OMU: Black Panther -- Year Two

The Black Panther moves out into the wider Marvel Universe during the next twelve months, relocating to New York City as a member of the Avengers. He also meets his first love-interest, the American singer, social worker, and civil rights activist Monica Lynne. Additionally, since writer/editor Roy Thomas seemed to believe that all superheroes must have a secret identity, T’Challa started teaching high school under the alias “Luke Charles,” though the storyline was never developed and ultimately fizzled out. Though underutilized, the Black Panther is frequently seen giving the Avengers the benefit of his genius for mechanical engineering, which easily rivals Tony Stark’s, particularly with the introduction of the team’s signature aircraft, the Quinjet.

Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale). Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.


Now continuing… The True History of the Black Panther!


January–February 1964 – T’Challa, recently crowned monarch of the small African nation of Wakanda, continues his controversial modernizations efforts. He becomes increasingly frustrated with the limitations imposed on him by his role as king, wanting to have a greater direct impact on people’s lives both at home and abroad.

March 1964 – T’Challa takes some of his warriors to inspect an island in the Caribbean that he has purchased. Detecting intruders, T’Challa suits up as the Black Panther and goes to investigate. He finds three members of the royal family of the Inhumans: Black Bolt, Medusa, and Karnak. They are searching for the source of an unknown danger, and learning they are friends of the Fantastic Four, T’Challa decides to offer them assistance. Using their uncanny abilities, the Inhumans discover a high-tech installation hidden under the ground, only to be attacked by three mercenaries with strange weapons. However, Live Wire, Shellshock, and Ivan Karlovich are quickly defeated by the Black Panther and the Inhumans. Moving deeper into the complex, T’Challa is glad when two more Inhumans, Triton and Lockjaw, teleport in with the Human Torch and the Thing. Triton confirms Black Bolt’s suspicion that the villain they are seeking, known as Psycho-Man, threatens the world with a sinister emotion-manipulating ray. When a nightmarish, many-tentacled monster attacks them, Black Panther slips into an air duct and makes his way to the central control room. No sooner has he spotted Psycho-Man, though, than a large, panther-like monster appears in the duct and attacks him. Their brutal battle ends when the creature is disintegrated by a strange shockwave. Black Panther races back to his friends and finds them, now joined by another Inhuman called Gorgon, writhing under their foe’s emotion-rays. T’Challa leaps out of the duct and tackles Psycho-Man, but the villain collapses like an empty suit. The others explain that Psycho-Man himself is microscopic, having come from a “sub-atomic” realm known as a microverse to conquer the Earth with his bizarre technology, and with his armor disabled, he no longer poses a threat. The Fantastic Four take possession of Psycho-Man’s armor and the emotion-ray generator he was carrying so Mister Fantastic can study them at the Baxter Building. T’Challa claims the villain’s base, as it is on his property, and sets about dismantling and examining the fully-operational, large-scale “mind-ray” device their foe was about to activate.

April 1964 – Back in Wakanda, T’Challa is informed that one of his border outposts has been destroyed by foreign mercenaries. Fearing that Klaw may be making another attempt to steal vibranium, Black Panther goes to investigate. He finds the outpost’s personnel have all been killed and tracks the mercenaries into the jungle, where he attacks them. Unfortunately, the mercenaries overwhelm T’Challa with their high-tech weapons and give him a brutal beating. Nevertheless, he trails his foes back to their base camp, where he is astonished to discover that their leader appears to be Baron Zemo, the infamous Nazi war criminal reported killed while battling Captain America last year. Black Panther slips back to the palace to have his wounds treated, but soon a blistering energy beam from space carves a swath of destruction through the jungle. T’Challa’s military advisors report that the beam originates from an orbiting satellite that is protected by an impenetrable force field. Though he knows their only chance is to disable the satellite’s control center on the ground, T’Challa realizes he cannot take on Baron Zemo and his private army alone. Thus, he decides to call on the villain’s nemesis, Captain America, for help.

T’Challa sends an aero-car to New York City and is relieved when Captain America agrees to lend a hand. When the aero-car enters Wakandan airspace about an hour later, though, it is nearly destroyed by a blast from the orbiting satellite. T’Challa brings the ship in for a safe landing by remote control, then briefs the star-spangled hero on the situation. However, T’Challa withholds the identity of their foe, fearing Captain America would find it impossible to believe. Before they set out, Cap phones his teammates at Avengers Mansion and leaves a message on their answering service. The two heroes then track down the mercenaries and fight them in the jungle, only to be taken prisoner. In his underground bunker, Baron Zemo gives his enemies a beating while gloating about his plans to use his orbiting death-ray to destroy the United States. When Zemo’s agent, the notorious spy Irma Kruhl, arrives with a list of American military targets, T’Challa begins to worry that he and Cap have failed. Luckily, she proves to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in disguise and destroys Zemo’s satellite control panel with a flame-thrower concealed in her briefcase. As the trio fights its way through Zemo’s mercenaries, T’Challa realizes that S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 13 is also Captain America’s girlfriend. Their escape is thwarted by a powerful robot, which delays them long enough for Zemo and his mercenaries to swarm in and hold the trio at gunpoint. However, Cap grabs Zemo and yanks off his facemask, revealing him to be an impostor. Cap recognizes the man as Zemo’s former pilot, Franz Gruber. Outraged by the deception, one of the mercenaries shoots the impostor dead. Black Panther demands that the mercenaries surrender, as the warriors of Wakanda now have the bunker surrounded. Realizing they aren’t going to get paid, the mercenaries comply. As Zemo’s forces are taken into custody, Agent 13 deactivates the force field around the satellite, allowing S.H.I.E.L.D. to destroy it with a missile strike. Cap then takes T’Challa aside and explains that he’s taking a leave of absence from the Avengers and suggests that the Black Panther serve as his replacement. T’Challa realizes that this is the opportunity he’s been waiting for to make a difference in the world outside Wakanda. He accepts the offer, so Cap radios his teammates and arranges it. T’Challa then asks his friend M’Baku to serve as regent while he is in America with the Avengers. M’Baku agrees and appoints his ally N’Gamo to serve as his chancellor. Believing Wakanda is in good hands, T’Challa flies Captain America and Agent 13 back to the United States.

