best marvel time travel stories

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The Best X-Men Time Travel Stories Ever

These mind-bending X-Men time travel tales make for some of the best stories in the Marvel mutant canon.

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X-Men comics have always been about the future. They are, after all, stories about mutants, the next stage in human evolution. The central tension dividing Professor Charles Xavier and his best friend Magneto is how to go into that future, either working with humanity or ruling them.

X-Men comics have also always been very, very confusing, with their frequent tales of clones, shape-changers, and alternate realities.

Given those two facts, it’s no wonder that X-Men creators would embrace time travel as a storytelling conceit, throwing Marvel’s Merry Band of Mutants far into the future or launching them deep into the past. The results vary, but these fifteen tales represent the best, and sometimes most headache inducing, of the X-Men’s adventures across time.

15. Days of Future Present (1990)

The 1990 crossover Days of Future Present is only half an X-Men story, as Franklin Richards is the main character. The son of Reed and Sue Richards, Franklin spins out of Fantastic Four comics. However, Franklin is a mutant (well, used to be, until a recent ret-con and the coldest of shoulders from Professor X), and thus his future self concerns the X-Men.

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Days of Future Present comes at a transitional point in X-Men history, with longstanding writers Chris Claremont and Louise Simonson losing control over the plots and flashy artists Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld gaining influence over story beats. As a result, Days of Future Present has lots of splash pages, lots of shouting, but not so much in the way of character development. It’s always fun to see Franklin as a powerful kid mutant, but the the storyline doesn’t offer much more beyond that.

14. “Cable” (Ultimate X-Men #75 – 78, 2006 – 2007)

Of all the original Ultimate Comics series, Ultimate X-Men may have aged the worst. At once too edgy and hip for its own good, while also repeating too many beats from the mainline series, the comic managed to irritate everyone and please no one. So many reacted with a sigh when the first appearance of Ultimate Cable ends with popping claws three claws and telling Wolverine , “This is it, bub.”

Yes, in the Ultimate Universe, Cable is not the long-lost son of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor, but Wolverine, who became a cyborg to off-set his depleted healing factor. He’s come back for… something. But his goal doesn’t really matter, because Ultimate Bishop arrives almost immediately after, leading to a knock-down battle between time travelers with the X-Men in between. Writer Robert Kirkman deserves credit for a twist on the Cable mythos, and pencilers Ben Oliver and Yanick Paquette make the fight scenes pop. But there’s not much to the storyline beyond the Wolverine reveal.

13. X-Cutioner’s Song (1993)

When Cable showed up in 1990’s The New Mutants #8, he was just a time traveling tough guy with giant guns and tiny feet. His backstory was a secret (or, undeveloped), following in the vein of Wolverine and Gambit. But as Marvel published more and more Cable stories, it became clear that he had a much deeper connection to the X-Men. The 1992-1993 crossover event X-Cutioner’s Song clarified things. Cable was not Nathan Christopher Charles Summers , the son of Madelyne Pryor and Cyclops. Rather, Nathan grew up to be the villain Stryfe and Cable was his clone.

At least, that’s what we thought. But later stories have established the opposite, with Cable as the real son and Stryfe as the clone. (Hey, it’s Marvel in the ’90s; of course they’re going to make a mess of their clones). Even before that reversal, X-Cutioner’s Song confuses more than it clarifies. On the surface, it’s about Stryfe getting revenge on the X-Men, Apocalypse, and Cable. That said, the enjoyment of X-Cutioner’s Song isn’t contingent on it making sense, as it delivers more than enough mutant-on-mutant action.

12. “Berserker” (Old Man Logan #1 – 4, 2016)

As anyone who has seen Logan knows, Old Man Logan is not a time travel story. Rather, it’s an alternate universe tale in a potential future, in which the haggard and bitter Wolverine gets called back into action for a lot of Mark Millar edge lord nonsense. In the same way that Logan improved on the original story from Millar’s 2008 Wolverine run with Steve McNiven, the follow-up ongoing Old Man Logan from 2016.

The first arc from Old Man Logan finds the elderly Wolverine transported in the present, before the Wasteland has has developed and with his friends still alive. Yet, Old Man Logan remains haunted by the memory of things to come, terrified that it will happen again. With “Berserker,” writer Jeff Lemire and artist Andrea Sorrentino revisit the classic Logan conflict between person and beast by giving readers a Wolverine who knows that he’s killed his friends.

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11. “Here Comes Tomorrow” (New X-Men #151-154, 2004)

When Grant Morrison took on the X-Men in 2001, they revitalized the franchise in ways that continue to resonate even today. But for all of the run’s high points, it ended on an uneven note. “Here Comes Tomorrow” mostly takes place 150 years after the previous story, which climaxed with Magneto, addicted to a drug called Kick, killing Jean Grey and leaving Scott heartbroken. Beast tries to take his place but, as happens kinda often with Beast, he goes mad and becomes an ageless tyrant who rules the world.

If that sounds high-concept, well, it is Grant Morrison. Unfortunately, Morrison’s heady style clashes with the pencils from Marc Silvestri, an artist who did great work with Claremont back in the late ’80s but has lost some storytelling skills by the time he returns. Between Morrison’s oddball ideas and Silvestri’s unclear pencils, much of “Here Comes Tomorrow” reads like a mess. That is, until, the return of Jean Grey allows the heroes to go back to the past, making a nice setup for Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men .

10. X-Men: Battle of the Atom (2012)

Speaking of Beast doing crazy things, Hank McCoy crossed a real ethical line when he went back in time to bring his younger self and the other four original X-Men, still teens studying under Xavier, into the present. In Hank’s defense, things had gotten bad. Pushed to the limit, Cyclops became a militant, taking half the team with him. In a desperate attempt to talk some sense in his old self and reunite the X-Men, Beast brought the teen team to talk some sense into their older selves.

Of course, it didn’t work, as demonstrated by Battle of the Atom . As the teens resist attempts to send them back to the past, the X-Men of the future arrive and demand they go back. But when the present X-Men realize that the future X-Men are in fact the future Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, they fight to keep the past X-Men here. Confused? Well, you should be. But at least the creative team, including writers Brian Michael Bendis and Jason Aaron as well as artists Frank Cho and Stuart Immonen keep things entertaining.

9. “Tooth and Claw” (X-Men #8, 1992)

Like Cable, Lucas Bishop came to the X-Men from a ravished future, bearing a gun and a bad attitude. And like Cable, he wasn’t entirely trustworthy, as he kept under wraps his mission to prevent the dystopian future from which he hailed. However, in X-Men #8, Jim Lee and Scott Lobdell add another juicy twist to Bishop’s story when he meets the X-Men Blue Team for the first time. While impressed to shake hands with the great Cyclops, Bishop loses his cool at the sight of Gambit, branding the Cajun mutant a traitor.

Really, Bishop did Gambit a favor. For years, questions about Gambit’s trustworthiness gave him a new edge of cool among readers. But X-Men #8 doesn’t get into any of that. Instead, it’s a splashy issue full of Jim Lee cheesecake and beefcake, in which the Gambit and Bishop battle climaxes with a pie in Rogue’s face. Bishop’s mission and Gambit’s betrayal will later become major plot points. But in “Tooth and Claw,” they’re just an excuse for mutant shenanigans.

8. The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix (1994)

Remember how I said the future identity of Nathan Summers would get clarified later on? Well, that happens in the miniseries The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix . And “clarified” might be too strong a word. The story begins with Jean and Scott’s other time-displaced kid Rachel Summers, now an elderly woman, pulling her the consciousness of her parents into new bodies in a future conquered by Apocalypse. They’re joined by the infant Nathan Summers, who has been stashed in this reality to train for an eventual stand-off with Apocalypse.

The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix does the readers no favors by throwing them into a disoriented time frame, complete with lots of word balloons and unfamiliar versions of Cyclops and Jean Grey. But after that first issue, writer Scott Lobdell and penciler Gene Ha zero in on the emotional stakes of the story. Under the assumed names Slym and Redd Dayspring, Cyclops and Phoenix get to be the parents they never were, raising Nathan before returning to their time without memories of the occasion. It’s a strangely sweet story, hidden under complex time travel mechanics.

7. Cable #10 – 12, (2021)

If you’re rolling your eyes at the sight of another Cable story on this list, rest assured — this one is much easier to follow. The fourth Cable ongoing series, launched in 2021, follows Nathan Summers in his late teens, having gone back further in time to kill his apparently corrupted older self. Okay, that is a bit confusing, but it mostly comes down to grizzled old Cable being replaced by young excitable Cable.

At least until the end of the third series. In the final three issues of that run, written by Gerry Duggan and Phil Noto, young Cable encounters his older arch-enemy Stryfe. Stryfe has stolen mutant children from the island of Krakoa, but the young Cable can find no way to stop him. In an act of desperation, Cable finds his older self, resulting in a delightful and unlikely team-up.

6. Marvel 1602 (2003 – 2004)

Every story on this list is confusing to some degree, but by putting magic at the center of its time travel tale, Marvel 1602 outdoes them all. The product of Neil Gaiman and penciler Andy Kubert, Marvel 1602 involves not just the X-Men but the entire Marvel Universe. Furthermore, it mostly reads like an alternate universe story, in which recognizable heroes take surprising forms. Nick Fury , Agent of Shield becomes Sir Nicholas Fury, spymaster for Queen Elizabeth I. Explorer Sir Richard Reed takes his family aboard his sailing vessel the Fantastick . And Charles Xavier becomes Spaniard Carlos Javier, who runs a school for the hated and feared witch breed.

The time travel aspect of Marvel 1602 doesn’t become clear until late in the series, and even then has a more metaphorical and scientific bent, as one would expect of Gaiman. Even before then, though, the early 17th century take on mutants allows readers to see different ways that hatred takes form, whether in the past or in the future.

5. Legion Quest (1994 – 1995)

Inspired by an episode of X-Men: The Animated Series , the 1995 storyline Age of Apocalypse stands as the brightest point of 90s X-Men comics. Set in an alternate present ruled by Apocalypse, the Age of Apocalypse came to be when Xavier’s troubled son Legion travels back in time and kills his father before the X-Men can be formed.

Before Age of Apocalypse came Legion Quest , a six-part story that crossed between X-Factor , Uncanny X-Men , X-Men , and Cable . While the storyline has more than its fair share of the big poses and hyper-crosshatched artwork common to ’90s X-Men comics, it also has a tragic heart at the center. An incredibly powerful but deeply troubled person, Legion wants nothing more than to please his father, which he hopes to do by going back to kill Magneto. Even before the story reaches its tragic end, it pits Legion against Xavier’s students, the children he truly loves over his own neglected son.

4. House of X/Powers of X (2019)

When Jonathan Hickman took over the X-Men universe, he introduced a number of radical concepts, including the Resurrection Protocols that make mutants functionally immortal and a sovereign nation in the island Krakoa. But the most controversial change may have been to Moria McTaggert, a longtime human ally to the X-Men. In the twin miniseries House of X and Powers of X , which launched the Krakoa era, Hickman revealed Moira to be a mutant, one who could resurrect with the memories of her past lives.

Thanks to this shift, House of X and Powers of X is a time travel story, although it doesn’t function like one. Each of Moira’s lives involve timelines, some of which end in childhood and others that go one for millennia. And each time she reincarnates, always at the same point in history, she does so with knowledge of those futures. From that concept, Hickman uses Moira as a catalyst for a new imperative, as humans, mutants, and even machines battle to control tomorrow.

3. Multiple Man #1 – 4 (2018)

In superhero comics, the existence of two (or more) people with the same identity means one of two things: time travel or clones. In the case of Jamie Madrox, it’s both! One of the most criminally underused characters in the X-Men bullpen, Jamie Madrox is the Multiple Man, a guy who has the ability to make perfect duplicates of himself. Madrox usually gets ignored or misused by writers who aren’t Peter David (looking at you, X-Corp ), but the miniseries Multiple Man stands as a wonderful exception, thanks to its time travel plot.

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Written by Matthew Rosenberg, with art from Andy MacDonald and Tamra Bonvillain, Multiple Man begins in the manner of most new Madrox stories, with the revelation that he is not, in fact, dead. The dead Madrox was, of course, a duplicate. But then this newly-revealed Madrox gets captured by Madroxes from the future, who have the powers of the Hulk , Deadpool , Cloak , and others. These Madroxes take the other Madrox into the future, to join other Madroxes in a resistance against a Madrox who has conquered the world with his army of Madroxes. Mind-boggling? Yes! Delightful? Absolutely!

2. X-Men: Messiah Complex (2007 – 2008)

Even though the X-Men had two time traveling gun nuts running around since the early ’90s, the two didn’t really come to heads until the 2000s (save short spats, as in the aforementioned X-Cutioner’s Song ). But with the 2007 – 2008 crossover Messiah Complex , which ran across all of the X-books at the time, Cable and Bishop finally face off over Hope, the first new mutant born since Scarlet Witch decimated the population in House of M .

For Cable, Hope is exactly what her name suggests, the way toward a better and vibrant future for mutants. But Bishop comes from a future ruled by the Mutant Messiah, which appears to be Hope. As important as this difference of perspectives is, Messiah Complex is about much more than just two buff dudes in a grudge match. Rather, a creative team that includes Ed Brubaker, Mike Carey, Billy Tan, and Chris Bachalo craft a story about the way forward for the X-Men and their status as the next stage in evolution.

1. “Days of Future Past” (Uncanny X-Men #141 – 142, 1981)

Of course the number one pick is “ Days of Future Past .” How could not be? Not only is it a legendary story that has been adapted into every other type of medium, but it remains a model for telling a satisfying time travel story. After all, look again at the headline above. The entirety of “Days of Future Past” occurs across just two issues, telling a complex story with clarity and conciseness. Those qualities come courtesy of one of the greatest collaborations in comic book history, between writer Chris Claremont and artist/co-writer John Byrne.

