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Wisdom and Earth-691

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 7:32 pm
by Enda80
Donald Campbell may be interested in this. In the Wisdom series, Wisdom confronts Martians, expicitly stated to be coming from an alternate Earth that they conquered "six years ago". I am guessing then this is Earth-691. Of a more scintillating note, this may indicate that an Earth-616 Killraven may get an entry.

The "six years ago" note is interesting, because as Campbell pointed out, the issue of the sliding timescale has been inconsistnetly handled with the Guardians continuum. Although the 1970's published issues had Vance Astro leaving Earth in 1988, in one of the 1990's GOTG issues, he notes that he departed in the 21st Century. Since it is absolutely certain that Astro left Earth before the second Martian invasion, that suggests a sliding timescale at work.

Re: Wisdom 1-6

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:57 pm
by JephYork
that suggests a sliding timescale at work.
Well ... yeah. Just like every other comic in the MU.

I'm interested to see Don Campbell's take on the Martians too, though... :)

-Jeph!

Re: Wisdom 1-6

Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:48 pm
by Enda80
Michael Gallagher in this Guardians story insisted on an absolut 2001 as the year of the 2nd Martian Invasion on Earth-691.

Re: Wisdom 1-6

Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 8:13 pm
by SeanCurtin
Which Guardians story?
Why must that story's placement of the date of the invasion be exempt from the sliding timescale?
And what does vodka have to do with anything?

Re: Wisdom 1-6

Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 8:43 pm
by Col_Fury
SeanCurtin wrote:And what does vodka have to do with anything?
LOL!

Re: Wisdom 1-6

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 2:40 am
by Enda80
As Don Campbell wrote:
A second (and less ambiguous) indication comes from “The (Secret) Origin of the Guardians of the Galaxy” in GotG #26. In that story, Major Astro reveals that, “early in the Twenty-First Century - - the specific date wouldn’t matter to you - - I was to be the first normal man to travel to another star!”

Also from Don Campbell
In contrast, Michael Gallagher’s stories clearly do NOT accommodate the sliding timescale. Instead, he firmly hangs onto the idea that the “Martian” invasion took place “at the turn of the Twentieth Century” which, at the time that his stories were written, was only six or seven years in the future. Also, Gallagher’s stories show that many of the then-current Marvel heroes fought against the “Martian” invaders. I consider it significant that those heroes didn’t appear to be any older than when they appeared in stories set in the “present-day” of the “mainstream” MU.

Gallagher's stories to that effect (that the second Martian invasion took place in an absolute 2001) include Guardians of the Galaxy Annual#3,
the issue where it was revealed that the Earth-691 Quasar and Her were Starkhawk's biological progenitors, GOTG#50, the history back-ups in the Galactic Guardians limited series, GOTG#61, and a few others.

Re: Wisdom 1-6

Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 6:45 pm
by Enda80
http://www.imagecomics.com/messageboard ... hp?t=40164
http://www.imagecomics.com/messageboard ... hp?t=40164
Jim Valentino himself responds to the sliding timescale issue and the Martian Invasion.

Re: Wisdom and Earth-691

Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 9:14 am
by rhod
So Astro left Earth "before the second invasion" & “early in the Twenty-First Century - - the specific date wouldn’t matter to you".

Alien invasion - 2001
Astro leaves Earth - 2000.

I don't see any problem.

Re: Wisdom and Earth-691

Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 4:46 pm
by Enda80
Rhod, the 21st century began on January 1, 2001, not January 1, 2000. There was no year zero. Another messup from Bede and Dennis the Little.

Another oddity that occured to me. Don Campbell pointed out the story in AA2 38 where a mutated astronaut who can project illusions. Death's Dark Dreamer!" tells the story of what happened when Killraven stumbled across the Miami Museum of Cultural Development and became caught up in the projected dreams of an astronaut from the "Mars launch in 1999." During the hallucination, Killraven encountered distorted versions of numerous Marvel characters. Rather ambiguously, the awakened astronaut later described the figures as "all the heroes from my youth" but he also often refered to them as "myths." The only Marvel character that is definitely "real" in the projected nightmare is the Man-Thing who appears as part of an actual memory of an encounter that the astronaut had with the creature in the Florida Everglades. All the other Marvel characters could just be the astronaut's childhood myths brought to life.