About an hour after landing in New York City, Black Panther arrives at Avengers Mansion, only to find the building completely dark. He enters through a hatch in the ceiling that Captain America told him about and is shocked to discover Goliath, the Wasp, and Hawkeye apparently dead on the floor. S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jasper Sitwell finds the Black Panther there and places him under arrest. When the police arrive, Hawkeye’s girlfriend, Natasha Romanoff, enters as well and is distraught to find her friends dead. She tells Sitwell that she’s never heard the Avengers mention anyone called the Black Panther, which makes the authorities doubt T’Challa’s story. When the conference room access code given to him by Captain America fails to work, T’Challa realizes he’s being framed for the murders, so he does not resist when the police escort him to the local precinct. When they arrive, though, T’Challa realizes that the true killer must have been hiding in the conference room. Thus, while the police are trying to sort out whether he actually has diplomatic immunity, T’Challa escapes from custody and returns to the scene of the crime. His suspicions are confirmed when he sneaks inside and finds the Grim Reaper, a super-villain with a scythe-like weapon, ranting to himself about having avenged the death of his brother, Wonder Man. Black Panther attacks him and in the ensuing battle learns that the Avengers are not truly dead—the Grim Reaper’s scythe merely induced a death-like state so the three heroes would either be buried alive or killed by the autopsy. Disgusted by such villainy, T’Challa fights even more savagely until the Grim Reaper accidentally stabs himself with his scythe. Black Panther seizes the weapon and, leaving his foe writhing in pain, races to the hospital where the Avengers were taken. There, he uses the scythe to revive them, ignoring the injuries he sustained during the fight. The three grateful heroes clear things up with the police, then take T’Challa back to the mansion. Unfortunately, the Grim Reaper has made good his escape. Goliath, Wasp, and Hawkeye vote unanimously to induct the Black Panther into their ranks.

In the days that follow, T’Challa meets the Avengers’ butler, Edwin Jarvis. Though Jarvis offers to prepare a room for T’Challa in the mansion, the king declines, preferring to purchase a townhouse on the Upper West Side. T’Challa then summons a small staff of domestic servants from Wakanda to manage the property for him. He is also interested to meet Goliath’s research partner, an African-American scientist named Bill Foster. However, T’Challa senses a thinly veiled animosity from the Wasp’s chauffeur, Charles Matthews, and wonders what lies behind it. While recovering from the injuries he sustained fighting the Grim Reaper, T’Challa familiarizes himself with the Avengers’ files and reports.

May 1964 – Black Panther and Goliath capture an intruder who turns out to be the Angel, a member of the X-Men. Angel informs them that he can lead them to the island fortress of the infamous mutant terrorist Magneto, where Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, former members of the Avengers, are being held captive along with the other X-Men. Joined by the Wasp and Hawkeye, they take an aero-car out to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and storm Magneto’s complex. However, the Avengers find they must fight the other X-Men—Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Iceman, and the Beast—as Magneto has somehow brainwashed them. The Avengers overcome the X-Men and smash their way into Magneto’s command center. Unexpectedly, Magneto’s obsequious henchman, the Toad, activates a self-destruct mechanism, declaring that the entire island will be destroyed in less than a minute. The Avengers and the X-Men, now free of their foe’s influence, evacuate the fortress as Magneto and the Toad flee for their lives. Reaching the Avengers’ aero-car on the beach, the two teams see Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch escaping with the Toad in another airship. Magneto tries to join them, but the Toad kicks him away. Magneto falls into the ocean from a great height as a series of tremendous explosions obliterate the island. As the aero-car takes to the skies, the Avengers can only assume that Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch want nothing more to do with them. Dejectedly, the Avengers drop the X-Men off in Manhattan on their way home. T’Challa, however, is proud that his first official mission with the Avengers was a success.

Black Panther and Goliath work together to improve the security systems at Avengers Mansion. However, just hours after informing Jarvis about the new protocols, the mansion is invaded by a gang of super-villains known as the Masters of Evil, comprised of Klaw, the Melter, the Radioactive Man, and Whirlwind. Taken unawares, the Avengers are quickly captured by their enemies. The team is shocked when the new leader of the Masters of Evil, the Crimson Cowl, is revealed to be Edwin Jarvis himself. Black Panther is then knocked unconscious, and when he wakes up, he finds himself trapped with his teammates inside a missile with an armed nuclear warhead. The Crimson Cowl appears on a closed-circuit TV monitor and taunts the Avengers by revealing Jarvis to be merely his hypnotized pawn. The real Crimson Cowl is in fact a robot calling itself Ultron-5. The missile is then launched, with the Avengers still aboard, but they are saved in mid-flight by the new Black Knight, who had tried to infiltrate the Masters of Evil by posing as his villainous predecessor. After a quick battle, the heroes capture Klaw, the Melter, and the Radioactive Man, but Whirlwind manages to escape. Once the missile’s hydrogen bomb has been disarmed, the Black Knight describes how Jarvis helped him to save the Avengers’ lives and explains that the butler betrayed the team because he needed money to pay for his mother’s chemotherapy treatments. Back at the mansion, Jarvis insists that he believed the Avengers would easily defeat the Masters of Evil and was desperate to help his ailing mother. However, he is unable to explain why he didn’t seek help from Tony Stark, or why he can’t remember where the hidden base of Ultron-5 is located. Nevertheless, the Avengers decide to give Jarvis a second chance, since he did risk his life to save theirs, but they remain somewhat wary of their butler in the weeks to follow.

June 1964 – T’Challa spends a quiet month exploring New York City and using the Avengers’ training facilities. Though he remains excited to be part of the world’s foremost superhero team, he realizes there is still something in the back of his mind that leaves him feeling vaguely dissatisfied.