The premise is simple: after Mystique and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants murder the hateful Senator Robert Kelly, the bigoted backlash creates a police state ruled by Sentinels. To prevent this from happening, Rachel Summers sends the adult Kate Pryde’s consciousness back to her younger self, then a new recruit on the team, to save Kelly and the future. It’s a classic X-Men story with both creators at the height of their powers, one that keeps its time travel mechanics clean, giving the adventure full emotional heft.

Joe George | @jageorgeii

Joe George’s writing has appeared at Slate, Polygon, Tor.com, and elsewhere!

The 13 Most Interesting Time Travel Stories in Comics

In comics, time travel is as commonplace as the superhero team-up, but often just involves inconsequential time-hopping to have adventures with King Arthur or a far-future descendant. Time travel stories that take care to dance around concepts like causality and temporal paradoxes make most people’s head hurt, but these are the things that make for great stories. Here are 13 comics that did it right.

1. Weird Science Fantasy #25 : "A Sound of Thunder"

Al Williamson/EC Comics

One of the most influential works of time travel fiction in any medium has to be Ray Bradbury’s 1952 short story, A Sound of Thunder . It is the classic depiction of time as a fragile series of interdependent events and would inspire the phrase “The Butterfly Effect."

In the early 1950s, EC Comics took the liberty of adapting Bradbury’s story (initially, without permission or credit to Bradbury) into a seven-page comic illustrated by the great Al Williamson. It’s a gripping tale of a group of hunters who pay to go on the ultimate safari in prehistoric times to hunt a Tyrannosaurus Rex . The trip is perfectly orchestrated so as not to disrupt the ecology, even allowing hunters one shot at a predetermined dinosaur that would have been killed by a falling tree moments later anyway. When one of the hunters freaks out and tramples through the jungle—stepping on a butterfly in the process—they return to their own time to find their world has been drastically altered.

You can read this story in its entirety here.

2. Uncanny X- M en: Days of Future Past

John Byrne/Marvel Comics

The most popular time travel story in comics, “Days of Future Past” from Uncanny X-Men #141-142 introduced us to a dystopian future in which mutants were being hunted by the U.S. government. In a desperate attempt to change their fate, the surviving X-Men telepathically send the mind of the adult Katherine (Kitty) Pryde 30 years back and into her own teenage body so that she can prevent the assassination of a U.S. Senator—the event that would set this unfortunate future into motion.

A future that must be avoided at all costs would become the driving force behind X-Men comics for decades to come. It was an idea writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne came up with three years before The Terminator would do the same in Hollywood. Day of Future Past would, of course, inspire a film adaptation of its own in 2014—one year after the dark future of the comic was supposed to have taken place. Around this same time, writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Stuart Immonen turned the dark future trope on its head in All-New X-Men , by plucking the original Silver Age X-Men out of their past and into the present to warn them about all of the messed up events that had been happening to them recently. I t was now clear that the grim turn that X-Men comics had taken in the past 30 years meant that the dark future was already here.

The “many-worlds interpretation” of quantum mechanics—a theory proposed in 1957 by physicist Hugh Everett —states that time travel could be possible if the traveler accesses one of many universes that exist parallel to ours, avoiding any temporal inconsistencies. Marvel Comics operates under this theory as well and have made it clear that “Days” actually takes place in the future of Earth-811. 

3. Meanwhile

Jason Shiga

Jason Shiga’s inventive 2010 choose-your-own-adventure graphic novel Meanwhile is a perfect marriage of subject and format. The reader gets to control the decisions made by a little boy who stumbles into a scientist's laboratory that contains, among other things, a time machine. The pages of the book are marked by tabs and certain panels have color-coded paths that connect to those tabs which may jump you 20 or 30 pages ahead, causing you to read the book in a very nonlinear fashion. Shiga has released Meanwhile in many formats, including interactive apps for iOS devices, including Apple TV.

A former major in the study of abstract math concepts known as "pure mathematics,” Shiga has created a story with a total of 3865 narrative possibilities, encouraging many, many re-reads and a lot of potential for triggering temporal paradoxes and alternate timelines. You may even end up having the boy run into another version of himself. The catch to the time travel in this book is that the machine can only send you as far back as seven minutes—unless you can find clues within the story that will give you the code to unlock its full capabilities. 

4. I Killed Adolf Hitler

Jason/Fantagraphics

The idea of going back in time to kill Adolf Hitler is pretty much its own subgenre of time travel fiction. It even inspired a question asked of Republican presidential candidates this election season. Killing Hitler before he can commit the atrocities of WWII is a popular embodiment of the “Grandfather Paradox,” a concept that comes from the idea that going back in time to kill your grandparents will prevent your own birth, provided the universe and the rules of time allow that to happen. 

Norwegian cartoonist Jason is masterful at every genre he dabbles in, from crime to horror to science fiction. He does so with his trademark anthropomorphic characters and a storytelling approach that is full of literary and cinematic influences. His 2007 graphic novel I Killed Adolf Hitler is inspired by the French New Wave films of the 1960s and at its heart is not about Hitler at all, but the love story between a hitman and his often ignored girlfriend. When the hitman is hired to go back in time to WWII to assassinate Hitler, the hit goes bad and the dictator steals his time machine, leaving the hitman to have to naturally age his way back to the present in order to correct his mistakes (both personally and professionally). 

5. Mystery in Space #114 : "Killing Time"

Tom Yeates/DC Comics

The dangers inherent in trying to kill Hitler played out to terrifying results in a 1980 issue of DC Comics'  Mystery in Space by Gerry Conway and Tom Yeates. In this short story, a time traveler is successful in his assassination mission but is then overcome by a crowd of Nazis who steal his laser rifle, reverse-engineer it, and use the technology to conquer the world.

But, hey, that’s an easy fix, right? All it takes is for a future time traveler to go back and kill the first time traveler before he makes the mistake of killing Hitler. But then a Nazi time traveler comes back and kills him. Then someone else comes back for him, and on and on forever, creating an endless loop of assassins rewriting history.

You can read this story in near entirety here.

6. Ivar , Time w alker #4

Clayton Henry/Valiant Comics

In the mid-1980s, physicist Igor Novikov proposed the “self-consistency principle” that ruled out any form of time travel that could result in a temporal paradox. The laws of physics, which already restrict us from doing things like walking through walls, would similarly prevent a time traveler from altering the past in any way that would create inconsistency.

Fred Van Lente and Clayton Henry perfectly illustrate this theory in their Valiant Comics series Ivar, Timewalker . Ivar Anni-Padda is an immortal who has spent centuries mapping “time arcs” that he uses to jump from one period of history to another. In his 2015 solo series, Ivar rescues a scientist named Neela Sethi, who is about to be murdered before she can invent a new form of time travel. Hopping from era to era, Ivar teaches Neela some of the most important tenets of time travel, particularly that the universe has a way of preventing you from tampering with it. Issue #2 demonstrates this by, you guessed it, showing how you can’t kill Hitler.

The self-consistency principle is demonstrated at its best in issue #4, in which Neela goes off on her own to prevent her father’s death. Over and over, Neela revisits this day from her youth, trying to reroute the course of her own personal history, only to have the universe persistently get in her way. Her constant failures play out in a way that is both comic and tragic.

7. Chronocops!

Dave Gibbons/2000 A.D.

Three years before they would create 1986’s  Watchmen , Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were honing their comic-creating skills by producing short stories for 2000 A.D. magazine. In one of the magazine's recurring features called Time Twisters , they published a five-page story called Chronocops! that is considered one of Moore’s best early works, and one that would hint at the complex narrative skills he would demonstrate later in his career.

Part satire of the television show Dragnet , part romp through all the classic tropes of time travel fiction, Chronocops! opens with our heroes, Joe Saturday and Ed Thursday, foiling a teen punk's attempt to create the typical grandfather paradox by murdering his great-grandfather. In just a few pages, Moore and Gibbons manage to pack in a dense array of sight gags, Easter eggs, and clever wordplay in a plot that unfolds forwards and backwards in time. Poor Ed gets clocked in the eye for an offense he hasn’t even committed yet and by the end he has to be stopped from marrying his grandmother and becoming his own grandfather.

You can read Chronocops! in its entirety here . It has also been collected in The Complete Alan Moore Future Shocks . 

8. Adventure Comics #247 : “The Legion of Super-Heroes

Al Plastino/DC Comics

One of comics’ classic temporal paradoxes occurred in 1958’s Adventure Comics #247 , when Superboy received a visit from three teens who took him aboard their time sphere and brought him to the 30th century where they inducted him into their club, The Legion of Super-Heroes. Unlike most futures we see in comics, the Legion’s is a utopia that impresses Superboy so much he can’t wait to come back. It also impressed readers; while this issue was intended as a one-off, the Legion would continue to come back again and again, eventually getting their own long-running series.

The Legion was inspired to become superheroes by studying the 20th-century legends of Superman. However, when they go back to the time when Clark Kent is still a teenager, the adventures they have together would inspire Clark to grow into the hero they learned about in their history books. This type of paradox is referred to as a " causal loop ," when a future event is the cause of a past event, which in turn is the cause of the future event.

9. Too Cool To Be Forgotten

Alex Robinson/Top Shelf

Does reliving memories count as time travel? Alex Robinson’s 2008 graphic novel, Too Cool To Be Forgotten , makes a good case for it while also expertly navigating many of the tricky principles of time travel. Forty-something Andy Wicks is put under hypnosis to cure his smoking addiction and finds his consciousness transported (Kitty Pryde-style) back to 1985 and into his teenage body. He quickly realizes that he is there to stop himself from smoking his first cigarette but the question is, what else could be changed by forcing his teenage self to remake decisions he already once made. 

As a Star Trek nerd, Andy is well-versed in the potential mechanics of time travel, which informs how he decides to act in these situations, since it is unclear to him (and the reader) whether this is an hallucination or something more. Robinson presents the concept of reliving high school as both a wonderfully nostalgic opportunity and also the worst nightmare imaginable.

10. All-Star Superman #6 : "Funeral in Smallville"

Frank Quitely/DC Comics

Every issue of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s 12-part

is a masterpiece of high-concept pop comics inspired by the imaginative-but-silly Superman stories of the ‘50s and ‘60s. In issue #6, “Funeral in Smallville”, Morrison and Quitely give their modern, awe-inspiring twist on a popular Superman trope of that era: the visitors from the future. When Ma and Pa Kent take in three migrants looking to help out on the farm, Clark soon figures out there is more to these guys than it seems. In fact they themselves are Supermen; one from the 854th century, one from the 5th dimension, and one known as The Unknown Superman of A.D. 4500. They are here hunting a creature called a Chronovore, which ages everything it touches; they hope to recruit the present day Superman to help them.

There is a great plot twist in this issue that hinges on the fact that this story itself takes place in the past, relative to the rest of the All-Star Superman series. It is a story in which time travel is used not to alter the past, but to revisit it and loved ones who have been lost over the years. 

11. Patience

Dan Clowes/Fantagraphics

The newest book on this list is Daniel Clowes’ Patience , a graphic novel released in March about a young man named Jack whose world is turned upside when his young wife and mother of his unborn child, Patience, is mysteriously murdered. Jack spends the next near-two decades pondering why this has happened until he meets a man who invented a method of time travel (a vaguely explained process involving the injection of some sort of liquid) that gives him a chance to undo the event that ruined his life. Not knowing who the murderer is, Jack’s first step is to go back far enough into Patience’s past to solve the mystery.

Clowes’ take on time travel is inspired by a love of EC Comics and 1950s science fiction, but he uses it as a device to explore themes of nostalgia, regret, and the desire to control fate. Jack is indeed able to affect change in Patience’s past, but is his own tampering going to be the cause of her death anyway?

12. We Can Fix It

Jess Fink/Top Shelf

Jess Fink’s We Can Fix It  is probably the only time travel memoir. Like Alex Robinson’s Too Cool to Be Forgotten , it uses time travel as a way to try and fix the kind of small-scale mistakes most people have made in their lives, but Fink uses her own life and her own mistakes as fodder here. Wearing a futuristic bodysuit and operating a giant walk-in time machine, she visits herself at various ages, initially focused on voyeuristically reliving her early sexual encounters and preventing the more embarrassing ones. She also commits the ultimate act of self-love by making out with her younger self. 

The rules of time travel are not exactly in play in this comic, but it’s a lot of fun and eventually hits on some emotional moments as Jess digs deeper into her own past and asks the question: If you could go back in time, what in your life would you fix?

13. Weird Science #5 : "The Man Who Was Killed in Time!"

Jack Kamen/EC Comics

“The Man Who Was Killed in Time!” was a story by Al Feldstein and Jack Kamen (two of the greats who were producing sci-fi gems for EC Comics back in the early days of comics) that appeared in 1951’s Weird Science #5. This seven-page tale begins with a man running over his own doppelgänger on the road, then running off. He stumbles upon a rocketship that turns out to be a time machine and accidentally transports himself back 14 hours in time, where he proceeds to run into the road and get run over by his own car.

This goofy little story is quaint compared to the other tales on this list, but it is a fun little artifact in that it feels the need to explain itself with a wonderful little illustration at the end. So much of what we take for granted in time travel stories were first done by the people at EC Comics and this little comic is a reminder that it was all new for readers back then.

This story was included in the first volume of the collected Weird Science, but you can also read it in its entirety here .

10 Greatest Time Travel Stories in Marvel – Ranked

Time Travel Stories in Marvel:

Time Travel is tricky business. But in the comic books, it does not just possible but also creates some truly amazing (and sometimes destructive) consequences. The time travel storylines in Marvel Comics can become very bizarre at times. Sometimes it is pretty straightforward and sometimes it is akin to a paradox.

