Time Travel Conundrum

November 17th, 2004

Filed under: Comics

Time travel stories are one of the staples of comic books. Characters travel up and down the time stream from the distant past to the far future. Almost every character or team seems to have traveled in time: the Flash, JSA, Birds of Prey, Avengers, JLA, X-Men and even the New Warriors.

Stories set in the near future are almost always an interesting read because they show a glimpse of how a character’s life might turn out. This is the reason almost all DC’s Armageddon 2001 Annuals were good — unlike the mini-series itself, and unlike most other themed annuals. Stories set farther in the future are not always as good becuuse the writer needs to establish a frame of reference so the readers can relate to the new setting. Sometimes this is done well (almost all Legion of Super-Heroes stories); sometimes it’s not (the DC One-Million stories). Most comic book futures seem to be portrayed as dark and grim, and the heroes must work to prevent that particular future from occurring (a la Days of Future Past). Rarely have there been any particularly happy futures.

Time traveling to the past presents its own complications. That whole concept of whether changes made in the past will affect the future is always a stumbling block. The trouble with most of these time travel stories is that they don’t change the status quo. Admittedly, sometimes the entire story is set up so the heroes have to fight to maintain the status quo (the “Must Shoot Abe Lincoln” issues of Plastic Man are probably the best recent example.) Have there been any comic stories where characters have traveled into the past and actually significantly changed things in the present? Like Marty McFly did in Back to the Future — he ended up with cool parents and a new truck. Has that ever happened in comics?

7 Responses to “ Time Travel Conundrum ”

  1. David Lawson
    November 18th, 2004 at 1:58 am

    Well, Rex Tyler and Atom-Smasher’s mom are still alive thanks to time travel, with the android taking Hourman I’s place in Zero Hour and Extant replacin Mrs. Rothstein in the plane crash from the ‘Darkness Falls’ trade paperback.

  2. Paul O'Brien
    November 18th, 2004 at 5:34 am

    There’s always the Age of Apocalypse. True, it was largely self-cancelling. But it did permanently add several new characters to the Marvel Universe, and they got the entire X-MAN title out of it.

  3. Tim O'Neil
    November 18th, 2004 at 7:21 am

    hey, I have always really, really liked the 1,000,000 series and most all of the associated crossoversd a and spinoffs. Grant Morrison at his level best!

  4. Tom
    November 18th, 2004 at 7:42 am

    John Byrne retroactively inserted Hippolyta as the JSA’s Wonder Woman, but I’m stil not sure whether that was a good thing.

  5. Chris Galdieri
    November 18th, 2004 at 9:45 am

    “John Byrne retroactively inserted Hippolyta as the JSA’s Wonder Woman, but I’m stil not sure whether that was a good thing.”

  6. Chris Galdieri
    November 18th, 2004 at 9:46 am

    “John Byrne retroactively inserted Hippolyta as the JSA’s Wonder Woman, but I’m stil not sure whether that was a good thing.”

    It seemed like a reasonably good thing, until one actually thought about it for, oh, two seconds or so.

  7. Scott
    November 18th, 2004 at 9:59 pm

    I thought about Age of Apocalypse, since it did add some characters…but I couldn’t decide if that counted as an alternate timeline or a change in history or exactly what.
    I had forgotten about Mrs. Rothstein. I’m not sure Android Rex counts as changing the past since that was techincally the future — or outside the timeline or whatever.

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