As Stakkar Karnak pointed out, the list of projected images included:

AA2 38 established that Ant-Man, Black Bolt, Black Panther, Captain
America, Daredevil, Dr Doom, Dr Strange, Hawkeye, Hulk, Human Torch, Iron
Fist, Iron Man, Karnak, Loki, Man-Thing, Martinex(!), Medusa,
Moondragon, Namor, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man(!),
Thing, Thor, Thunderbird, Vision, and Yellowjacket were part of Killraven's past

Re: Wisdom and Earth-691

Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 11:29 pm
by JephYork
You realize that the main Marvel Universe's sliding timescale, coupled with the fact that Vance Astro's 616 self, Justice, will never significantly age, will eventually mean that Major Astro couldn't have been BORN in the 20th century, let alone become a qualified astronaut?

I mean, Justice is, what, around 24-25 now, in "2008" ... meaning both he and Major Astro (who were THE SAME PERSON prior to M/TIO #69) would have been around 17-18 in "2001". We're already pushing it. In a few more years, the poor guy will be lucky to have readers think he hit puberty by the turn of the 21st century.

I don't think it's tenable to say that the Guardians' timeline DOESN'T have a sliding timescale, given that it branched definitively off of the Marvel Universe, which DOES have a sliding timescale.

-Jeph!

Re: Wisdom and Earth-691

Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2008 6:33 am
by rhod
the 21st century began on January 1, 2001, not January 1, 2000.
I know that, but billions of people still celebrated the new millennium on Dec 31, 1999/Jan 1 2000. Maybe Vance went with the majority opinion?

Re: Wisdom and Earth-691

Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 7:35 pm
by DonCampbell
jephyork wrote:I'm interested to see Don Campbell's take on the Martians too, though... :)

-Jeph!
You know, I remember reading these posts back when they were recent, no more than a day or two old, and thinking to myself that I really should post a reply of my own. Well, here it is...and it only took me ten months to get around to doing it.

Regarding the WISDOM mini-series as a whole, I was quite pleased with it. The threats that the MI-13 team faced were new and interesting, and how the team handled them made for good stories. The new characters (Tink the fairy, John the Skrull, Captain Midlands and Maureen Raven) were also interesting but I disappointed myself by not realizing who Maureen was before the fifth (or was it the sixth?) issue. Pete Wisdom came off as a complete jackass and I totally agreed with Shang-Chi that he was "a man who has engineered his own karmic downfall." His inability to trust others led to the Martian invasion and the resulting deaths, and forced him to deal with Maureen himself. Bad karma indeed.

While there were a few story elements that seemed questionable, the only thing that I found to be absolutely wrong was that Alistaire Stuart was depicted as an old man. The last time that I saw him prior to this LS, he was still the young (late 20's/early 30's) man with black hair that he'd always been. It wasn't until the latest issue of CAPTAIN BRITAIN AND MI: 13 that it was explained that he's been "somewhat mutable in form" ever "since that unfortunate dinner party with Morgan Le Fey." I wonder if this was something that writer Paul Cornell planned from the beginning or if it was just his way of fixing an earlier mistake. By the way, does anyone recall reading about that dinner party in any previous story or it it new?

Finally, as to the Martians, I thought that they were handled quite well. There were a couple of things about them which could have been established more firmly but, on the other hand, maybe it was that very ambiguity that prevented any outright mistakes from being made. For one thing, the only Martian ever actually "seen" on panel looked significantly different from how the aliens from the Killraven stories were depicted. Of course, that in itself was no big surprise. It seems that every art team who ever draws these "Martians" has to create their own image for them, one that is different from how they have previously been portrayed. By now, this single alien race has already been depicted in been four or five different forms, so what's one more?

The other thing that bothered me is the fact that, even though AVENGERS FOREVER firmly established that the "Martians" from AMAZING ADVENTURES were actually aliens who merely used Mars as a staging base for their invasion of Earth, EVERYBODY CONTINUES TO CALL THEM MARTIANS. Even the alien's human translator slave refers to his master as a "Martian scientist." I really, Really, REALLY want someone to give this alien species their own race-name.