 10. Age of Ultron

Hank Pym creates an artificial; intelligence powerful enough to protect humanity. It ends up going rogue and taking over the world and his definition of protecting the world means that humanity is a threat. Ultron creates a dystopia where humanity has lost the war to the machines and has been enslaved. The Superheroes could no longer continue the fight because Ultron is nigh unstoppable.

Wolverine travels to the past to kill Hank Pym so that he never creates Ultron in the first place. After killing Pym, Wolverine realizes that Hank Pym’s abrupt death created an even more wicked future. So he travels back to the past to stop himself from killing Hank Pym, who is persuaded to write a hack into Ultron’s core code which the Avengers use to defeat him.

 9. Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine

The comic book arc titled Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine is a limited series run. It only has six issues but boy is it some good read! One of the most iconic duos in Marvel Comics, Wolverine and Spider-Man travel far and wide into the past to stop a supervillain called the Orb, who is using artefacts called the Time Diamonds to travel across time and create havoc.

Spider-Man and Wolverine travel to the Cretaceous era, the age of the dinosaurs right before the asteroid that killed all of them was about to hit Earth and permanently threw it off-axis. When Doctor Doom and Mojo reveal their own personal agendas to trying to add on to the heroes’ woes, the story gets even more interesting.

 8. Avengers #167-177

The Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 1, in more ways than one, helped launch the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A nameless team with little to their credit in terms of fame and popularity, Rocket Raccoon, Gamora, Star-Lord, Groot, and Drax the Destroyer showed the universe what a bunch of misfits with a sense of purpose can achieve once they set their minds to it. We all love the Guardians.

But the original iteration of the team was different. The one we saw during the end credits of the sequel to Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 1 titled Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, saw big names like Miley Cyrus and Sylvester Stallone join the fray. They were the original Guardians of the Galaxy who were introduced in Avengers #167-177. They were first seen trying to track down Korvac after they teamed up with the 20 th Century Avengers to stop the villain from playing with Time.

 7. Doom Quest

Doom Quest is rather infamous for having a lot of continuity errors. But it is a solid story arc because it helped establish Tony Stark and Victor Von Doom as two of the greatest geniuses the Marvel Universe has ever seen. Doctor Doom and Iron Man are fighting over the reversal of an arms sale to Latveria by Stark Industries. Doom uses a time machine to travel to the past and take Iron Man with him. They end up in the Age of Arthurian Camelot. King Arthur joins hands with Iron Man while Doom sides with Morgan le Fay. Eventually, both the time travelers manage to find a way back home by combining their armor technology.

 6. X-Men: ResurrXion: Conquest

Cable has been a very popular superhero in comic books. But for the casual movie-going audience, he became a household name only after Josh Brolin played the guy in Deadpool 2. Cable aka Nathan Summers was born in the future. He traveled back to the past in search of rogue mutants and heroes who used time travel to gain an unfair advantage. He did all that as part of a secret organization that hired him as their bounty hunter to track down threats to the time stream. In the very first issue of the series, Cable was given the job of bringing down a rather resourceful supervillain who had eluded the organization for decades by jumping through time.

 5. Young Avengers

A harrowing tale of fate and destiny, the Young Avengers has one of the most well-acclaimed character development arcs which use heavy tropes of time travel for a particular superhero. Nate Richards is the descendant of Reed Richards. Apart from being extremely intelligent, Nate is also a superhuman and has many abilities. When he meets Kang the Conqueror and discovers his plans to conquer the Erath, he travels to the past and tries to recruit a group of superheroes for helping Nate Richards aka Iron Lad stop Kang.

Later he realizes that he is destined to become Kang the Conqueror and he has to travel back to the future and leave the team if he wants the timeline to remain intact. He bids the Young Avengers team a heart-wrenching goodbye and moves on to the future, waiting to become the very thing he set out to defeat.

 4. Captain America Reborn

Steve Rogers wakes up to realize he is no longer in the 21 st Century. He is fighting the Nazis in the trenches of World War Two. Captain America has no idea how he got there in the first place. He next sees him-self fighting Master Man, Red Skull’s right-hand man, later. He finds himself reliving the moment he met President Franklin D Roosevelt and shook hands with him.

It is then that he figures it out as to what is going on. Captain America has been captured by Doctor Doom and the Red Skull. They are trying to time displace Captain America and try to swap the Red Skull’s body with that of his. The villains intend to use Captain America to kill Franklin D Roosevelt, changing the very course of human history.

 3. Avengers Forever

Kang the Conqueror is known to be a villain who likes to destroy worlds, not save them. In this storyline, he goes against his own set of codes. Kang the Conqueror realizes that Immortus – another version of Kang from a different point of time, is actually planning to take over the planet and destroy humanity with the help of the Time Keepers. Kang hatches up a plan.

He gathers a team of Avengers with each member of the new team being time-displaced from different points in the chronological stream. Captain America is taken right before he assumes the identity of the nomad. Song Bird and Captain Marvel are from the near future. Goliath and the Wasp hail from the then-current timeline while Hawkeye is actually taken from right after the Kree-Skrull War devastated the planet.

 2. X-Men: Days of Future Past

The Days of Future Past story arc was Marvel’s first attempt at creating a true dystopia for the superhero genre. In this timeline, the X-Men do not exist because they have been killed. The Sentinels become the terror that scours the world looking and hunting for humans and mutants alike. The timeline needs a course correction. The X-Men known as Kitty Pryde aka Shadow Cat takes the help of Wolverine to change the past and correct the mistakes that led to the world having such a dark descend.

They manage to undo the mistakes done in the past. But here’s the catch – we do not know that the future timeline was corrected or it just branched out to form an alternate timeline. The way Marvel timelines work, we are pretty sure that is the case because Rachel Summers, a fairly new mutant belongs to the same dark-toned future timeline.

 1. The Incredible Hulk: Future Imperfect

What happens to Earth hundreds of years into the Future? Does it still exist? Has humanity transcended to the stars or a higher plane of existence? Have we solved cancer or maybe the Corona Virus has actually taken over the world?? In Hulk: Future Imperfect, we have a very bleak representation of the Future Earth. The world has been devastated by nuclear warfare. The radiation and the resulting nuclear winter have killed all human beings and life as we know it on Earth does not exist. The only being to have survived the chaos is the Hulk, who is pretty much immortal and un-killable.

The Hulk from the present timeline time travels to the future where the future Hulk has absorbed the radiation and become insanely stronger and crazier. He now calls himself the Maestro and is smarter and more powerful than the current Hulk. He rules a city called Utopia that he made himself.

Bibhu Prasad

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10 Best Avengers Time Travel Comics

Avengers: Endgame introduced the concept of time travel to the Marvel Cinematic Universe , which opened the doors for the MCU to tell multiverse stories. The latest MCU Phase has been dominated by multiverse stories, from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to Spider-Man: No Way Home to Loki 's two seasons on Disney+.

The Avengers have traveled through time several times, battling Kang the Conqueror and his Council of Kangs across Marvel's timeline. Likewise, comic series like Young Avengers and Avengers Forever feature Avengers from the past, present, future, and larger multiverse.

Marvel's Ultimates Return

Ultimate invasion.

After the Secret Wars event in 2015, Marvel destroyed its Ultimate Universe, and only several characters survived, like Reed Richards/The Maker and Miles Morales. However, Ultimate Invasion brought them all back. The Maker began manipulating time and the multiverse to restore his destroyed universe.

Ultimate Invasion was an incredible blast from the past for fans of Marvel's Ultimate comics. The Maker's manipulations led to the creation of a brand-new Ultimate Universe with new titles like Ultimate Spider-Man , Ultimate Black Panther , and Ultimate X-Men .

Kang The Conqueror Vs. The Avengers

Avengers #8 by stan lee & jack kirby, 20 storylines x-men '97 borrowed from the comics.

Six decades of X-Men comics have given X-Men '97 plenty of classic stories to adapt for the newest animated series featuring Marvel's merry mutants.

Can any one man defeat the Avengers? Stan Lee posed that question on the cover of Avengers #8, as Kang the Conqueror appears for the first time, deflecting all the Avengers' attacks, even Thor 's hammer. Kang is such an interesting character. He is a villain who travels from Marvel's future, possessing advanced technology and intimate knowledge of the Avengers team.

How do the Avengers defeat someone who hasn't even been born yet? Someone who can travel back in time and try again and again. Decades later, the Avengers are still trying to overcome the challenge that is Kang after facing him in several time travel stories.

The Avengers Are "Lost in Space-Time"

West coast avengers #17-22 by steve englehart, al milgrom, joe sinnott & ken feduniewicz.

"Lost in Space-Time" is yet another example of time travel gone wrong. The comic arc is incredible, as Dominus lures the West Coast Avengers onto a version of Doctor Doom 's time pad and sends them hurtling into Marvel's past. With no way to travel back to the future, Iron Man tries to rig the time pad to send them forward in time rather than backward.

The West Coast Avengers ultimately travel to Marvel's Wild West and even to ancient Egypt, where they encounter Rama-Tut. He was an early and alternate version of Kang the Conqueror who would possess his own time machine and attempt to conquer the world in the past.

First Appearance Of Immortus

Avengers #10 by stan lee, don heck, dick ayers & stan goldberg, every member of the x-men who joined the avengers.

Earth's Mightiest Heroes are welcoming Storm onto the team, though she isn't the first member of the X-Men who joined the Avengers over the years.

Just two issues after Kang first appeared in Avengers comics, Earth's Mightiest Heroes meet Immortus, another time-traveling villain, who ultimately was revealed as just another alternate version of Kang. Immortus had battled the Avengers for years before becoming the lord of Marvel's Limbo.

Keeping track of Kang's divergent history across Marvel's timeline and multiverse could be a full-time job. Immortus is an incredible villain, just like Kang, who can manipulate time, effectively making himself immortal. His first battle with the Avengers in issue #10 was just a taste of what was to come.

The Avengers Of The Multiverse Assemble!

Avengers forever (2021).

Over two decades after Marvel published the original Avengers Forever , Marvel Comics released a second Avengers Forever miniseries, which utilized a similar concept. However, instead of Avengers from Marvel's timeline, the 2021 Avengers Forever also featured Avengers from Marvel's multiverse .

Ghost Rider leads a multiversal army of Avengers, including alternate versions of the X-Men, Peggy Carter's Captain Britain, and Tony Stark as the Invincible Ant-Man, against Marvel's greatest villains. Marvel definitely needs to publish bombastic, large-scale multiversal comics like Avengers Forever more often.

Iron Lad Is A Heroic Version Of Kang

Young avengers (2005).

The Young Avengers aren't a "time-traveling" superhero team like the Exiles of the X-Men corner of Marvel Comics, but time travel has affected the bulk of their comic series, whether they're aware of it or not. Iron Lad was one of the original members of the Young Avengers, sidekicks to Marvel's Avengers who branched off on their own, similar to DC's Teen Titans.

However, Iron Lad was secretly a version of Kang from an alternate future who traveled back in time and became a hero. Many MCU fans hope to see a live-action version of Iron Lad potentially following the next wave of Avengers films.

Kang Vs. Kang In The Celestial Madonna Saga

Avengers #129-134 by steve englehart, sal buscema, joe staton & bill mantlo, 10 best fighters in the avengers, ranked.

While Earth's Mightiest Heroes gained their name from their assorted power sets, The Avengers also feature quite a few skilled brawlers on the roster.

The "Celestial Madonna Saga" is a little strange, and Kang is more sinister than ever regarding his intentions. Apparently, a woman will become "the perfect human," so Kang hopes to create a perfect heir to his future empire with her. The motivations are unsettling, but the action and saga itself are incredibly enjoyable.

"The Celestial Madonna Saga" features some of the best appearances from the Council of Kangs. Each version of Kang has its own agenda and goals, stepping on each other's toes with the Avengers caught in the middle.

Kang & The Uncanny Avengers Avenge The Earth

Uncanny avengers #18-22 (2014) by rick remender & daniel acua.

In an alternate future, Earth has become Planet X, a world dominated by mutants. It's the ultimate utopia that Apocalypse has always dreamed of, taking Magneto's goals of mutant superiority to dangerous extremes. The Avengers' Wasp is the only human left on the planet, and she is forced to team up with Kang and his time-traveling police force.

Uncanny Avengers was one of the best comics from Marvel's All-New era. It combined members from the Avengers and X-Men teams. "Avenge the Earth" was the best arc of the series, feeling like a natural blend of classic Avengers and X-Men comics.

Wolverine Changes Marvel's Past

Age of ultron, 10 things you didn't know about the avengers.

The Avengers might be Earth's Mightiest Heroes, but there's a lot that even big time fans might not know about the Marvel Comics superhero team.

MCU fans who've never read the Age of Ultron comic series are in for a shock. Age of Ultron is nothing like the Avengers: Age of Ultron MCU film . The film is extremely simple and streamlined compared to the comic, which features Avengers and X-Men traveling to Marvel's past and future.

Wolverine and the Fantastic Four's Invisible Woman are the stars of the Age of Ultron comic. While the rest of the Avengers travel to the future to stop Ultron, Wolverine travels to the past to kill Hank Pym before he can ever create Ultron, completely altering the timeline with disastrous results.

The Avengers Of Marvel's Past, Present & Future

Avengers forever (1998).

Versions of Kang have been at war for centuries across Marvel's timeline, and the Avengers always seem to get pulled into his mess. Created by Kurt Busiek, Roger Stern and Carlos Pacheco, the original Avengers Forever 12-issue miniseries from 1998 featured appearances from Avengers in displaced times.

Versions of Captain America, Hank Pym and Kang himself were ripped from various points in Marvel's past, present and future. Avengers were forced to team up with Kang to defeat... a different Kang. Avengers Forever is regarded as one of Marvel's best time-travel comics , shoulder to shoulder with X-Men's Days of Future Past .