July 1964 – At the beginning of the month, the Avengers convince T’Challa to take a turn as team chairman. He finds that such administrative duties come naturally to him. Then, a few days after hosting a Fourth-of-July picnic attended by the Fantastic Four, the Avengers receive a mysterious summons from Captain America which leads them to Doctor Doom’s abandoned castle in upstate New York. Having learned about the notorious super-villain’s time machine from Mister Fantastic, Cap is intent on using it to find out if there’s any way his old junior partner, Bucky, could have escaped his fiery death in 1945. Leaving the Wasp to operate the time machine’s control panel, Black Panther, Captain America, Goliath, and Hawkeye journey back to the fateful day when Cap entered a state of suspended animation. Materializing as invisible, intangible phantoms, they watch Cap and Bucky’s encounter with Baron Zemo at a U.S. Army base on the British coast. However, when Zemo knocks his foes out and binds them to the drone plane he is about to launch, the Avengers unexpectedly materialize fully, allowing Cap to free his past self. After a brief struggle with Zemo’s android henchmen, the Avengers return to their previous wraith-like state. The heroes watch grimly as Bucky is engulfed in a fireball while trying to deactivate the drone plane and Cap’s past self plunges into the sea. The time machine then takes the Avengers back to Doctor Doom’s castle. The Wasp admits she momentarily dozed off at the controls, and Goliath speculates that that must have been what caused them to fully phase into the past. The team locks up the castle and jets back to Manhattan.

Out for a walk one evening, T’Challa ruminates on his discontentment, thinking he should be trying to help people in a more direct manner. When he stumbles upon a robbery in progress, he becomes the Black Panther and captures the crooks in spectacular fashion. A group of African-American children have witnessed the incident, he realizes, and when one boy says he could use a Black Panther up on his block, T’Challa decides he needs to focus his efforts on the city’s poor black neighborhoods. He is then summoned back to Avengers Mansion, where he joins Goliath, the Wasp, and Hawkeye in a laboratory where they are examining an inert android with red skin and a strange green-and-gold costume. T’Challa is intrigued when the others discuss a failed project by Goliath and Bill Foster to build a “synthezoid,” a unique synthesis of android and robot. Suddenly, the android revives and attacks them, and during the fight he adopts the name “the Vision” for himself, based on a comment the Wasp had made about him. Goliath realizes that the Vision possesses the power to control his own density and tries to reason with him. The android agrees to stop fighting as he attempts to remember where he came from and why he felt compelled to attack the Avengers. The Avengers are shocked when the Vision recalls that his creator was a robot called Ultron-5. He then agrees to lead the Avengers to Ultron-5’s headquarters, hidden beneath an abandoned tenement on New York’s Lower East Side. When they arrive, the Avengers come under fire from automated defensive systems, and Goliath is separated from his teammates. Before the other Avengers can decide what to do, the walls start closing in on them. Insisting that he was unaware such traps awaited them, Vision phases through the wall and disappears. Several minutes later, Vision frees them and leads them to the smoking wreck of Ultron-5’s body, where they are rejoined by Goliath. Grateful to the Vision for defeating Ultron-5, the Avengers invite him to accompany them back to the mansion. Goliath takes the wreckage of Ultron-5’s body for study but is unable to find the robot’s head. When they arrive at their headquarters, Hawkeye introduces the Vision to Jarvis, since the android will be staying at Avengers Mansion for the time being.

Soon after, T’Challa decides to become a high school teacher for at-risk inner-city kids. He contacts the New York City school system, using the “Luke Charles” identity that was created for him when he was a college student, and makes all the necessary arrangements.

August 1964 – Black Panther joins Captain America, Goliath, the Wasp, Hawkeye, Thor, and Iron Man at Avengers Mansion to discuss the Vision’s petition for membership. Searching for clues as to the Vision’s origins, the Avengers head out to Goliath’s abandoned suburban laboratory in Cresskill, New Jersey. There, they discover that Goliath created Ultron back in January, though the evil robot erased his memory of it, and it then went on to evolve itself into Ultron-5. Seeking to destroy the Avengers, Ultron-5 created the Vision using recordings the team had made of Wonder Man’s brain patterns last year. The Avengers then return to their mansion and, after some deliberation, vote to accept the Vision into their ranks. T’Challa is surprised when the Vision appears to be overcome with emotion after hearing their decision.

September 1964 – T’Challa arrives early for a team meeting, since Goliath asked to discuss something with him beforehand. However, Goliath doesn’t show up, so T’Challa holds a training session with Hawkeye and the Vision instead. When the Wasp gets there, she becomes concerned about her partner’s absence. While they are all discussing it, a costumed man calling himself “Yellowjacket” appears and demands to be made a member of the Avengers. When the outraged heroes scoff at his overinflated ego, Yellowjacket claims to have killed Goliath. The Wasp nearly faints at this news. With the help of a swarm of wasps, Yellowjacket fights off the three male Avengers and kidnaps their female teammate. Later, the Wasp reactivates her emergency transponder signal, allowing the Black Panther, Hawkeye, and the Vision to track her to Cresskill City Hall in New Jersey. They are ready to fight with Yellowjacket when he and the Wasp emerge from the building, but she informs her confused teammates that she intends to marry Yellowjacket as soon as possible.

A couple of days later, Black Panther, Hawkeye, and Vision are joined by Captain America and Iron Man for the impromptu wedding ceremony. When the bride and groom arrive at the mansion, the Wasp angrily insists that the Avengers respect her decision. T’Challa then mingles with the other guests, including Mister Fantastic, the Invisible Girl, the Thing, the Human Torch and his girlfriend Crystal, Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Angel, Iceman, and the Beast, as well as the Black Knight. He also meets Daredevil, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and his girlfriend Clea, and Nick Fury, the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Before the ceremony can begin, though, Cap, Iron Man, and Fury are called away on other business. The ceremony goes well, but when the Wasp and Yellowjacket are cutting the cake afterwards, a giant python bursts out of the cake and attacks them. The Avengers ask their guests to step out while they deal with the situation. Moments later, the team is attacked by the Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime: Princess Python, the crafty Clown, Ernesto and Luigi Gambonno, and the Human Cannonball. While the Gambonno brothers keep the Black Panther busy, the giant python coils around the Wasp, who has been stunned by the Ringmaster. Yellowjacket leaps to her defense but is unable to reach her fast enough. Unexpectedly, Yellowjacket grows to giant-size, revealing himself to be Goliath in a different costume, and rescues his bride. The Circus of Crime is quickly defeated, and the police are called to take them into custody. The wedding guests return for the reception and are pleased to learn that “Yellowjacket” is really the Wasp’s old beau and not some stranger. When the party ends, the newlyweds depart for their honeymoon.