By the way, considering the fact that (in X-FORCE #102 - thanks, Jeph!) Pete Wisdom told Alistaire Stuart that "Martians" were cut up in British Intel's primary dissection lab beginning in 1899, were the "Martians" who invaded in WISDOM meant to be from the same species? If they were, then that could reopen the debate as to whether or not Earth-616 experienced the same (or a similar) failed alien invasion in 1901 as Earth-691 did. Of course, since these "Martians" were specifically described as coming from a parallel Earth (presumably Earth-691) which they rule, their appearance in WISDOM doesn't prove anything about Earth-616's history one way or the other.
jephyork wrote:You realize that the main Marvel Universe's sliding timescale, coupled with the fact that Vance Astro's 616 self, Justice, will never significantly age, will eventually mean that Major Astro couldn't have been BORN in the 20th century, let alone become a qualified astronaut?

I mean, Justice is, what, around 24-25 now, in "2008" ... meaning both he and Major Astro (who were THE SAME PERSON prior to M/TIO #69) would have been around 17-18 in "2001". We're already pushing it. In a few more years, the poor guy will be lucky to have readers think he hit puberty by the turn of the 21st century.

I don't think it's tenable to say that the Guardians' timeline DOESN'T have a sliding timescale, given that it branched definitively off of the Marvel Universe, which DOES have a sliding timescale.

-Jeph!
Here are my thoughts on the sliding timescale. I view the Marvel Multiverse as a massive railway system, one which begins (at the Big Bang) with a single track which branches out into a infinite number of tracks. Each track represents a different timeline, and each switch is a point of divergence wherein one timeline splits into two or more timelines. Starting at the "past" end there is one train (representing every object in the universe) and its group of passengers (representing all life in the universe) sitting on a single track (representing the original timeline). As the train moves towards the "future" end of the track, it passes through a series of switches (events). Just as the track on which it's travelling splits, so too does the train with its passengers also split into two or more similar-but-different trains with similar-but-different groups of passengers. In this scenario, time travellers are parachutists who drop out of the sky (Limbo) and whose very presence causes switchs to appear beneath the trains in which they land.

The phenomenon known as "Marvel Time" complicates matters somewhat. When Guardians of the Galaxy's Alternate Future Earth first interacted with the mainstream Marvel Earth, they were meant to be the same Earth at different points in its history. For a while, the divergence point between Major Astro's timeline and the main Marvel timeline was thought to be the events in Marvel Two-in-One #69. However, as the "present-day" of the main MU got closer and closer to the fixed date of the Martian invasion (2001 AD), this idea became increasingly unworkable, and the divergence point between the Killraven/Guardians timeline (now called Earth-691) and the main (Earth-616) timeline was pushed further into the past.

Here's my solution to this problem. It doesn't exactly make sense, but hey, neither does "Marvel Time" itself, right?

In the whole Multiversal railway I described above, there is one particular train which has unique properties. Unlike all the other trains which diverge from it, Train-616 is surrounded by a chronal aura of Marvel Time. This aura keeps things within the train young/recent, no matter how much time has (objectively) passed. When alternate trains separate from Train-616, they quickly lose this aura. As a result, events that remain "recent" on Train-616 soon fade into history on other trains. For example, while Vance Astrovik was born "24-25 years ago" on Train-616, it is now accepted that his counterpart on Train-691 was actually born in 1962 or so (as was first established in GIANT-SIZE DEFENDERS #5).

So, that's my answer. While "Marvel Time" keeps people "young" and events "recent" in the mainstream Marvel Universe, it quickly fades from those timelines which diverge from the main MU. As a result, timelines which were once believed to have diverged during a particular adventure (like M/TIO #69) are later determined to have actually diverged much earlier. This in turn means that the participants in those adventures and their other-dimensional counterparts are retroactively determined to have actually been born years or even decades apart, instead of at the same time. In other words, although their genetics and family histories remain the same, Vance-616 and Vance-691 were no longer born on the same date or lived through the same "world events" as they grow/grew up. In short, they were NEVER the same person.

Yes, it is REALLY messy but I can't see any other solution. Trying to integrate a "sliding timescale" timeline with a "fixed dates" timeline just doesn't work for me.

Don Campbell

Re: Wisdom and Earth-691

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 9:48 am
by Enda80
The next A-Z Hardcover or the following one, per solicitations, will feature a guide to Mars.

Re: Wisdom and Earth-691

Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 3:20 pm
by Enda80
Captain Britain Hardcover entry states that the Martians in Wisdom came from Earth-691.

Re: Wisdom and Earth-691

Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:27 pm
by JephYork
Don, thanks for the thoughts. My solution, by the way, is that "fixed dates" simply don't exist.

-Jeph!