The Avengers

Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Marvel's Avengers first appeared in 1963. While Marvel Comics premier superhero team has boasted a rotating cast of heroes, and even spinoff franchises like the West Coast Avengers, heroes like The Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, The Wasp, and Thor are mainstays of this potent franchise that has helped defined Marvel Comics and the MCU.

The Top 10 Time-Travelers in the Marvel Universe

The past, present, and future have nothing on these characters who have rewritten the rules of time.

You may think of time as a one-way boulevard or a two-way express lane, but the Marvel Universe’s definition is quite different. Our concept of time is like a highway jam-packed with commuters, all shifting back and forth throughout the continuum of spacetime and the Multiverse itself.

While it seems like just about every major character has made a journey to the past (or future), several visitors from various Marvel timelines have traveled to Earth-616 and made a major impact. Here’s our roundup on the Marvel time-travelers who have left a mark on the prime Marvel Universe!

TWO-GUN KID

Since the beginning, the House of Ideas has made space for a variety of genres, including the fan-favorite Western. Series TWO-GUN KID originally saddled up in 1948 and came out sporadically for the next decade-plus showcasing Clay Harder's masked adventures. And, in 1962’s TWO-GUN KID #60 , the title's status quo got upended by introducing Matt Hawk who trained in the ways of the gunfighter and took the name Two-Gun Kid from dime store novels he read (presumably starring Clay Harder). He then went on to have his own adventures, becoming one of the Wild West's most prominent do-gooders.

He and other Western heroes were stunned to find their era visited by Kang the Conqueror , Immortus , Thor , and Moondragon in AVENGERS (1963) #141-144 . After helping the future heroes, Two-Gun asked them to bring him to the future, which they did. Becoming an Avengers reservist, he and Hawkeye: Clint Barton palled around together, but he returned to his home time in AVENGERS #175 after being kidnapped by the Collector .

Back in the Wild West, he assisted an offshoot of his old squad in WEST COAST AVENGERS (1985) #18-23 , dealt with Kang's forces again in AVENGERS FOREVER (1998) , and fought Loki with King T'Challa in BLACK PANTHER (1998) #46-48 . Then, in SHE-HULK (2005) #4 , he returned to the present when She-Hulk requested the Time Variance Authority free him from Limbo. He kicked around for quite a while after that, even getting involved in the first Super Hero Civil War .

THE (ORIGINAL) GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

Today the Guardians of the Galaxy might be well-known for members like Star-Lord , Gamora , Groot , and Rocket , but when the original squad debuted in MARVEL SUPER-HEROES (1967) #18 , the team looked totally different. That issue introduced the world to Charlie-27 , Martinex , Yondu and “ Major Victory ” Vance Astrovik. The quartet came together in the year 3007 on Earth-691 to combat the Brotherhood of the Badoon invasion of the United Lands of Earth.

While they would eventually go on to star in their own self-titled series that spanned 62 issues , the Guardians made a variety of guest appearances. Having met Captain America , the Thing , and Agent 13: Sharon Carter in MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE (1974) #5 , they appeared in the present in GIANT-SIZE DEFENDERS (1974) #5 . In addition to helping the title team deal with Eelar, a young Vance Astrovik met the team he would eventually join, including his future self!

The Guardians continued to appear in DEFENDERS (1972) #26-29 , though Doctor Strange noted that the coexistence of Vance's younger and older selves was causing problems in the timestream. To fix the issue and help their new companions, the Defenders transported the Guardians to their home time and helped them free the humans to defeat the Badoon on Earth.

Later, the Guardians met with a new group of Earth's Mightiest Heroes to combat Korvac , a villain from their own time period who had attained godlike powers. Throughout the “Korvac Saga” in AVENGERS #167-181 , the Guardians fought valiantly to save the past. Before heading home, they fought alongside Carol Danvers , Spider-Man , and the Thing in MS. MARVEL (1977) #23 , MARVEL TEAM-UP (1972) #86 and MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE (1974) #69 respectively.

Speaking of Korvac: This time-traveler has threatened reality on a variety of occasions! In the aforementioned “Korvac Saga,” he traveled from the future of Earth-691 to Earth-616, but before that, Michael Korvac betrayed humanity to the Badoon who later cut off his legs and fused him to a hovering computer module. Seeking revenge, he decided to take over the Badoon empire, but was first brought to the present by Elder of the Universe Grandmaster in GIANT-SIZE DEFENDERS (1974) #3 . Using his machinery’s ability to absorb energy, he syphoned off some of the Grandmaster’s power, which allowed him to travel through time on his own.

Returning to the present, Korvac visited Galactus ’ ship and managed to absorb some of the Power Cosmic, which allowed him to restore his body and take control of all things. He eventually fought the Avengers and the Guardians but took his own life when he felt that his partner Carina lost faith in him.

Korvac came back in his own time-hopping mini-crossover called “The Korvac Quest” (playing out across FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #24 , THOR ANNUAL #6 , SILVER SURFER ANNUAL #4 and GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY ANNUAL #1 ), but was ultimately turned into a baby in the future. He has returned as an adult to the present several times, including in AVENGERS ACADEMY (2010) #11-12 . Members of the team accidentally transported Carina to their base which drew Korvac's attention. When she rebuked him, it led to a huge battle with all the Avengers involved!

Planning another attack, Korvac went back to Earth-616 and began slowly dismantling time. In GUARDIANS 3000 (2014) , the original Guardians felt it in their own time and went back to discover the cause: Korvac. His plans wound up falling apart because of the Incursions leading into SECRET WARS (2015) . After reality was put back together, he appeared regularly in IRON MAN (2020) and attempted to bring peace to Earth by ending all life. Thankfully, the Armored Avenger and his allies stopped Korvac once more.

OLD MAN LOGAN

More than most super-powered groups, the X-Men are no strangers to time-travelers joining their ranks. One of the more recent additions came from Earth-21923 , a world in which the villains worked together and manipulated Wolverine into killing the X-Men before dividing up the whole nation amongst themselves. Afterwards, Logan attempted to live a normal, non-violent life, but returned to action when an older Hawkeye needed help with a mission. Wolverine ultimately killed the Red Skull of his time but returned home to discover that his wife and children had been murdered by the Hulk Gang.

This “Old Man Logan” version of Wolverine wound up in the Earth-616 present after the entire Multiverse was rewritten during 2015’s SECRET WARS. Though he began a mission of preemptive vengeance almost immediately in the pages of OLD MAN LOGAN (2015) , he slowly allowed himself to be integrated into the larger X-Men family, taking the place of his past self who had died before his arrival. This more experienced, (more tragic) James Howlett regularly appeared in his own book as well as EXTRAORDINARY X-MEN (2015) , X-MEN: GOLD (2017) , and WEAPON X (2017) .

During his time in the present, he met many of Earth’s heroes, and even participated in the Second Superhuman Civil War . In DEAD MAN LOGAN (2018) , the hero said his goodbyes in the present and returned to his future to live out the rest of his life.

KATE PRYDE (EARTH-811)

While many of the characters on this list have made several trips to the present, others managed to change the course of human history in just one journey. In the classic “Days of Future Past” story (1981’s UNCANNY X-MEN #141-142 ), readers were introduced to Earth-811, a possible future in which Senator Robert Kelly, Charles Xavier , and Moira MacTaggert were killed by mutant terrorists on Halloween 1980.

That attack prompted the government to unleash the Sentinels and create three designations for living beings: H (baseline humans), A (anomalous humans), and M (mutants). The mutants that were not killed were placed in concentration camps, but that did not destroy their hope to change the past.

Working with her fellow alternate future X-Men, Kate managed to send her consciousness back to 1980 to inhabit the body of her younger self, Kitty Pryde . She got the attention of the X-Men and explained the future to them, noting that they could fix the whole thing by going to Washington, D.C. to prevent the assassination. They did exactly that by stopping Mystique and the Brotherhood of Mutants . Not bad for a one-time time-traveler!

With origins in yet another future where mutants were rounded up and imprisoned ( Earth-1191 ), Lucas Bishop became a member of the X.S.E. (Xavier Security Enforcers) AKA the mutant police. During one mission he was chasing Trevor Fitzroy , a rebel-turned-criminal mutant whose powers allowed him to travel through time. Bishop wound up in the present as seen in UNCANNY X-MEN #282-283 , and although both of his X.S.E. partners were killed, he succeeded in sending his quarry Fitzroy back to the future. Though initially uneasy of the X-Men, Bishop decided to stick around with the team in hopes of stopping the event that triggers his future.

During his time in the present, Bishop went on scores of missions with the X-Men, but he became incredibly important during the AGE OF APOCALYPSE event as the catalyst for returning everything to the way it had been before Charles Xavier was killed by a time-traveling Legion .

Further down the line, Bishop found himself at the heart of the “Messiah Complex” crossover which featured a variety of factions trying to track down the first mutant born since HOUSE OF M , Hope Summers . Bishop revealed that, in his timeline, this “mutant messiah” would kill one million humans. To that end, he fought against many of his old teammates—including fellow time-traveler Cable —to kill the child Hope. Bishop eventually saw the error of his ways and has since made amends with his fellow X-Men.

[ RELATED :  Bishop's Complete Marvel History ]

On the island of Krakoa , Bishop became an inaugural member of  Kate Pryde’s  Marauders, and added Red Bishop  of the Hellfire Trading Company to his resume. He was also one of Krakoa’s  Great Captains , established by the  Quiet Council of Krakoa . Then, in  INFERNO (2021) #1 ,  Cyclops  stepped down from the position of Captain Commander, the leader of all Great Captains, and promoted Bishop to the role.

SPIDER-MAN 2099

Back in 1992 , Marvel launched a forward-looking lineup of series that took place in the year 2099, a not-so distant alternate future of Earth-616. Miguel O’Hara was 2099’s Wall-Crawler, carrying on Peter Parker's legacy of arachnid heroics in SPIDER-MAN 2099 (1992) . Though there were a few meetings between the 2099 and Earth-616 Spidey, Miguel did not travel back to the prime reality for a long period of time until SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN (2013) #17 . During that time, Miguel was not only stranded in the past , but encountered Otto Octavius in the body of Spider-Man!

Taking on the identity of Michael “Mike” O’Mara, Miguel began working for Alchemax, the company that were a critical part in his life circa 2099. Down the line, Spider-Man 2099 has played major roles in the multiversal SPIDER-VERSE and SPIDER-GEDDON events, helping to save not just the present reality, but countless others too.

[ RELATED :  Meet Miguel O’Hara, Spider-Man 2099 ]

THE GOD(S) OF THUNDER

To battle the threat of Gorr the God Butcher , God of Thunder Thor needed all the help he could acquire in fan-favorite series THOR: GOD OF THUNDER (2012) . So, who better to recruit than versions of himself?

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To cut off the source of Gorr’s universal god-killer “the Godbomb,” the past’s “Young Thor” and the future’s “King Thor” collaborated with the present Odinson. These three cross-time Thors were also assisted by King Thor’s granddaughters Frigg , Ellisiv and Atli all of whom worked together to save godhood.

The three goddesses would later travel back via Time Diamonds to meet the legendary Jane Foster after her initial stint as Thor . Though they took her flying, they did not tell her about the epic story ahead in the WAR OF THE REALMS event, at the end of which the Fantastic Four used Doctor Doom’s Time Platform to recruit King Thor and Young Thor to end the conflict. WAR OF THE REALMS also resurrected Jane as Thor once more.

THE ENTIRE SUMMERS FAMILY

Warning: The Summers-Grey kids know how to alter a timeline.

Thor and his selves get around the time stream regularly, but not nearly as much as the Summers’ mutant family. Dad Cyclops alone has traipsed through time on a variety of occasions, so let’s start with that. As a kid, he and his fellow original X-Men traveled to the present as versions of their younger selves in ALL-NEW X-MEN (2012) . And don't forget about the time that he and his wife Jean Grey took a trip several thousand years into the future in ADVENTURES OF CYCLOPS & PHOENIX (1994) to save Scott’s son Nathan Summers, AKA Cable.

Oh, and remember Kate Pryde from the “Days of Future Past” timeline? Well, she's not the only one from that future who came to the present. Kate was followed by Rachel Grey/Summers —the daughter of that era's Scott Summers and Jean Grey—who had telepathic powers like her mother, but had been turned into a mutant-hunting Hound following the destruction of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. After Kate’s mission to the past, Rachel eventually made contact with the Phoenix Force which allowed her to physically, not just mentally, travel to the present of Earth-616 in UNCANNY X-MEN #184 . Since then, Rachel has allied herself with Xavier's other students and teams, defending the denizens of the present for years, now under the codename Prestige.

But it’s son of Cyclops, Cable—whose mother is Madelyne Pryor , a Mister Sinister -created clone of Jean Grey—that has made his way through time more often than even his half-brother X-Man . Following Nathan’s birth in UNCANNY X-MEN #201 , Apocalypse infected the infant with a techno-organic virus that threatened his life ( X-FACTOR #65-68 ). To save his son, Cyclops agreed to let Sister Askani, a member of a religious anti-Apocalypse cult, take the child to the far future where they could better manage baby Cable’s affliction.

The Clan Askani saved Nathan's life but could not fully cure him of the virus. When he was still a child, the mysterious “Slym and Redd” stepped in to raise him. Though Cable didn’t know it at the time, this couple was a temporally displaced Scott and Jean. While Scott and Jean returned to their present in ADVENTURES OF CYCLOPS & PHOENIX #4 , the boy grew to become an incredibly resourceful soldier of the future. Though a younger version of him did come to the present in X-FORCE (2018) , the most well-known version of the man known as Cable debuted in NEW MUTANTS (1983) #87 , though he would not reveal his history, or connection to the Summers family, for some time.

