Today, we look at how Doctor Doom helped inspire the creation of Kang the Conqueror.
In “Our Lives Together,” I spotlight some of the more interesting examples of shared comic book universes. You know, crossovers that aren’t exactly crossovers.
One of the interesting things about the so-called “Marvel Method” of writing comic book stories is that the idea of a creator drawing out a comic book story and then another creator adding dialogue to the finished pages was around well before the Marvel Age of Comics. That approach was pretty much how all of Jack Kirby and Joe Simon’s comic books were produced back during the days where Kirby and Simon would produce multiple comic books a month together (Kirby would plot out his comic books, and sometimes help Simon plot out his comics, and then Kirby would draw his issues, with Simon later scripting Kirby’s books and inking Kirby’s books – Simon might have also occasionally co-plotted with Kirby on Kirby’s books). Kirby kept this approach going when he joined Marvel in the late 1950s (then called Atlas). Another artist at Atlas, Steve Ditko, also made it evident that he could come up with his own plots, so Kirby and Ditko would go do their own plots (Ditko, though, would definitely talk over plots with Atlas Editor-in-Chief, Stan Lee, at the time).
When the Marvel Age of Comics kicked off in the early 1960s, though, that meant that you’d have a few books plotted by Kirby and Ditko, two of the best plotters in comic book history, along with dialogue from the very popular word stylings of Stan Lee, and then you’d have…other comic books. So Stan Lee came up with the idea that would allow him to at least dialogue pretty much all of the comics. He would have all of the OTHER Marvel artists plot their own comics, as well, and then Lee would do the dialogue, rather than pay other writers to do stories that didn’t have the same “sound” as the books scripted by Lee.
I bring this up to explain just why there mostly was a total lack of cohesion when it came to the depiction of time travel in the Marvel Universe, because you’d have Kirby plotting his stuff, which would be all tied together, but then you’d have Don Heck coming up with a story idea a few issues later and having a completely different idea about time travel. This eventually left Marvel with a completely confusing take on time travel overall that later writers would have to move mountains to try to get it to all sort of make sense together.
However, within the context of, say, Kirby/Lee books, there was a much more consistent through line, as they literally used the Fantastic Four to set up the Avengers time-traveling villain, Kang the Conqueror.
You see, in 1963’s Fantastic Four #19 (by Kirby, Lee and Dick Ayers), the Fantastic Four traveled to the past on a wild goose chase for a cure for blindness and then met Rama-Tut, a pharaoh who was actually from the distant future!
That issue ended with Rama-Tut headed back to his own time, and we left him at that. Rama-Tut was next seen in the 1964 Fantastic Four Annual #2. Back in those days, Kirby and Lee were still doing explicit recaps on how Doctor Doom survived his previous appearance (as most early Doom appearances seemed to end with Doom being killed. It was similar to how early Joker appearances would always end with Joker “dying” and then the next issue would have to explain how he survived, until they just stopped bothering, as I suppose they figured, “You get it, the Joker will likely survive somehow, right?”), and so in Fantastic Four Annual #2 (by Kirby, Lee and Chic Stone), we see that Doom survived his seeming death in Fantastic Four #23 by being rescued by Rama-Tut…
They have a trippy talk about how they’re related to each other, or are they THE SAME PERSON!?!?
I love how Rama-Tut tries to hand wave how it doesn’t make any sense for him not to know if he is literally Doctor Doom or not by throwing out references to Albert Einstein.
And in the end, Rama-Tut sends Doom back to Earth and is inspired himself to go into the future and get into some Doom-style trouble…
Well, almost DIRECTLY following the release of Fantastic Four Annual #2 was the release of Avengers #8 (the “official” release dates have them coming out four days apart, but I assume it was more like a week apart) by Kirby, Lee and Dick Ayers.
The Avengers have to show up to take on the villainous Kang the Conqueror, and he reveals that he is Rama-Tut, picked up from the aforementioned Fantastic Four Annual…
He just overshot his journey into the future and ended up in the distant future…
It is no coincidence, I imagine, that Kang’s outfit is similar to Doctor Doom’s, in terms of full face mask and sort of tunic-y style of dress, as it appears that Rama-Tut was vey much inspired by his brief interaction with his ancestor (descendent? Same person?)…
The really fascinating thing to me is that Lee didn’t actually use Fantastic Four Annual #2 to advertise Avengers #8. That seems like it would have been a perfect opportunity to sell another Marvel comic, right? “Check out Avengers #8 to see where Rama-Tut ended up.” In any event, though, this is a perfect example of how Kirby and Lee would use the expansive nature of the Marvel Universe to tie things together and let readers feel like they were enjoying one big superhero comic book tapestry, even if most of it was just patchwork.
Okay, folks, if you have a suggestion for another interesting piece of shared continuity, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!
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