The following Monday, T’Challa starts teaching at Andrew Jackson High School in Harlem, using the alias “Luke Charles.” He finds the work to be highly rewarding and feels he’s having a positive impact on his students’ lives. Not long after, T’Challa is shocked when Iron Man informs the Avengers that Captain America has apparently been gunned down by HYDRA assassins on the waterfront. They try to learn more about the circumstances of Cap’s death from Rick Jones, who is dressed as Cap’s WWII-era partner Bucky, but the lad is too upset to discuss it. A funeral service is quickly arranged, attended also by Nick Fury and other agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., including Cap’s bereaved girlfriend Agent 13, who now introduces herself as Sharon Carter. During the eulogy, everyone present is suddenly knocked out by a powerful anesthetic gas. When the Black Panther comes to, he finds himself in a coffin about to be buried alive by HYDRA agents in a gloomy cemetery. However, Captain America reappears and, with Rick, pursues the fleeing HYDRA agents as the Avengers recover their senses. Relieved that Cap is not dead after all, they return to Avengers Mansion.

The Avengers are contacted by the astral form of Doctor Strange, who is seeking help to save the world. Recognizing him from the wedding, they agree at once, although only the Black Panther, Hawkeye, and the Vision are available. They follow the ectoplasmic Doctor Strange to a cemetery elsewhere in the city, flying in one of the new Quinjets that T’Challa has provided. There, they discover the comatose form of the Black Knight. Rejoining his physical body, Doctor Strange explains that the Black Knight was laid low by a magical crystal while they were investigating an evil cult called the Sons of Satannish. Determined to save the Black Knight, T’Challa carries him to the Quinjet and rushes him to the team’s medical facilities. There, Doctor Strange reluctantly performs a simple operation and the team’s ultra-rejuvenator device does the rest, enabling the Black Knight to make a quick recovery. Vision reports to the others that bizarre natural phenomena have been reported worldwide, such as volcanoes erupting through the ice in Antarctica and snow falling in the jungles of central Africa. Time has run out, Doctor Strange reveals, and the world-threatening spell cast by the Sons of Satannish has done its work, bringing simulacra of the Asgardian monsters Ymir and Surtur to Earth. And so, Black Panther and Vision fly the Quinjet to Wakanda to battle “Ymir” while Hawkeye and the Black Knight take on “Surtur” in Antarctica, all in order to give Doctor Strange time to gain mental control over the magical crystal so that he can use it to send the two creatures back from whence they came. “Ymir” wreaks havoc on Wakanda and destroys the Quinjet, but at the critical moment, the monster is teleported to Antarctica along with the two heroes. “Ymir” and “Surtur” inadvertently strike each other, causing a tremendous implosion. When the smoke clears, the astral form of Doctor Strange appears and congratulates the Avengers and the Black Knight on their victory.

Stopping in Wakanda on the way back to New York, Black Panther, Hawkeye, Vision, and the Black Knight discover that T’Challa’s regent, M’Baku, is scheming to seize the throne. After the other three have been imprisoned, T’Challa is attacked by M’Baku, who is dressed in the forbidden garb of the White Gorilla and calling himself the Man-Ape. As they fight, T’Challa is astonished by M’Baku’s newfound superhuman strength and suspects his treacherous accomplice, N’Gamo, had something to do with it. Their battle leads them through the technological jungle to the nuclear power plant beneath it. There, Black Panther saves the Man-Ape from falling into a reactor, only to be jolted into unconsciousness when his ungrateful foe grabs a handful of live wires. When he comes to, T’Challa finds himself shackled to a stone slab at the base of the sacred panther totem. The Man-Ape tries to topple the totem over onto T’Challa, but instead it just crumbles and crushes the villain under tons of stone. Hawkeye, Vision, and the Black Knight come running up, having finally freed themselves, and release the Black Panther from his bonds. Disillusioned by his friend’s betrayal, T’Challa reluctantly presses old N’Baza back into service as regent before returning to America. He is frustrated when N’Gamo somehow escapes with M’Baku’s body, worried that the Man-Ape will become a martyr to those dissatisfied with T’Challa’s rule. Taking a new Quinjet, the Avengers drop the Black Knight off in England on their way home.

When they arrive at Avengers Mansion, the three heroes are greeted by Yellowjacket and the Wasp, just back from their honeymoon. They explain that Yellowjacket has permanently abandoned his Goliath identity due to the ill-effects of constantly enlarging himself. Before he can destroy his growth serums, though, the Avengers receive an emergency message they believe to be from Nick Fury, which sends them on a wild goose chase to the Caribbean Islands in search of Natasha Romanoff. T’Challa uses his authority as team chairman to make Hawkeye stay behind, believing he’d be too emotionally involved in such a mission. When the four heroes return, however, they find that Hawkeye has disappeared. Soon after, they hear a message broadcast over hijacked radio and TV signals by a super-villain Yellowjacket identifies as his old enemy Egghead. The villain claims to be causing a string of blackouts across the country and threatens to shut down the entire nation’s power grid if his demands are not met. While the Black Panther goes out in search of Hawkeye, Yellowjacket tries to determine where Egghead’s broadcast originated.

About a day later, the Avengers discover that Egghead is broadcasting from an orbiting space station. Unfortunately, the station is cloaked and they are unable to determine its precise coordinates. The villain ups the ante by revealing his powerful “death-ray,” which he demonstrates by obliterating an evacuated Midwestern town. Hawkeye finally returns, accompanied by Natasha, and reveals that he has given up archery to assume the Goliath identity. Yellowjacket agrees to give the new Goliath full use of his size-changing potions. Their meeting is interrupted when Jarvis escorts in the notorious racketeer Barney Barton, who has information on Egghead’s scheme. T’Challa is suspicious of the obvious personal connection between the gangster and Hawkeye/Goliath, but he agrees to allow Barton to accompany the team on their raid of Egghead’s space station. Using the orbital coordinates Barton provides, the Avengers reach the station aboard a Wakandan-built space rocket. There, they battle Egghead’s army of robots until they fall victim to a paralysis ray. Fortunately, Barney Barton sacrifices himself to save the Avengers. Black Panther is stunned to learn that Barton was Hawkeye’s brother.