Since then, Cable has been involved in just about every major X-event. He was at the forefront of defeating his own time-traveling clone Stryfe in the “X-Cutioner's Song” storyline , and also ensured Hope Summers’ survival during “Messiah Complex” and throughout CABLE (2008) . Hope Summers not only represents the reinvigoration of the mutant race, but as a member of The Five , she's an integral part of the mutant resurrection process, making her one of the most important beings in the continuation of Krakoa.

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KANG…ALL OF THEM

If you had to take notes to keep track of some of these temporally adventurous individuals, now's the time to break out the cork board, red string, and pushpins because Kang’s got them all beat! Born to Earth-6311, a reality in which humanity evolved to the point where peace reigned supreme, a man named Nathaniel Richards—related to either present-day Reed Richards or Doctor Doom —grew bored and desired conquest.

[ RELATED :  The Many Faces of Kang ]

To that end the conquering Nathaniel built his own time ship which was stocked with future tech and traveled to Ancient Egypt where he took on the identity of Pharoah Rama-Tut in FANTASTIC FOUR (1961) #19 . While in that era, he encountered many heroes traveling from Earth-616’s present. However, after surviving a time storm, “Rama-Tut” decided to switch things up by becoming the Scarlet Centurion ! Those attempts to destroy Earth's Mightiest Heroes early in their tenure—as seen in AVENGERS ANNUAL (1967) #2 —proved a failure.

Leaving that identity behind, Richards became Rama-Tut once more, but overshot his home in the 30th century and wound up in the far more dangerous 40th century where he took on the name Kang the Conqueror , the character who debuted in AVENGERS (1963) #8 . Thus began Kang’s recurring attempts to defeat the heroes of the present. Though he has come close several times—like during the “Kang War” story in AVENGERS (1998) #38-55 —the Conqueror has never truly lived up to his name, though it appears that he never stops trying just like the interminable march of time.

But not all Kangs are bad. (And thanks to parallel and offshoot timelines there are plenty.) In one unusual blip of the timestream, a teen version of Kang, Iron Lad , traveled back to the present and became a founding member of the Young Avengers . He even succeeded in killing his older self, but that led to a time storm of epic proportions, so much so that Iron Lad undid the murder and returned to his proper period, knowing he’d eventually become the corrupted Kang.

But as readers have learned over the years, “Kang” isn't even this character's endpoint. The Lord Immortus —who first appeared in AVENGERS #10 —pops up from time to time to mix it up not only with the heroes of the present, but also with Kang himself. (As seen in tales like “ Celestial Madonna ” and “ Destiny War .”) You'd be surprised how many times Kang has tussled with himself and the wild results—but that doesn't stop the Kangs from interfering with each other’s intricate plots for power!

Regardless of which variant of Kang we’re talking about, no character has traversed time as often and as freely. And while these stories take place across the expansive Marvel Multiverse including all of time and space, they can all be read in one place: the Marvel Unlimited app !

To read your Marvel comics digitally, download the  Marvel Unlimited app  for  iOS  and  Android  devices. Gain an expansive catalog of 30,000+ comics spanning Marvel Comics history, plus access your entire digital library including comics redeemed from print.  

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The Untold Truth Of Time Travel In Marvel

Ever since Doctor Doom forced the Fantastic Four to go back in time in order to retrieve Blackbeard's treasure in " Fantastic Four" #5 (1962) , time travel has been an increasingly convoluted story trope in the Marvel Universe. There have been time-traveling villains like Kang the Conqueror and Zarrko the Tomorrow Man who keep returning to the past in order to rule it, but heroes have engaged in their own shenanigans: Doctor Strange's use of time travel through magic, for example, set the precedent for him getting the Time Stone as part of the Eye of Agamotto in the MCU . Time travel stories have gotten stacked on top of other time travel stories. People have come back to the present to prevent apocalyptic futures, but that trick never works.

Stories that try to explain how time travel works in the Marvel Universe tend to only make things more complicated, especially when they're repeatedly retconned. Characters like Immortus, the Time Keepers, and the Time Variance Authority have tried to establish some rules, with generally mixed results. Of course, time travel can get pretty confusing even under the best of circumstances, but the details are even hazier in the Marvel Universe, where  there are no time paradoxes — instead, whenever someone attempts to go back or forward in time, they pop into Limbo and create a divergent reality. These alternate realities make up the multiverse and make everything extra confusing. With all that in mind, let's unravel a few of the more interesting stories regarding time travel in the Marvel Universe. 

The Time Variance Authority: bureaucracy in inaction

The Time Variance Authority was introduced in "Thor" #371 as a time agency that sent freelance operative Justice Peace to stop an immortal killer named Zaniac . The members of the Authority were later revealed to be a group of cloned bureaucrats living in the Null-Time Zone, filling out forms in triplicate and making sure no one broke any temporal rules. One middle manger, the wonderfully named Mobius T. Mobius, arrested the Fantastic Four for time infractions, but Reed Richards escaped and took the file on his reality with him as he scampered off. 

When one of his supervisors realized that the file was missing , Mobius tried to find Richards; failing, he kidnapped the rest of the Fantastic Four, including their new recruit Ant-Man. The whole mess was resolved when the FF convinced Mobius to look for another job, he went for a job interview with Kang the Conqueror, and an offer was made. The TVA then counter-offered, making Mobius a happy man and keeping the FF's reality safe.

Speaking of reality, a desperate TVA once employed the Watcher to fix the problem of Immortus manipulating the nexus beings of various realities so he could become the undisputed master of time. The Watcher suggested altering Immortus so he would be incapable of harnessing as much energy as he did, and disaster was averted. The TVA took credit for everything, of course. 

The Time Keepers are in it for themselves

Much like Schrödinger's cat, the Time Keepers existed in a constant state where they were either the time-pruning Time Keepers or else the reality-devouring Time Twisters. In either case, they weren't very nice. They were meant to be a gift of a future universe by He Who Remains,  the final director of the Time Variance Authority . Instead, the Time Twisters devoured entire realities, killing trillions in each timeline. Understandably annoyed by all this, Thor convinced He Who Remains to undo their creation , but instead he simply changed their genetic makeup, turning them into the Time Keepers instead. 

The Time Twisters managed to reemerge, manipulating Immortus into collecting nexus energy for their own purposes. When this plot was foiled by the Watcher, the Time Keepers made sure the Time Twisters wouldn't emerge again.

However, the Time Keepers' mission was to make sure that humanity didn't become a harmful force. They saw the Avengers as the key to achieving this goal, and tried to make them get rid of their servant the Space Phantom  and deal with the Scarlet Witch before she became too powerful. They used Immortus as their servant too, but he often helped the Avengers. 

Eventually, the Destiny War between Kang and Immortus revealed the Time Keepers were less interested in preserving the multiverse than they were in preserving their own survival. At the end of time, Kang  finally managed to kill them , assuring his own freedom as well as Immortus'. 

The time pest: Zarrko the Tomorrow Man

Dr. Artur Zarrko, otherwise known as the Tomorrow Man, is a scientist from the 23rd century. Like many mad scientists from peaceful eras, he was bored and wanted to collect weapons from the past for conquest, so naturally he came to the 20th century and stole a nuclear weapon — making himself one of Thor's first villains . Zarrko was never quite as ambitious or competent as Kang the Conqueror. He wasn't much of a hand-to-hand fighter either, preferring to use his robot friends, like the Servitor, to carry out his bidding. 

When Zarrko stole the weapon, Odin helped out his son by giving Mjolnir time-traveling abilities, as if Thor wasn't tough enough already. Thor went to the 23rd century and got the weapon back, giving Zarrko amnesia in the process. Loki, in turn, helped out Zarrko and brought him back to fight Thor, but Thor beat him again, even with many of his powers taken away.

When Zarrko and Kang were competing over the 20th century, Kang manipulated the Avengers, Spider-Man, and the Inhumans into defeating Zarrko for him , leaving behind an empty suit. 

In yet another story that never happened, Lord Thor of a potential future who ruled Earth with an iron fist realized his error. Zarrko helped him figure out where it all went wrong and they corrected the error. Of course, this type of story is a good example of a frequent contradiction in Marvel: did Lord Thor's reality became a divergent one, or did it disappear altogether?

The granddaddy of time travel: Dr. Doom's time platform

You have to hand it to Victor Von Doom: he unleashed a crazy time-travel scheme on the Fantastic Four in his very first appearance , inventing a platform that made them disappear into a past era to steal Blackbeard's treasure chest. In a wacky series of events, Ben Grimm actually became Blackbeard and Reed Richards cheated Doom by bringing the chest back, but not its treasure.

This was the first of many times the platform became a crucial component of a Marvel Comics story. For example, the Fantastic Four used it again and met another time-traveler, Rama-Tut, in ancient Egypt . They wouldn't be the last ones to visit that era, either: Captain America asked the Avengers to accompany him back to the past to make sure his best friend and fellow soldier Bucky Barnes really died during World War II; as you may have already guessed, all sorts of weird things happened, like the Avengers materializing when they were supposed to be phantom observers. Immortus was involved, of course. 

Years later, Cable and SHIELD's George Washington Bridge argued over the time platform after Doom disappeared and they wound up in World War II-era Latveria. Cable destroyed it, but death is always temporary in the comics, even for time platforms, and it was eventually rebuilt. Many centuries later, Kang found it. 

The many faces of Kang the Conqueror

You can't talk about time travel in the Marvel Universe without talking about Nathaniel Richards, who's had a number of time-spanning identities. The descendant (or something — probably) of Reed Richards' father, who had the same name, he was born in the 30th century. Intervention from his future self, aka Kang, influenced Nathaniel into becoming Iron Lad and forming the Young Avengers . He fell in love with Cassie Lang, daughter of Ant-Man, but eventually realized he had to go back to his era . Still a teen, he became Kid Immortus after Cassie died, trying to merge with Doctor Doom and Annihilus to destroy the Fantastic Four . 

Richards discovered Doom's time platform, using it to become Rama-Tut and conquer ancient Egypt. After the Fantastic Four defeated him, he fled and encountered Doom. This encounter influenced this potential descendant of Doom (it's complicated) to adopt a new, armored persona: the Scarlet Centurion . The Centurion altered time such that he controlled the original Avengers, but a newer lineup defeated him and sent him to the 41st century.

That's where he'd become Kang the Conqueror, mastering that world before turning his attention to other planets and timelines. Eventually, Kang got bored with conquest. He went back to Egypt for a while as an older Rama-Tut , then decided to become Immortus, master of time in Limbo. Confused? Don't worry — even Nathaniel probably has a hard time keeping track of it all.

Tony and Vic's excellent Arthurian adventures

When an unscrupulous Stark Industries employee sold electronics components to Doctor Doom, a furious Tony Stark intervened and called off the sale. That led to Doom stealing the components anyway — and Iron Man confronting him. However, in a plot twist, a disgruntled underling of Doom's sent both of them back into the past using the good ol' time platform  – and promptly wrecked it. 

Where did they go? Camelot . Doom was trying to get there in order to get mystical training from Morgana Le Fey, the powerful sorceress and enemy of King Arthur. Iron Man allied himself with Arthur. Doom headed up Le Fey's army of the dead, but when Iron Man realized that Le Fey was responsible for this invincible army, he confronted her directly, and Doom and Iron Man had to work together in order to construct a crude time machine. They left with a grudging respect for each other's genius.

Years later, Stark and Doom both received half of a mystical artifact . When Doom stole Stark's half, he realized too late that it was waiting for both of them to be together. It was a time machine, powered by magic. Where did they go? Camelot  – this time in the far-flung year of 2093. With Arthur reincarnated as a pre-teen, Doom and Iron Man were forced to team up against Stark's descendant Andros and a 100-year-old Doom. When they returned to the present, they forgot everything.

The gloriously convoluted Lost In Space-Time

The various versions of Doom's time platform really get around. The villain Dominus lured the West Coast Avengers into a trap :  Stranded in 1876 , they helped the Marvel western heroes fight a bunch of their villains. Wonder Man reasoned that if they could find a way to ancient Egypt, they could use Rama-Tut's time machine to get back to the future. They stopped in 1776 to test it and nearly ran into Doctor Strange. While they were there, they ran into an ancestor of their teammate Firebird, and Hawkeye left a note in the family Bible, hoping it would be seen in the future. 

When they finally got to Egypt, they were nearly killed by Rama-Tut but were saved by the Egyptian moon god Khonshu . In return for his help, they would fight Rama Tut. The Avengers almost ran into a different time-traveling version of Strange as well as the Fantastic Four while trying to get to Rama Tut's time machine, but they missed out on every opportunity to get back. They managed to secretly save both Strange and the FF so they could return to the present. 

In the present, Khonshu sent his subject, Moon Knight, to tell the West Coast Avengers to look at Firebird's note. While it seemed incredible, they grabbed and repaired Dominus' time machine, went back in time, and rescued their teammates. Whew!

Days of Future Past kicks off a lot of confusion

The "Days Of Future Past" storyline that began in " Uncanny X-Men" #141 inspired a movie and multiple sequels in the comics. It essentially opened the Pandora's box of convoluted mutant time travel drama. In the then-future of 2013, an adult Kitty Pryde has her mind projected back into her 13-year-old self. She tells the X-Men that in the future, the world is a hellish place ruled by the Sentinels, who are hunting mutants. She traveled back to prevent the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly and Professor X and avert that future, and it worked — although the future X-Men were also on a last-ditch mission that utterly failed as they died.

The story continued when one of the mutants from the future, a psychic red-headed girl named Rachel, came back to the past and was revealed to be the daughter of Cyclops and Jean Grey. She helped defeat a time-traveling villain named Ahab in the " Days Of Future Present " story. In an issue of Excalibur titled " Days Of Future Tense ," the deaths of the original team from 2013 are detailed: On a mission to track down their missing member Douglock, they discovered to their horror that he had been captured by the government and turned into a living computer who killed them all. 

