, to make a difference. The past seems dynamic for a time, but proves immutable in the end.

Type III: Can't Go Home Again.

The third operating scheme for a time travel story permits the traveler to journey along his own time line, and to make changes. The consequence of these actions, though, is that he changes future history - that is, history as he remembers it no longer exists; he becomes an anomaly, an orphan of an extinguished time line.

By far the most popular of the approaches in comics, novels and movies, this offers the highest level of dramatic tension of the perspectives explored so far. The traveler must exercise caution not to affect anything, as the smallest change could cascade through time and leave him no familiar present to return to. It is this approach which was used in perhaps the most often-praised of the original Star Trek episodes, "City on the Edge of Forever".


The usual structure involves a person or object moving into the past, resulting in a change in history. The protagonists are then forced to journey back into the past and prevent the deviation from occurring, or, failing that, to fix it in some way.


Not all of the uses of this time travel convention are big, sweeping ones. In some instance, the effect is minimalized and/or localized.


Once such use is in Milestone's Blood Syndicate, in the character of Flashback. Hers is the ability to turn time back six seconds at will, allowing her to quickly react to an event, turn time back, and shout out a warning or otherwise take action to prevent the incident. This effect essentially hurls her back into the past by those few seconds, allowing her the chance to alter history while it's extremely ripe.


Another, more peculiar but generally less satisfying method which has been used to work things out was seen in Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy's Aztec Ace. In those stories, the protagonist attempts to thwart the efforts of an organization which intends to undermine history. While Ace manages to do the job reasonably well, there are momentary imbalances, paradoxes he refers to as "doxy glitches". In truest comic book fashion, these localized expressions of outraged time manifest themselves as grotesque creatures, usually blending the attributes of two or more animals. Why? It's just what happens. It makes a good visual and gives him a monster to fight, and in comics that can be an end unto itself.

Type IV: All Can Be Undone

In many ways this is just a case of taking Type III one step further. However, as it is a particularly significant step, it deserves a separate category.

As with Type III, the traveler can undo the past, but in this case he risks not only destroying his time line, but eliminating himself as well. The apocalyptic nature of these tales, which allow the utter elimination of the hero and all the characters, is probably the least-used of all the time travel conventions in episodic fiction. In comics, this form is generally reserved for one-shot tales with a "twist" ending, often involving the traveler returning to a world in which he and his fellow beings are no longer human, but are now descended from some other animal.


A general pop-culture example, albeit an ultimately more upbeat one, of this is form found in the movie Back To The Future. In that film, the time traveler finds evidence of the past he knows being erased, as evidenced - however ludicrously - by the gradual disappearance of his siblings from a photo he brought with him, and, later, by the traveler himself beginning to fade out of existence.


The systems presented, as noted at the outset, overlap in places. The Captain America example given under Type II, for instance, is couched in a Type III scenario (i.e. He is sent back in wraith-like, observer form because it is believed that he otherwise could change the past, and so alter the present.) This, along with instances of each of the types within a single comics universe, indicates that all may be in play. How flexible one can be in allowing for the coexistence of these story types in the same fictional universe depends on a combination of the plotter's skill, the reader's verisimilitude, and the ability of each to mentally construct an all-encompassing framework.


Though continuity-intensive fans sometimes make it to an editorial level, and so attempt to impose a structure on time travel conventions, there are occasional slip-ups as writers and editors become confused or otherwise sloppy. Despite the fact that up until relatively recent times, the Marvel Universe has generally operated as a Type-I & II mix continuum, in which ventures into the past usually see the travelers shifting into or otherwise creating an alternate time line, and almost all the other times involve the time traveler's actions proving to be part of history, there have been times when other changes have been permitted. In one such story a time traveler changes Earth's history while the Fantastic Four are in space, and thereby supposedly insulated from the local shift. In this instance, the heroes must go back in time to counter the events and prevent some vaguely hinted-at "collapse" of time. [Giant-Size Fantastic Four #2 (August, 1974)]


In another instance involving the same characters, a cylinder of an advanced alloy is knocked onto a time platform and sent into the past. It reaches the seemingly ubiquitous Nazis, early in WWII, and they use the unique properties of the alloy to construct far more precise V-2 rockets, and so win the war and sweep the world. While this story initially treats those circumstances as creating an alternate time line which left the" main" one unchanged, Reed Richards hints at the possibility of a sort of domino effect, which is given no more explanation - plainly it was referenced purely as a story element to provide motivation and a sense of drama, when all that was really needed was a sense of guilt and responsibility at being inadvertently responsible for a time line in which the Nazis won.[Fantastic Four Annual #11 (November 1976)]


Time travel is too successful and time honored, however often abused, to ever be far from comics for long. The possibilities it offers for exploring new aspects of old events and characters are simply too compelling to be ignored - nor should they. Those who choose to use it should take care, though, to decide which framework is best for their stories, and stick with it.





Praise? Ridicule? Non-injurious suggestions? Drop me a line @ orto@erols.com

Editors Note;
Time Travel in comics seem often,to inconstistant.Doctor Dooms Time Mechine works differently than Kang's Time Sphere.It would ok,if Doom's time mechime somehow instantly beamed people onto a time ship platform,then somewhere else in time and space,but we are not sure how either really work.Superman's time travelling should limited to star ship travel or devices,in the Fotress of Solitude,using Phantom Zone based technology.
Doc Thompson



All work on this page is by Michael J. Norton, 1997. Permission to reproduce this material is granted, provided credit is given me. I'd also appreciate being given notice, too, okay?



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