Since Egghead managed to escape, the Avengers return to their headquarters to discuss their plan of action. Goliath tells them a bit about when he was just a circus performer named Clint Barton and how Barney helped him survive after they’d been orphaned. Suddenly, the Swordsman invades their meeting room, though he is a bit confused about Hawkeye’s new identity. Goliath tries to prevent his teammates from interfering in what he considers to be a private fight, which allows the Swordsman to fire energy beams from his sword that blast the Black Panther, Yellowjacket, the Wasp, and the Vision into unconsciousness. When the Avengers revive, they find both Goliath and the Swordsman are gone, but before long reports come in that Goliath singlehandedly captured the Swordsman and Egghead and turned them over to the police. Soon after, the Avengers grow concerned when Captain America avoids them following a nearly fatal battle against HYDRA. Yellowjacket is certain Cap must have his reasons for his behavior, and Goliath reminds them that, despite recent setbacks, many active HYDRA cells remain. T’Challa is sure that if anyone can bring down HYDRA, it’s Captain America.

T’Challa is surprised when a Wakandan national named N’Jadaka visits him at Avengers Mansion and reveals that he was among those kidnapped by Ulysses Klaw’s men during their failed invasion eleven years ago. He eventually escaped from them, he explains, but lacked the means to return home. T’Challa is very sympathetic to N’Jadaka’s plight and promises to arrange for him to return to Wakanda. A few days later, T’Challa learns from his chief communications officer, Taku, that an army of mercenaries has attacked the country, apparently intent on freeing Zemo’s gang from their island prison. Deciding he’d better take charge of the situation, T’Challa steps down as Avengers chairman a bit early and hands the gavel off to the Vision. He then takes a Quinjet, stopping at the Harlem tenement where N’Jadaka has been living to pick him up. T’Challa is amused by the vast amount of luggage that N’Jadaka is bringing with him. When they land in Wakanda, T’Challa wishes N’Jadaka well as he heads back to his village in the western hill country. Turning his attention to the foreign incursion, T’Challa leads his warriors into battle to repel them. In the midst of an intense firefight, Taku informs T’Challa that the Avengers are requesting a sizable amount of vibranium to use against Ultron-6. After the necessary arrangements have been made, T’Challa returns to the battle, and the invaders are soon routed.

October 1964 – Black Panther finds himself transported to the throne room of Kang the Conqueror at his fortress in the 41st century. Kang explains, one king to another, that he was challenged to a contest by a powerful alien called the Grandmaster. If Kang wins, his lover Ravonna, who hovers between life and death inside a nearby stasis tube, will be restored to full health. If Kang loses, though, the earth will be destroyed. As such, T’Challa agrees with Kang’s plan to bring the Avengers forward in time to serve as his champions. He is annoyed, though, when Kang lures the Avengers into his time-travel vortex by sending an android to kidnap Tony Stark from the hospital where he was about to undergo life-saving surgery. When explanations have been made, Captain America agrees on behalf of Yellowjacket, the Wasp, Goliath, the Vision, and Thor that they will cooperate for the sake of the planet, if not for Kang, on the condition that Kang return Stark to the hospital immediately. As Kang complies, the Grandmaster materializes in the room and teleports Captain America, Goliath, and Thor away for round one of their contest.

Black Panther, Yellowjacket, Wasp, and Vision watch helplessly as the Grandmaster sets four super-villains of his own creation against Captain America, Goliath, Thor, and Iron Man, who materializes out of nowhere to join his teammates. On Liberty Island, Cap defeats Nighthawk. At the Taj Mahal, Iron Man defeats Doctor Spectrum. At the Giza Necropolis in Egypt, Thor defeats Hyperion. However, in London, England, Goliath only beats the Whizzer with the unexpected help of the Black Knight. The Grandmaster calls a foul, since the Black Knight is not a member of the Avengers, and recalls the four heroes to their base. Then, for round two of the contest, Black Panther, Yellowjacket, and Vision are transported to Nazi-occupied Paris, France, in February 1942, where they encounter the Invaders. Assuming the Avengers to be Nazis, the contemporary Captain America, Sub-Mariner, and Human Torch attack them. After a brief battle, Vision overcomes his three opponents by partially phasing through their bodies, thus disrupting their nervous systems. With victory achieved, Black Panther, Yellowjacket, and Vision are transported back to Kang’s 41st-century fortress. There, they rejoin Captain America, the Wasp, Goliath, Thor, and Iron Man, as well as the Black Knight, who has followed the Avengers to the future by his own means. Immediately, the heroes storm into Kang’s throne room and battle the time-traveling despot, to the Grandmaster’s great amusement. Once Kang is defeated, the Grandmaster teleports the Avengers home. Black Panther joins his teammates in extending a unanimous offer of membership to the Black Knight. He then drops the Black Knight off in England on his way back to Wakanda to finish up some affairs of state.

T’Challa flies back to New York the following day to rejoin the Avengers. When he arrives at the mansion, he immediately rushes off to help a black woman being assaulted by the Sons of the Serpent, a hate group that’s been making headlines again recently. One of the attackers is accidentally shot dead by his compatriot, and the remaining two are electrocuted by remote control when they fail to overcome the Black Panther. When the police arrive on the scene, the woman identifies herself as Monica Lynne, then storms off after berating the cops for not showing up until after the danger was over. Black Panther makes a statement to the police before heading back to the mansion, leaving the cops to deal with the dead bodies.