Avengers and X-Men Forever and ever

The idea of using villains plucked from different eras is one that's resurfaced in Marvel, starting with Kang's Legion of the Unliving . He plucked Baron Heinrich Zemo, Wonder Man, Midnight, and others right before their deaths and made them serve him. So why not a team of heroes from a variety of timelines? In the "Avengers Forever" miniseries, Kang was trying to resist his seemingly-inevitable transformation into Immortus. His allies were Avengers from across time: the modern-day Goliath and Wasp, Songbird and Captain Marvel from the future, a delusional Yellowjacket, a dejected Captain America from the Watergate era, and Hawkeye from when he was more of a loose cannon. That group was just unpredictable enough to thwart Immortus' plans.

The only team that's encountered time travel more than the Avengers was the X-Men. In "X-Men Forever," a being named Prosh with time-travel capabilities collected Jean Grey, Iceman, the Toad, Mystique, and the Juggernaut and sent them to alter key events in mutant history, ranging from the assassination of Graydon Creed to Toad's own mental breakdown. All of this knowledge helped them defeat the Stranger, a being who'd been manipulating the mutants for years.

Age of Ultron: everything gets worse

The idea of the Time Variance Authority might be silly ... but they have a point. Changing the timeline too many times and creating divergent realities can tear apart a fragile chronal ecosystem. Case in point:  Age of Ultron . After messing around in outer space, Ultron disguised himself as a Spaceknight and made his way back to Earth, where a group of villains accidentally activated him . 

Ultron attacked Earth from the future, using the Vision as his conduit point. He overwhelmed the planet with Ultron Sentinels, killing most of the world's superheroes . The world's remaining heroes tracked down Nick Fury, who had Doom's time platform, in order to attack Ultron in the future. Meanwhile, Wolverine had another idea:  kill Hank Pym, the creator of Ultron , before he could make him.

Logan and Sue Storm went back to the past and Wolverine killed Pym  — but when they returned to the future, they found they'd created an alternate future where the world teetered on the edge of its own apocalypse thanks to Morgan Le Fey . Wolverine went back again, to prevent himself from killing Pym , and gave him the idea of creating a backdoor virus in Ultron. It worked, and Ultron was destroyed — but it also broke the timeline , bringing characters like Angela and Miles Morales to the main Marvel Universe.

Doctor Strange has always been a time traveler

When Doctor Strange became Sorcerer Supreme, he took a number of jaunts down time travel lane. The first came when he and Baron Mordo were chasing the 40th sorcerer, Sise-Neg, through time . At each stop, Strange saw Sise-Neg do something important, like destroying the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah or banishing the monstrous Shuma-Gorath to another dimension (at Strange's behest). Strange himself saved Sir Lancelot, ensuring his survival in Camelot. When Sise-Neg reached the dawn of time, he realized that his role was to make things happen exactly as they had, and Strange got to watch the universe's birth .

Later, Strange and Clea visited Sir Francis Bacon in 1618 and Benjamin Franklin in 1776. While Strange was off hunting a sorcerer named Stygyro, ol' wily Ben seduced Clea — although in the next issue, a new writer revealed that Stygyro was pretending to be Ben Franklin . 

Years later, Mordo and Strange renewed their hostilities when he brought Strange to 1943 . Teaming with Nick Fury, Strange foiled a ceremony to bring Dormammu to Earth with a love spell, sending Mordo adrift in time . 

Vance Astro: man out of time

What's the easiest but most tedious way to travel to the future? Cryogenically freezing your body, of course. This is what Major Vance Astro did, as this astronaut went on a thousand-year journey to a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri in cold storage. In a cruel trick, faster-than-light travel had already been invented centuries before his arrival, so people were waiting for him when he arrived. But it wasn't all bad: Vance was now a man out of time, but he found that latent mutant telekinetic powers had emerged during his voyage.

Good thing too, because he learned that the alien Badoon had conquered Earth. Teaming with the last survivors of Earth's colonies, he joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. Because there always seemed to be a duplicate of Doc Doom's time platform laying around, the Earth resistance brought Captain America and the Thing to the future by accident. Cap inspired a rebellion and the Guardians joined in, with Vance taking special pleasure in meeting Cap. 

Later, the Guardians traveled to the 20th century to fight the cosmic menace of Korvac. Vance didn't dare travel to Earth, for fear of meeting his younger self and causing some sort of time anomaly, but he couldn't resist trying to talk his teenage self out of becoming an astronaut and accidentally unleashed young Vance's powers. This created a divergent reality where young Vance grew up to be Justice, while older Vance returned happily to the 30th century.

The Black Knights: men out of time

If you don't have a time machine handy, magic can move your soul through time in order to take over another body. Case in point: the various incarnations of the Black Knight. The original, Sir Percy of Scandia, pretended to be a cowardly dandy to disguise his secret identity as the Black Knight, one of King Arthur's most loyal men. Sir Percy found his spirit thrust forward in time a few times. That included possessing his heroic descendant Dane Whitman's body and meeting the super-hero team Excalibur, as well as being forced into another body by his enemy Morgan Le Fey, which landed him in an insane asylum . 

Dane Whitman's career as the new Black Knight was cut short when the Enchantress turned him to stone and magically transported his soul  back in time to the Crusades , where he inhabited the body of his 12th century ancestor, Eobar Garrington, and decided to stay there. He eventually became the guardian of the mystic realm of Avalon, and brought the Avengers back to the 12th century to help fight the Fomor, an evil group of gods. Dane was seemingly killed sealing off the Fomor forever, but it was only his host body that was destroyed. His time-traveling spirit returned to the 20th century and his original body was restored. It wasn't his last time travel adventure, as he went back to the 12th century and met the powerful psionic mutant who would become Exodus.

The brief, sad life of Rita DeMara

Rita DeMara was a small time-crook who stole one of Yellowjacket's spare costumes and tangled with the Wasp . She later reluctantly joined the Masters of Evil and assisted during their siege of Avengers Mansion . Her heart was never really into hardcore villainy, however, as she betrayed the Fixer when he was going to attack the Black Knight, whom she found dreamy . She even briefly joined a makeshift version of the Avengers to fight the High Evolutionary. When she wound up joining Doctor Octopus' new incarnation of the Masters of Evil and stormed Avengers Mansion yet again, the group found the Guardians of the Galaxy there instead of the Avengers, along with a bunch of doppelgängers. The Masters and Guardians teamed up to defeat them and the Masters (including Rita) turned on Doc Ock.

Rita secretly followed the Guardians back to the 30th century and eventually gained their trust , becoming a full member and earning her Guardians star. While she became close with her teammates, she eventually started missing her own timeline and returned. However, she accidentally stopped in an alternate future where the Avengers were being hunted down and saw Hawkeye and the Black Widow murdered. Taking with her a mysterious teenage girl (an alternate version of Luna, the daughter of Quicksilver and Crystal), she returned to the present to warn the Avengers. Her reward was a mind-controlled Iron Man killing her.  

Time travel in the MCU

The rules of time travel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are mostly the same as in the comics: if you go back in time, you are guaranteed to create a new, divergent timeline. As the Avengers discussed in "Avengers: Endgame," it doesn't work like "Back to the Future," where if you change something in the past, it can affect the future. However, you can go to past timelines, steal stuff, interact with people, and even have them follow you. 

Like in the comics, there are two ways of traveling through time: science-based and magic-based. Indeed, Doctor Strange's dominion over the Eye of Agamotto, which contains the Time Stone, allows him to see multiple futures, create time loops, or even rewind time and erase it. Basically, it allows the user to break many laws regarding science-based time travel. In "Doctor Strange," Doc undid a great deal of damage in Hong Kong by reversing time and then putting Dormammu in a time loop. His examination of future timelines led to him nudging everyone toward the one timeline where Thanos was defeated.

Hank Pym may have discovered the Quantum Zone, reached when one shrinks beyond a subatomic level, but it was Scott Lang who told the Avengers that time works very differently there. Five hours spent in the zone turned out to be five years in his world. Gifted with this knowledge, Tony Stark unlocked the key to developing a sort of quantum GPS system, making targeted time travel possible — and allowing the Avengers to undo Thanos' "snap." 

Time is fragile!

So what is the worst idea in the world? It's hard to say for sure, but letting an unrepentant Loki loose in the timestream with the powerful Tesseract, the Space Stone, might belong on the list. In "Avengers: Endgame," this is exactly what Tony Stark did by accident when a door flew open and he dropped the case containing the Tesseract. Loki, who had just been defeated in the Battle of New York, grabbed the powerful artifact and exited stage left.

As the Ancient One pointed out, time is fragile. Time traveling willy-nilly results in all sorts of potentially horrible new timelines. What's worse, the thread of time can really get tangled when there are too many new timelines introduced into the multiverse. Thanks to the Avengers significantly altering the 2012 timeline when they allowed Loki to escape, things got ugly.

Enter the Time Variance Authority, run by powerful beings called the Time Keepers. Just like in the comics, they have a painstaking, bureaucratic level of control over the multiverse. In the "Loki" series, a TVA manager named Mobius M. Mobius enlists this particular version of Loki to help fix the broken timelines. Of course, employing one of the most chaotic beings in the universe to restore law and order to the timeline is a totally bonkers idea, but sometimes the risk is worth the reward.

The best Marvel Comics stories of all time

The ten best Marvel Comics stories from the House of Ideas

The best Marvel Comics stories of all time have often transcended media, with many of the MCU's most popular movies adapting classic comic tales.

But there will always be something uniquely special about reading - or re-reading - the original comic books and experiencing those stories in their earliest incarnation.

So without further ado, here are Newsarama's picks for the best Marvel Comics stories ever.

10. X-Men: Days of Future Past (1981)

The original X-Men story ' Days of Future Past ' was simply two issues of the main ongoing series, Uncanny X-Men #141 and #142 (Take that, 200+ issue events of today!) In a dystopian future, mutants have been rounded up into concentration camps; that is, the ones who haven't been slaughtered. 

Adult Kitty Pryde's consciousness travels back in time to stop the assassination of a prominent government figure (in the story, Senator Robert Kelly) by Mystique and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

While she succeeds, and the world is avoided (at least in one timeline), there are some lasting effects. Rachel Summers, a prominent character in today's X-Men titles, came from that alternate future. So did the hyper-advanced Nimrod Sentinel, which has been a key antagonist in the current X-Men era.

The storyline was adapted into the 2014 feature film, one of the most highly-regarded of the Fox X-Men franchise. 

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9. Annihilation (2006)

In 2006, Marvel Comics decided they were going to ignite the cosmic corner of the Marvel Universe. Writer Keith Giffen was tapped to conceive a limited series and a set of tie-ins titled Annihilation , intended to establish characters new and old as major players in the Marvel universe. 

The story, told entirely apart from the mainstream Marvel Universe without the input of heroes like the Avengers and X-Men, letting the more obscure cosmic heroes take the spotlight - eventually leading to the formation of a new version of the Guardians of the Galaxy, who became the basis for the popular MCU version of the team.

Indeed, the Guardians of the Galaxy movie franchise literally would not have come to pass without Annihilation having redefined Star-Lord, Groot, and Rocket, and bringing that group of heroes together in the first place.

8. Fantastic Four: The Coming of Galactus (1965)

Long before anyone could even conceive of carving out a whole corner of the Marvel Universe devoted to cosmic threats, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created what may still be considered the ultimate cosmic threat: Galactus.

First appearing in Fantastic Four #48-50 , the godlike being from beyond the stars came careening into the solar system and the lives of Marvel's First Family, widening the entire scope of the Marvel Universe in the process.

Both the Silver Surfer and The Watcher also made their debuts in 'The Coming of Galactus,' with the latter becoming a burgeoning figure in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the recent What If...? animated Disney Plus series.

7. Daredevil: Born Again (1986)

There was a time when Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli could basically do no wrong, and 1986-1987 was simply a magical period for the pair, who essentially reinvented major street-level vigilante heroes for both Marvel and DC in the span of about a year and a half - including, most importantly for this list, Marvel's Daredevil.

The pair's arc together on Daredevil #227-231 (with some ancillary work in #232 and #233) has it all: romance, intrigue, religion, and of course tons of action. There’s The Kingpin, Ben Urich, Nuke, and Captain America. This story basically tears Daredevil down to virtually nothing and lets him emerge, 'Born Again,' into a better, stronger hero than ever before.

Now, Daredevil: Born Again is being adapted into an 18-episode Disney Plus streaming show.

6. Secret Wars (1985)

No, not 2015-16's Secret Wars - but the original!

Back in 1984, Marvel Comics and toy makers Mattel had the big idea to team up for a joint toyline and accompanying comic book series featuring all the biggest heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe in one story, resulting in Secret Wars, the first major Marvel crossover event.

Secret Wars set the mold for later Marvel events with its own 12-issue limited series, as well as tie-in stories told through ten other comics. Secret Wars pitted a veritable who's-who of Marvel heroes and villains against each other, with the results being an occasionally goofy but still exciting and even defining story with ramifications that spiraled out across the entire Marvel Universe.

Spider-Man's black Symbiote suit (that was really Venom), She-Hulk on the Fantastic Four, the second Spider-Woman Julia Carpenter - they all got their start in Secret Wars, along with even more storylines and character changes that continued to play out in a much less well-received sequel just a few years later.

Now the original Marvel Comics crossover event and its 2015 sequel will form the basis of the officially announced Avengers: Secret Wars film.

5. X-Men: Age of Apocalypse (1995)

In the late '90s, Marvel proclaimed they were going to cancel the entire X-Men line, then at the height of its immense popularity, and replace it with a whole new slate of titles - and lo they did, reimagining the entire X-line in an alternate reality with a vastly different status quo.

The result was four months of alternate-reality comic books titled ' Age of Apocalypse ,' which turned the entire X-Men franchise on its head with new roles and new relationships for almost all the line's characters. 

Set in a timeline where Charles Xavier died before founding the X-Men and Apocalypse is the unquestioned ruler of the world, 'Age of Apocalypse' presented readers with wildly different takes on Nightcrawler, Cyclops, Wolverine, Magneto, Rogue, and many, many more.

Though an event as massive as 'Age of Apocalypse' is never without its hiccups, the story took fans by storm - with some of the new versions of the characters even making it into the mainstream Marvel Universe after the story concluded and the classic X-Men timeline was restored.

It's looking like the X-Men franchise will pay homage to the original Age of Apocalypse in a similarly themed 2023 event titled Sins of Sinster .

4. Civil War (2006)

One of the newest stories on our list, Marvel's Civil War asked the question, 'Whose side are you on?'

Civil War starts with a bang (so sorry) as the New Warriors, while trying to subdue a B-list villain, are involved in a resulting explosion that kills 600 people (including many children and the New Warriors themselves) at a Stamford, Connecticut elementary school. 

As a result, the US government fast-tracks legislation called the Superhuman Registration Act, requiring anyone with powers and abilities beyond that of a mortal person to register with the government - thereby revealing their identity, with the caveat that they must train with government-approved heroes if they want to keep using their powers.

(The concept of the SHRA was somewhat adapted into the MCU as the Sokovia Accords).

Ultimately, this leads to Iron Man leading the pro-registration side and Captain America leading the anti-registration folks, with the two sides going all-out in a superhero civil war - a war with real consequences with major deaths.

Tony Stark becomes Director of SHIELD, while Captain America is assassinated, leading to a much deeper, longer-term rift between many of Marvel's heroes.

Marvel loved this story so much it was adapted to film in the blockbuster Captain America: Civil War and led to a comic book sequel, Civil War II . 

3. Amazing Spider-Man: The Night Gwen Stacy Died (1973)

Outside of the death of Uncle Ben, Amazing Spider-Man #121-122 may be the most important issues in the entire life of Peter Parker. The story said it right there in the title. They spoiled the outcome. They told the truth. 

This would be ' The Night Gwen Stacy Died .'

Norman Osborn, back as the Green Goblin, takes Gwen Stacy - Pete's girlfriend at the time - and throws her off a bridge. Just when it looks like Spider-Man successfully saves her, his webbing catches her ankle ... but the sudden stop snaps her neck.

Gwen's death was utterly tragic, and a true surprise - devastating Peter Parker (and many readers) like almost nothing before or since. It's heartbreaking and shocking, and in 1973, it was something that made people look at comic books, especially superhero comic books, in a very different way.

2. X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga (1980)

To this day ' The Dark Phoenix Saga ' is the story that all other X-Men stories are held up to. The first seeds of the tale began way back in 1976 when Jean Grey first came into contact with the Phoenix Force in X-Men #101-108. Then the 'Dark' part hit four years later in #129-138, as Jean comes under the influence of the Hellfire Club.

A masterpiece of a story by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, this epic holds some true marquee moments for the team both as a whole and as individual members. 

Cyclops battles Mastermind on the psychic plane. Wolverine takes on a seemingly endless stream of Hellfire Club soldiers. Oh, and Jean Grey, as the Dark Phoenix, goes berzerk, eats a sun (killing an orbiting planet's entire population), and goes on trial for genocide. 

When Jean manages to gain control of herself for one short moment, she sacrifices herself to end the Dark Phoenix, dying in Cyclops' arms.

Over the next few years (and several retcons), some of the pivotal moments would later be backtracked to bring back Jean and the Phoenix Force, but none of it has managed to cheapen or take away from the original classic.

1. Infinity Gauntlet (1991)

At this point, if you don't know about Infinity Gauntlet - the seminal Marvel Comics event that took the lead on our poll of the best Marvel stories by a wide margin - you simply haven't been paying attention.

Bringing together basically all of Marvel's heroes at the time to take on the existential threat of Thanos the Mad Titan and his quest for the Infinity Stones, which hold the power to remake reality itself, Infinity Gauntlet tells the story of what happens when the heroes actually fail - a somewhat unprecedented story at the time.

Of course, the heroes manage to overcome their defeat and win the day, restoring the universal destruction caused by Thanos, but not before the entire landscape of the Marvel Universe is changed by the experience - and not entirely for the better.

Infinity Gauntlet has it all - an unbeatable foe, an incredible creative team in Jim Starlin, George Perez, and Ron Lim, and a conglomeration of the world's greatest heroes involved in cosmic action with the highest stakes possible.

Even if you haven't read Infinity Gauntlet (and you should!), you probably know some of the story's broad strokes from its two-part MCU adaptation as Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.

Love comics but don't know where to start? Here's our guide to comic shops and what to expect.

Chris Arrant covered comic book news for Newsarama from 2003 to 2022 (and as editor/senior editor from 2015 to 2022) and has also written for USA Today, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, Marvel Entertainment, TOKYOPOP, AdHouse Books, Cartoon Brew, Bleeding Cool, Comic Shop News, and CBR. He is the author of the book Modern: Masters Cliff Chiang, co-authored Art of Spider-Man Classic, and contributed to Dark Horse/Bedside Press' anthology Pros and (Comic) Cons . He has acted as a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. Chris is a member of the American Library Association's Graphic Novel & Comics Round Table. (He/him)

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The Strongest Time-Traveling Superheroes, Ranked

The realm of time-traveling superheroes presents a captivating fusion of power and potential. These heroes can travel through history with incredible ease, altering timelines to prevent catastrophes, A diverse group of characters like Flash, Doctor Strange, and Cable showcase their talents in this riveting subject matter.

The domain of time travel characters includes many opportunities for excitement and suspense. Their exceptional skills that set them apart from other superheroes stem from their ability to master one of the most enigmatic aspects of existence - time itself. These awe-inspiring individuals harness their powers to navigate past, present, and future, accomplishing exploits that defy conventional norms. Hold on tight as you embark on a rollercoaster ride through space and time with these personalities.

Flash's astonishing speed enables him to breach temporal boundaries at will; Doctor Strange employs his mystical arts prowess to manipulate reality and traverse dimensions; while Cable boasts telepathic abilities and an advanced understanding of futuristic tech. These beings utilize their strengths for good deeds while safeguarding humanity. These heroes represent just a fragment of what makes this specific genre alluring.

The stories of these characters show how far comics have come in terms of creativity and depth. It's apparent that fans will never lose their appetite for narratives pushing boundaries and expanding imaginations.

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The 10 Best Marvel Comics to read before Captain America: Brave New World

Following the D23 trailer and Marvel’s 85-year celebration video showing Red Hulk’s transformation in glorious HD, hopes remain high for the upcoming Captain America: Brave New World . Marking Captain America ‘s return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe , Brave New World is poised to introduce more compelling Marvel comic characters and begin laying the foundation for Doomsday and Secret Wars .

Indeed, characters like the Falcon, Sidewinder, and Red Hulk enjoyed comic notoriety long before their upcoming appearances in Brave New World . With that in mind and utilizing decades of comic knowledge, I have expertly selected the best comics to read in preparation for Red Hulk smashing his way into the MCU in Captain America: Brave New World .

Tales to Astonish (1959) #63

‘A Titan Rides the Train,’ by legendary creators Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, gives fans the origin story of Samuel Sterns. A high school dropout and lowly plant worker, Sterns yearned for the adoration heaped upon genius until a freak gamma explosion altered his fate. This accident would birth the Leader, a hyper-intelligent, megalomaniacal mastermind.

Yet, unlike Bruce Banner, whose repressed rage manifests into the brutish Hulk, Stern’s intense desire to be among the intellectual elite supercharges his brain. Here, the Leader becomes one of the Hulk’s longest-tenured and most formidable adversaries, setting the stage for his appearance in Brave New World .

Captain America (1969) #117-119

In a vintage tale from Eisner Hall of Famers, Stan Lee and Gene Colan, the evil Red Skull uses the power of the cosmic cube, swapping bodies with the genre-traversing Captain America and banishing him to the Isle of the Exiles. Here, the villainous Exiles seek vengeance on Red Skull for marooning them and take the fight to their “enemy”.

Marking his first appearance, Sam Wilson comes to Cap’s aid with the help of his avian companion, Redwing. In particular, Sam’s acute morality and eternal optimism mesh flawlessly with Cap’s training and guidance. Ultimately, taking Cap’s suggestion and showcasing an original costume that inspires his future sidekick, the Falcon is born.

Hulk (2008) #1-9

Beginning with the brutal murder of the Abomination, Emil Blonksy, Hulk (2008) #1 introduces fans to the mysterious Red Hulk. Designated Rulk by S.H.I.E.L.D., this crimson goliath destroys anything in his path, from the cosmic watcher Uatu to the god of thunder Thor, and proves his power level on par with his emerald variant.

Eruditely capitalizing on the ‘World War Hulk’ gamma hype, the dynamic team of Loeb and McGuiness produce a lauded Hulk run. Undoubtedly, this series puts Rulk on the Marvel map, combining intrigue and various new Gamma characters and yielding an entertaining comic series that qualifies as a best comic read before Brave New World .

Fall of the Hulks Alpha/Gamma (2009)

A pair of informative one-shots narrated by upcoming Brave New World antagonist, the Leader, Fall of the Hulks Alpha and Gamma gives a concise history of the Intel(ligencia) and artistically depicts Redeemer Ross, one of Hulk’s oldest adversaries, death at Rulk’s hands as the game of cat and mouse between former allies intensifies.

Formed secretly to establish a New World Order, the Intel information network worked tirelessly over decades, accruing knowledge and data. Perhaps teasing potential plotlines, Alpha/Gamma gives readers vital insight into the cloak-and-dagger, shadow games likely upcoming between the Leader, Cap, and Rulk in Brave New World .

Fall of the Hulks: Red Hulk (2010) #1-4

A fast-paced and informative series, Red Hulk (2010) focuses on Rulk’s multi-layered revenge campaign against his villainous creators, the Intelligencia. Consequently, this series fills another vital piece in the Who is Rulk puzzle and shows readers Rulk, A-Bomb, and Bruce Banner battling the Leader, M.O.D.O.K, and Cosmic Hulk.

As Intel enacts its master plan, will Rulk and his former enemies stop the super-powered A.I.Marines in time? Highlighting the ties that bind Rulk and the Leader, Intel, and their New World Order is this comic series that feels right at home in Captain America: Brave New World .

Avengers (2010) #7-12

Following the ‘Fall of the Hulks’ event, Captain America seeks out Rulk after his sanity returns. Here, Cap offers Rulk a chance at redemption amid the devastation he wrought, and, being a soldier who idolized Cap, Rulk joins his cause. Soon after, Rulk is called upon when the Hood seeks out the Infinity Gems to restore his lost powers.

The ensuing battle royale takes Rulk from the depths of Atlantis to the mystic plane, as he utilizes his strength and the Power stone to fight an Infinity-charged Hood. Eventually, Rulk’s actions earn the respect of Cap and the Avengers, culminating with his official membership offer in this best Marvel read before Captain America 4 .

Captain America (2012) #25

The aptly titled ‘Who is the new Captain America?’ portrays the aftermath of Arnim Zola’s invasion of Earth with his Dimension Z mutates. Despite Captain America being aged and depowered by Iron Nail, the tide turns when Sam Wilson liberates his long-lost love, Sharon Carter, and “son” Nomad. But, when Zola’s bomb is accidentally triggered, the Falcon heroically detonates the bomb in space, saving millions.

Luckily, thanks to Tony Stark, Sam’s Doomwar-causing Vibranium equipment absorbs the blast, saving his life. After decades of selflessly fighting beside Cap, Sam’s sacrifice stirs something profound within his mentor. Ultimately, this catalytic act culminates with Sam being named Captain America, the role he’ll play in Brave New World .

Captain America: Sam Wilson (2015) #1-6

Teen Joaquin Torres debuts in the relevant Captain America: Sam Wilson (2015) comic series when the Sons of the Serpent and their mad scientist, Doctor Karl Malus, capture him. Hoping to create the perfect warrior, Malus experiments on Torres, splicing his genes with Cap’s psionic vampiric sidekick, Redwing. After acquiring wings, a healing factor, and heightened physical attributes, Torres aids Cap, standing with the heroes.

This defining act of heroism culminates with his official appointment as Sam Cap’s sidekick, the Falcon. Thus, with Sidewinder and Torres making their MCU debuts in Brave New World , this comic run checks in as a top read on the canonical links between Cap, Falcon Torres, and the Serpent Society.

Avengers (2016) #7-11

A visually striking entry to the best Marvel comics to read before Brave New World , Avengers (2016) #7-11 follows Captain America Sam as he leads the Avengers under the shadow of ‘Secret Empire.’ For example, when the Avengers and the Infamous Iron Man, Fortnite legend Victor Von Doom , defend Avengers HQ against a magical Chronosite.

This wonderfully entertaining story arc shows the Avengers and Doom combating a mystic cult and Avenger X. Colorfully showing the power of teamwork, this comic arc concludes with the Avengers in rebuilding mode following the harrowing events of ‘Secret Empire.’ Hence, while Sam persevered, his mentor’s betrayal and subsequent emotional scars led to Sam stepping down as Captain America.

Captain America: Symbol of Truth (2022) Vol. 1

Without a doubt, no best comics to read before Captain America: Brave New World list would be complete sans the inclusion of Captain America: Symbol of Truth (2022) #1 . Taking place nearly five years after toppling Hydra’s Empire and Sam’s gut-wrenching decision to step down as Captain America, he picks up the Shield again.

After his stint on the Champions, Falcon Torres reunites with his mentor Sam. Together, they battle, among others, White Wolf, Doctor Doom, and the Black Panther while navigating through a world with two Captain Americas. Lastly, seeing Sam don the Stars and Stripes again leaves a feeling of excitement for what’s in store for this duo in Captain America: Brave New World .