The next evening, a strange little man named Silas X. Cragg drops by Avengers Mansion looking for Captain America, whom he wants to invite to a charity benefit at the city orphanage. Yellowjacket phones Cap at the hotel where he’s staying and passes on the information. Later, the Avengers tune in to a late-night TV talk show hosted by notorious right-wing bigot Dan Dunn, who is arguing about civil rights with a controversial black agitator named Montague Hale. T’Challa is intrigued to see that Monica Lynne is also a guest on the program, and he learns that she is a popular local singer. Yellowjacket worries that the Sons of the Serpent may succeed in inciting a race war if something isn’t done. Black Panther insists on having 24 hours to try to resolve the situation on his own. He heads out and goes to Monica Lynne’s apartment building, where he waits for her to return from the TV studio. When she arrives, he implores her not to appear on a follow-up broadcast tomorrow, as he intends to take down the Sons of the Serpent. Black Panther then stalks the city until he finds some members of the hate group on the waterfront. He manages to infiltrate their group and thus gets a ride to their secret base submerged in the harbor. When they arrive, however, his deception is discovered and he is taken prisoner.

Throughout the next day, T’Challa is kept in chains and forced to watch TV coverage of a Black Panther impostor going on a lawless rampage. He realizes the Sons of the Serpent are trying to use the image of a militant black superhero to frighten white people into supporting their cause. Eventually, Dan Dunn’s show comes on again, and T’Challa sees that Monica Lynne has disregarded his advice and agreed to appear. A heated exchange between Dunn and Montague Hale about the Black Panther’s vigilantism nearly becomes a fistfight. The Sons of the Serpent then transport the bound T’Challa to an abandoned TV studio, where they plan to unmask him during a pirate broadcast. However, T’Challa begins to figure out what’s really going on when he realizes there are two different men dressed in the uniform of the Supreme Serpent. Thus, when the Avengers come to the rescue, T’Challa exposes the Black Panther impostor as a white man and reveals that the two Supreme Serpents are none other than Dunn and Hale, who staged their animosity to cover their subversive activities. Monica is disgusted that Hale has betrayed the civil rights movement and decides to put the fight for equality above her singing career. Impressed, T’Challa vows to do all he can for the cause as well.

The following day, T’Challa is doing business at a Manhattan bank when it is robbed by a gang called the Split-Second Squad. He manages to slip away and change into the Black Panther, but the crooks incapacitate him with a sedative gas and escape. A couple days later, Black Panther joins Captain America, Goliath, and the Vision at a Brooklyn pier to see off Yellowjacket and the Wasp, who, along with their friend Bill Foster, are leaving to head up a government research project in Alaska. Once the ship has departed, the Avengers are suddenly accosted by Quicksilver, who tells them that the Scarlet Witch has been kidnapped by an extradimensional barbarian named Arkon, who has also kidnapped numerous nuclear physicists. Unable to breach the dimensional barrier on their own, the Avengers call in Thor and Iron Man for help. Using the power of Thor’s enchanted hammer, the Avengers travel to Arkon’s otherworldly realm of Polemachus and storm his fortress. When Arkon transports himself and the Scarlet Witch to Earth, Black Panther, Goliath, Vision, and Quicksilver pursue them while the older Avengers remain behind to free the kidnapped scientists and solve the energy crisis that prompted Arkon’s incursion in the first place. With no further need for hostilities, Arkon departs peacefully and the Avengers regroup back at their headquarters. Cap introduces the Black Panther and the Vision to Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, who say they are ready to rejoin the team.

In the morning, the Avengers receive an urgent call for help from the Air Force’s Desert Base in New Mexico. Black Panther, Goliath, Vision, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch take a Quinjet and fly out west. When they arrive, they meet with General Thaddeus E. “Thunderbolt” Ross, who informs them that the Hulk is moving westward through the Mole Man’s system of tunnels and must be stopped before he reaches the San Andreas Fault. Immediately, they head northwest in an Air Force VTOL cargo jet, which carries a massive device called a gammatron bombarder, hoping to intercept the Hulk before he can trigger an earthquake. They begin setting up the machinery in a remote clearing in a forest in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Soon they detect the Hulk directly below them, and the Vision passes down through the ground by using his power to alter his body’s density. Moments later, Vision reappears with the Hulk in hot pursuit. The Avengers attack the green behemoth, trying to draw him between the two units of the gammatron bombarder. As soon as Goliath is able to lure the Hulk into position, Black Panther switches on the gamma radiation. Unfortunately, instead of changing back into Bruce Banner as planned, Hulk breaks free, destroys the device, and disappears into the distance before the astonished Avengers can react. Though they failed to capture the Hulk, the Avengers are satisfied that they prevented a major disaster. They return to Desert Base, pick up their Quinjet, and are soon back in New York.

Two days later, T’Challa is at Avengers Mansion when they receive a visit from Tony Stark, who is fighting off a hostile takeover by an unscrupulous businessman named Cornelius Van Lunt. Stark explains that the Avengers must raise $120,000 in back rent on the mansion immediately to help keep Stark Industries afloat during the crisis. T’Challa apologizes for being unable to open Wakanda’s coffers for such a purpose and regrets that he will not be able to participate in the team’s fundraising efforts due to his job as a teacher. The next evening, though, T’Challa does agree to help the Scarlet Witch remove a metal belt that Arkon had locked around her waist. Though the extradimensional alloy proves to be a challenge to his technical skills, T’Challa finally manages to cut it off without injuring her. The Scarlet Witch then rushes off to promote the Avengers’ cause on a nationally televised talk show. Two days after that, Quicksilver informs T’Challa that Van Lunt has offered to drop his attempt to bankrupt Stark if the Avengers would perform certain menial labors for him. However, he suspects that their next job, repairing a condemned tunnel under the East River, may be a death-trap. T’Challa agrees to have the Avengers’ submarine standing by near the tunnel. Quicksilver’s suspicions are borne out when, seconds after the team sneaks out of the tunnel, a series of explosive charges causes it to collapse. The Avengers are now convinced that Van Lunt is the mastermind behind the Split-Second Squad, and sure enough, they find the crooks attempting to steal a shipment of gold bars. Though they make short work of the Split-Second Squad, the Avengers are startled to discover their hooded leader is not Van Lunt after all, but a revenge-minded employee of his seeking to frame the tycoon. Disgusted by the whole affair, the Avengers return home.

After school, T’Challa stops in the Harlem office where Monica Lynne does her day job as a social worker. She’s tired and upset, and they argue. T’Challa then continues on to Avengers Mansion, where he is surprised to learn that Captain America was just attacked outside by the Man-Ape. He realizes N’Gamo must have healed M’Baku after he was seemingly crushed by the panther totem last month. Sure enough, M’Baku suddenly appears on their video monitor, revealing that he’s kidnapped Monica and challenging T’Challa to fight him. Over his teammates’ objections, Black Panther sets out alone and tracks his foe to a large vessel hovering low in the night sky above Manhattan. Since the ship is not of Wakandan design, T’Challa wonders where M’Baku could have obtained it. Upon boarding the ship, Black Panther is ambushed by the Man-Ape, whose superhuman strength seems even greater than before. Even so, T’Challa overcomes both M’Baku and N’Gamo, only to be caught off guard by an exploding mannequin disguised as Monica. When he regains consciousness, T’Challa finds he has been chained up and brought to an abandoned subway line, where he meets M’Baku’s new partners-in-crime: the Grim Reaper, the Swordsman, the Living Laser, and Power Man. This “Lethal Legion,” as they call themselves, then leaves T’Challa and Monica imprisoned overnight in a dark room.

In the morning, T’Challa overhears the Lethal Legion plotting their multi-pronged attack on the Avengers. After the villains have left, a rather convenient power failure enables T’Challa to escape. He contacts the Avengers to warn them of their foes’ plans but uses the code “Prometheus Priority” to alert them that it’s probably an elaborate trap. His suspicions are confirmed when the Grim Reaper reappears, bragging that he wanted T’Challa to send the Avengers scrambling all over town so their forces would be divided. The villain then recaptures T’Challa by gassing him into unconsciousness. When he comes to, Black Panther finds himself with Captain America, Goliath, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch inside a giant hourglass filled with poison fumes. However, Vision arrives, disguised as Power Man, and tricks the Grim Reaper into smashing the glass and freeing them. The Lethal Legion proves no match for the combined might of the Avengers, and they are quickly apprehended. Unexpectedly, Vision announces that he is resigning from the Avengers, claiming that a synthetic man has no place among flesh-and-blood people. He departs immediately, leaving T’Challa perplexed by his sudden decision. The Avengers free Monica from a cell, and T’Challa escorts her home. He is relieved to learn later that the Vision had gone to Andrew Jackson High School first thing that morning to inform them that “Luke Charles” would be absent.

Over the next week, T’Challa becomes frustrated that the Avengers aren’t doing more to combat ordinary crime in New York City when they’re not dealing with costumed menaces. This leads to a discussion among the full team about the best way the Avengers can serve the greater good of society. T’Challa states his position, but Cap, Thor, Iron Man, and Quicksilver believe the team should focus on global threats like the international crime syndicate Zodiac. Vision has just returned hoping the team will help the Native American hero Red Wolf avenge the murder of his parents, for which he blames Cornelius Van Lunt, and Goliath and the Scarlet Witch side with them. Unable to reach a consensus, the Avengers decide to split their forces, and each faction goes its own way. A little over a day later, though, Zodiac seals the island of Manhattan behind an impenetrable force field and invades the city with an army of mercenaries, intent on holding it for ransom. Prowling the rooftops, Black Panther becomes worried when the syndicate’s leader, Aries, announces that Cap, Thor, Iron Man, and Quicksilver have been taken prisoner. To slow the mercenary army down, T’Challa sabotages a power station, causing a blackout. He then runs into Daredevil, and they team up to try to free the Avengers from the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue, only to find the captive heroes have already been moved to Madison Square Garden to face public execution. There, Daredevil puts on some loud clothes and infiltrates the crowd in the arena, where he manages to use his billy club to sabotage the units keeping the four Avengers sedated. Once they’re free, the six heroes make short work of Zodiac’s forces, and as soon as the force field is disabled, the National Guard pours into the city to round up the mercenaries. When Aries makes a hasty retreat by aircraft, Thor pursues him. To stop Aries from turning his mysterious weapon, the Zodiac Key, on innocent bystanders, Thor summons down a lightning strike that blows up the villain’s ship, killing him and his henchmen. The Avengers and Daredevil then spend the rest of the day helping to repair some of the damage caused to Manhattan’s bridges and tunnels by the invasion. Comparing notes at Avengers Mansion later, the heroes are surprised to learn that the separate cases they had pursued were all, in fact, connected.

Hearing rumors of a kidnapping plot involving Professor T.W. Erwin of Miskatonic University, who is also serving as the grand marshal of the 11th annual Rutland, Vermont Halloween Parade, Black Panther, Goliath, Vision, and Quicksilver head up to the small town to check it out. When they arrive, one of the parade’s organizers, Tom Fagan, asks them to ride on a special parade float. During the festivities, they spot Klaw, the Melter, the Radioactive Man, and Whirlwind attempting to grab Professor Erwin, and a destructive brawl breaks out. The Masters of Evil gain the upper hand, only for the Wasp, the Scarlet Witch, the Black Widow, and Medusa to arrive and turn the tables. However, as soon as they have defeated the villains, the super-heroines attack the male Avengers and knock them out as well. When he comes to, T’Challa finds himself and his male teammates tied up in Professor Erwin’s laboratory, where the elderly scientist is explaining his parallel-time projector to a warrior woman called the Valkyrie. However, the Valkyrie soon reveals herself to be Thor’s old enemy, the Enchantress, in disguise. She hopes to use the parallel-time projector to return to Asgard, from which she has been banished. When she learned the Masters of Evil also planned to steal the device, she explains, she used her sorcery to make the four super-heroines her pawns. Luckily, Scarlet Witch breaks free of the Enchantress’s spell and uses her mutant hex power to hurl the villainess into the parallel-time projector. There is a tremendous explosion, and when the smoke clears, the Avengers find nothing but a smoking crater in the floor. The other women are thus freed from the spells that ensorcelled them. Goliath’s snide remarks prompt the Scarlet Witch to complain that her male teammates could use a dose of feminist enlightenment. Unfortunately, the Masters of Evil have escaped, so the heroes return to New York, where the Wasp, the Black Widow, and Medusa go their separate ways. T’Challa is frustrated that Klaw has once again slipped through his fingers.