The 10 Best Marvel Storylines (According To Goodreads)

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Comic Book Writer Calls Out A.I. Art - 'You Solved a Problem That Didn't Exist'

10 things you didn't know about wolverine & deadpool's relationship in the comics, this forgotten marvel superhero is one of the most powerful comics characters.

Marvel Comics has a history going back to the Golden Age, yet the publisher that fans recognize today gelled in 1961 with the release of Fantastic Four #1 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Marvel's stories evolved and became instant classics. Most of the best-selling comic issues of all time came from the house that Stan and Jack built.

RELATED: The 10 Best DC Storylines (According To Goodreads)

Fans debate which Marvel stories are the best. Goodreads is a website that creates lists based on reviews and rankings from fans. With millions of users, the numbers make for measured rankings based on mass appeal. Classics like Daredevil: Born Again made the list, while newer titles like Hawkeye and Ms. Marvel became instant hits. Fans can use Goodreads to settle arguments about what the best Marvel storyline truly is.

10 Daredevil: Born Again Saw The Hero Destroyed (4.34)

With "Born Again," Frank Miller returned to Daredevil to tear the character down. Miller and artist David Mazzucchelli rebuilt the hero from the ground up. At the same time, they elevated the Kingpin to a truly powerful and dangerous villain.

The Kingpin destroyed Matt Murdock's life when he learned Daredevil's secret identity. He beat him and left him for dead. Miller was a superstar comic book creator in the 80s. He crafted some of the best Batman stories of all time and accomplished the same with Daredevil. "Born Again" pushed Daredevil down to his lowest, making his heroic climb all the more triumphant.

9 Ms. Marvel: No Normal Debuted A New Type Of Hero (4.12)

Kamala Khan became a new type of hero for Marvel. As a teenage Muslim girl in New Jersey, she provided a new face for a more diverse readership. Despite becoming a superhero herself, Kamala was first and foremost a fan of superheroes and kept that joy even after joining teams like the Avengers and Champions.

RELATED: 10 Things Kamala Khan Does Better Than Any Marvel Hero

G. Willow Wilson wrote convincing Muslim characters around Kamala. Adrian Alphona provided art that surpassed his work on Runaways . Together, the two brought Kamala Khan to life. Kamala proved to be the most grounded, relatable character in Marvel's pantheon since Spider-Man.

8 Kraven's Last Hunt Had The Villain Triumph (4.30)

Kraven was one of Spider-Man's first villains . As the greatest hunter of all time, Kraven was also one of his deadliest foes. He had a fearsome reputation, yet he'd never prevailed over Spider-Man. "Kraven's Last Hunt," created by J.M. DeMatties and Mike Zeck, portrayed the classic villain like never before.

Kraven proved his superiority by finally defeating Spider-Man and burying him alive. Kraven donned a black Spider-Man costume and proved he was a better man for the job. "Kraven's Last Hunt" is an incredibly intense book not suitable for all readers. It elevated Kraven to new heights while providing one of the darkest comic book endings of all time.

7 Civil War Changed The Marvel Universe (4.10)

After a tragedy involving young heroes, the U.S. government reigned in superheroes. Iron Man and Captain America found themselves standing on opposite sides of the new law. Tony supported the registration act while Steve rejected it.

"Choose a Side" were the words displayed on just about every Marvel Comics title for months. Civil War took over Marvel, both in publication and in-universe. Friends and family became enemies and the superhero civil war resulted in more than one death, most notably Captain America's. Heroes crossed many lines. Reed Richards created a mad clone of Thor, and Iron Man even recruited villains like Venom.

6 Hawkeye: My Life As A Weapon Showed The Appeal Of Clint Barton (4.15)

Hawkeye has a complex reputation. As a long-time Avenger, he should have respect within the Marvel universe and with readers. He's also one of the few Avengers without powers at all. This has often made him the butt of jokes.

RELATED: 10 Avengers Too Weird For The MCU

In Matt Fraction and David Aja's "My Life As A Weapon" storyline, the archer showcased how formidable he really was. Fraction and Aja developed Clint Barton in a way that added new, humorous qualities while staying true to past characterization. Hawkeye also took on the role of mentor, training Kate Bishop in archery. Much of what Fraction and Aja created would be adapted in the new Disney+ Hawkeye series.

5 Days of Future Past Showed A Dark Future For Mutants (4.14)

In 1981, Chris Claremont and John Byrne produced Days of Future Past . The storyline accurately presented the freedom the mutants fought for. An adult Kitty Pryde went back in time to stop the assassination of a politician. That event would lead to a nationwide culling of mutants. Past issues had shown the tensions between mutants and humans, but Days of Future Past took their feud to a whole new level.

Mystique cemented herself as a major villain, leading a new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Days of Future Past was dark, mature, and thought-provoking, paving the way for even more legendary X-Men stories of the same nature.

4 Infinity Gauntlet Is One Of Marvel's Best Crossover Events (4.11)

Modern comics feature giant crossovers every other month, but few live up to the hype. Jim Starlin, George Pérez, and Ron Lim exceeded expectations in Infinity Gauntlet . They created a cosmic story that had ramifications for the entire Marvel Universe.

Thanos, possessing all six Infinity Gems, sought the affection of Death. He eliminated half of all life in the universe. Adam Warlock led the remaining heroes of Earth in an attempt to stop the Mad Titan before he destroyed the entire universe. Marvel had published epic crossovers before, but Infinity Gauntlet surpassed any of its predecessors.

3 Astonishing X-Men: Gifted Brought In Joss Whedon To Update The Mutants (4.19)

Joss Whedon and John Cassady relaunched the X-Men with a new school and a new mission as public superheroes. Dr. Kavita Rao announced a cure for mutants. The X-Men dealt with the cure, an alien threat, and a resurrected teammate they thought was long dead.

RELATED: 10 Things Infinity Gauntlet Does Better Than Any Other Marvel Event Book

Despite modern issues surrounding Joss Whedon and his work, Astonishing X-Men remains very poignant and relatable. John Cassady added to the fantastic storytelling, using quiet moments and pitched battles. The creators spotlighted characters like Kitty Pryde and Colossus while also shining light on lesser-known mutant students.

2 The Dark Phoenix Saga Is The Best X-Men Story Ever (4.24)

The Dark Phoenix Saga is unlike any other X-Men story. Chris Claremont spent years laying the foundations of the Phoenix Saga. Several artists illustrated Uncanny X-Men , but John Byrne helped craft the climax. Jean Grey, fearing that she was too much of a threat as the Phoenix , sacrificed herself to save her teammates.

The Dark Phoenix Saga has been adapted by just about every X-Men TV and film series. Jean's death was shocking and left many fans in tears. Thankfully, Marvel would resurrect Jean less than a decade later. The Dark Phoenix Saga was the pinnacle of storytelling, and Claremont set the bar for all X-writers who followed.

1 Marvels Presented The History Of The Marvel Universe From A Different Point Of View (4.27)

Marvels was a turning point in the history of Marvel, which was fitting given that the story was about the history of the Marvel Universe itself. Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross presented the story of a photographer documenting superheroes. Readers were along for the wild ride as more superheroes emerged.

The series showcased Alex Ross's amazing talent . His style amazed readers, showing a real world populated by superheroes. The creators put so many cameos and Easter eggs in Marvels . Readers could spend hours pouring over every page and panel, searching for callbacks to Marvel's world and characters.

NEXT: 8 Ways Marvel Could Have Their Own Dark Knights Of Steel (& Why They Should)

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The best time to visit Greece

Dotted with stunning islands surrounded by the sparkling waters of the Aegean Sea, Mediterranean and Ionian Sea, Greece has so much to offer within and beyond its most popular attractions. The best time to visit Greece depends on what you seek— formidable historic sites that have stood the test of time, islands buzzing with exciting beach clubs, or quiet beaches and cool weather. If you’re planning a trip soon, here’s a handy guide on the best time to visit Greece.

Jump to: When is the best time to visit Greece? Temperatures throughout the year When is the off season in Greece? How many days are enough for a trip to Greece? Do Indians need a visa for Greece? Plan your stay

When is the best time to visit Greece?

Like most European countries, the best time to visit Greece is considered to be the summer season , which lasts from June to September. This is when tourism is at its peak in the country. There’s a lot of sunshine and little to no rain, which means you can spend a lot of time outdoors. However, recent summer heatwaves in Europe have led to the mercury touching over 45°C in Greece—in July 2023, the Acropolis was shut in the afternoons and air-conditioned public spaces were opened for people.

For fewer tourist crowds, the best time to visit Greece is in its shoulder season, during spring (April-June) and autumn (September-October). In spring, sea temperatures are still slightly lower, so expect chillier weather but pleasant conditions to spend days outdoors. In autumn, temperatures begin to fall in October and many Greek islands begin seeing fewer and fewer tourists. Parts of central Greece experience fall foliage and colours, while beaches are emptier and cooler.

Temperatures throughout the year

November-March: 7°C-20°C (temperatures dip to sub zero levels in some parts of northern Greece) April-June: 11°C-30°C July-September: 15°C-45°C September-October: 8°C-29°C

When is the off season in Greece?

Winter, which lasts from November to around March, is the off season in Greece. Accommodation and flight prices typically dip during this time, as do the temperatures across Greek islands. This is also the wettest season in Greece— rainfall typically peaks in December and January, and some parts of Greece also experience snowfall. The further north you go in the country, the colder it will be. While many historical sites across the mainland remain open, islands and beaches may shut down. Even if they’re not officially shut, the water is too chilly to take a dip in.

How many days are enough for a trip to Greece?

You will need at least a week to explore the main attractions in Greece, in Athens, Mykonos and Santorini. Head to Crete , Greece’s largest island, for beach treks, sunbathing and lush vineyards. If you plan to also visit lesser-known Greek islands , account for four to five extra days in your itinerary.

Do Indians need a visa for Greece?

Yes Indian passport holders require a Schengen visa to visit Greece. The short stay type C Schengen visa allows for a stay of up to 90 days over a period of 180 days. You can submit your visa application at the Visa Application Centers for Greece in India in New Delhi or directly at the Greek Embassy- Consular Office. Processing time is typically 15 days but this can go up to 45 days. Make sure to submit your application no later than 15 days prior to your departure. If you are submitting your application anywhere other than the centre in New Delhi, account for about five extra processing days since your application will have to be sent to the capital first. Find more information here .

Plan your stay Guide to Mykonos Best hotels in Mykonos Best things to do in Santorini Guide to Hydra, Greece Guide to Tinos: the romantic Greek island Insider’s guide to Kalymnos

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X-men concept art gives a founding hero their most jaw-dropping costume of all time.

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X-Men Debuts a Founding Member's Crucial New Power (That Goes Beyond Mortal Limits)

10 funniest peanuts comics about going back to school, batman's new batsuit has a weapon that needs to become standard.

Since Charles Xavier founded the X-Men , the team's roster has shifted and changed. Its original members have cycled in and out throughout the years as they grew in power, experienced tragedy and grief, and battled through life and death before finding their way back. No one knows that journey better than Jean Grey , and artist Lucas Werneck captured her very essence with concept art for her new look.

In a post on Instagram, Werneck shared concept art for Jean Grey as the Phoenix, who is currently staring in a solo series written by Stephanie Phillips. Jean Grey is one of world's most powerful telepaths, but that only scratches the surface.

To speak of Jean Grey is to speak of life, death, and rebirth. It's not an easy idea to capture in a costume, but Werneck has managed it with stunning, fiery design, depicting in her classic green and gold surrounded by the blazing wings of a Phoenix, perfectly combining the cosmic entity with the mutant.

As Jean Grey’s new solo series continues to define her Omega-level status, the extent of the Phoenix's godlike powers is being explored in new depth.

Marvel Artist Lucas Werneck Gives Jean Grey A Look That Captures Her Immense Power

Concept art posted by @lukaswerneck.

Fully merging with the Phoenix is finally taking Jean beyond the X-Men and mutantkind.

As the Krakoan era drew to a close for mutantkind, Jean Grey's next chapter was only beginning. Since she first encountered the Phoenix, Jean has been in a push-and-pull relationship with the entity that has, in turns, taken everything from her and given it all back. It puts the power of life itself at her fingertips, paired with the ability to burn it all to ash. Combined with her Omega-level mutant abilities , it means that Jean has spent much of her life as one of the most powerful forces in the Marvel Universe.

Fully merging with the Phoenix is finally taking Jean beyond the X-Men and mutantkind. Her duty is to the universe, and for now she and the Phoenix act as a force of good together. This new quest pairs her heroic drive with the immense power at her fingertips in a way no other Phoenix host (or even Jean herself) has managed to do. While it is a new trajectory for her life, it doesn't necessarily come at the expense of her old one, and the most important elements of both come through in Werneck's breathtaking art.

For the first time since they met, Jean and the Phoenix are truly one being.

In Her New Solo Series, Jean Grey Is Finally Taking Her Rightful Place In The Marvel Universe

Phoenix #1 – available now from marvel comics.

For the first time since they met, Jean and the Phoenix are truly one being. The cycle of the Phoenix all leads back to Jean, and she's taken up a new post as a guardian of the universe, patrolling the cosmos. In short, she is embracing all of her potential at once, and Werneck's concept art does that idea justice. With her past and relationships still in tact, her future is more open than ever. As Jean Grey accepts her place outside the X-Men, she and the Phoenix are better off for it , and this concept art shows both forces at peace.

Source: Lucas Werneck Instagram

The X-Men franchise, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, centers on mutants with extraordinary abilities. Led by the powerful telepath Professor Charles Xavier, they battle discrimination and villainous mutants threatening humanity. The series explores themes of diversity and acceptance through a blend of action, drama, and complex characters, spanning comics, animated series, and blockbuster films.

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