November 1964 – While stalking the streets late on election night, Black Panther comes across a group of police officers searching for Daredevil. The newly elected district attorney, Franklin “Foggy” Nelson, recruits the Black Panther to help find the missing hero, who is suffering from blood-poisoning. T’Challa tracks Daredevil to the apartment of Nelson’s law partner, Matt Murdock, where he finds Murdock’s girlfriend Karen Page being held at gunpoint by a roboticist called Starr Saxon. Daredevil knocks Saxon out, then Nelson arrives with the police and a doctor who checks Daredevil over. Apparently, a gash on his hand has allowed Daredevil to bleed off the contaminated blood, saving his life. To T’Challa’s surprise, Daredevil declines to incriminate Saxon and hesitates when Saxon makes a break for it, allowing him to escape. Ignoring Nelson’s demands for an explanation, Daredevil goes after Saxon. Black Panther offers to help, but Daredevil asks him not to interfere. Concerned about Daredevil’s behavior, T’Challa decides to follow him discreetly. Observing a rooftop meeting of the two men, T’Challa learns that Saxon has discovered that Daredevil is Matt Murdock and is threatening to expose his secret identity. With no evidence to tie Saxon to the murder of mob boss “Biggie” Benson, Daredevil reluctantly lets him go. T’Challa notes that Daredevil seems very conflicted about the situation and decides not to confront him about it. Instead, he makes a surreptitious exit and goes home to watch the election returns. T’Challa is disappointed when Republican Senator Morris N. Richardson defeats President Lyndon B. Johnson after running a campaign laced with racial animus as well as inflammatory anti-mutant rhetoric. He worries that the tenor of public discourse in the United States seems to be turning uglier every day.

A few days later, Matt Murdock is reported killed in an airplane crash, but when Daredevil continues to plague the criminal underworld, T’Challa realizes it must be a ruse to outmaneuver Saxon. Indeed, about a week later, Murdock turns up alive, whereupon Nelson claims that Murdock’s death was faked as part of a scheme to defeat the super-villain called Mister Fear. Nothing ever comes of Saxon’s threats. T’Challa wonders if Nelson is aware of Murdock’s dual identity.

Black Panther spots an intruder breaking into Avengers Mansion and attacks him from behind, only to discover that it’s Hercules, a former member of the team. Hercules is ready to fight, but Goliath, Vision, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch turn up and defuse the situation. Hercules then reports that an all-pervasive terror has been induced in him as a punishment by his angry father, Zeus. He is being pursued by a sinister entity known as the Huntsman, who is the instrument of his father’s wrath. The Avengers offer to help, but Hercules insists it’s too dangerous. Suddenly, the Huntsman appears and uses his magic staff to render the Avengers helpless. In a mad panic, Hercules smashes his way out of the mansion and disappears into the night as the Huntsman sets off after him.

When Andrew Jackson High School closes for a four-day weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving, T’Challa decides to return to Wakanda to see how things are going there. N’Baza seems weak but insists he has everything under control. Even so, T’Challa faces mounting pressure to come home to stay. Chafing against the demands placed on him, T’Challa returns to New York to be ready to teach school on Monday morning.

December 1964 – One evening, Black Panther is prowling the neighborhood near Andrew Jackson High School when he hears an argument on the playground. He finds one of his students, Lonnie Carver, and his older brother, Billy Carver, being pressured to join the Thunderbolts street gang. Unwilling to take no for an answer, the gang’s leader assaults Billy, who refuses to fight back, saying he’s had his fill of violence after serving in Vietnam. Impressed, Black Panther intervenes and drives off the gang. When the Black Panther complements Billy, he notices Lonnie’s eyes light up—he knows how excited the boy has been for his brother to come home from the war. Thus, it comes as a surprise about a week later when Lonnie’s attitude toward school takes a sudden turn for the worse. He loses interest in the course material and increasingly becomes a discipline problem. Concerned, T’Challa decides to keep an eye on Lonnie for the time being.

When the Scarlet Witch has a dream about the Black Knight being killed by Arkon, Black Panther, Goliath, Vision, and Quicksilver decide to try to contact the Britain-based Avenger. They become concerned when they are unable to reach him and decide to investigate. Realizing they’ll need the power of Thor’s enchanted hammer to get to the extradimensional realm of Polemachus, T’Challa volunteers to go out and find the thunder god. He soon succeeds, but as they approach Avengers Mansion, the entire building suddenly vanishes. An image of the Enchantress appears in the sky and taunts Thor, so he uses his hammer to create a spacetime vortex that carries him and the Black Panther to Arkon’s capital city. As Thor launches a blistering attack on Arkon’s troops, Black Panther tracks down the rest of the Avengers and frees them from a dungeon. Hopelessly outnumbered, the Avengers are on the verge of defeat when the Enchantress loses her hold on the Black Knight while distracted by the Scarlet Witch. The Black Knight immediately switches sides, and the Enchantress, realizing the Avengers have turned the tide, teleports away to safety. When he sees that the sorceress has abandoned him, Arkon declares an end to the fighting. Thor then generates a spacetime vortex large enough to carry Avengers Mansion back to Earth, calling on Odin for assistance. However, while the Black Knight is returned to England and Thor and the Black Panther materialize with the mansion in New York, there is no sign of their other four teammates.

Before they can mount a search, Black Panther and Thor remember they are due to participate in a Toys-for-Tots program sponsored by the United States Marine Corps. For the next few hours, they join Captain America and Spider-Man in distributing toys to underprivileged children. Later, Thor uses the energies of his hammer to power an interdimensional scanner that Iron Man has brought over from Stark Industries to search for their missing teammates. After many hours, Goliath, Vision, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch are located and brought home. They relate how they had somehow been diverted to a parallel world, where they saved the earth alongside heroic versions of the Squadron Sinister called the Squadron Supreme. As the team heads upstairs for some refreshments, T’Challa receives an urgent call from Taku in Wakanda. Taku reports that N’Baza has died, leaving T’Challa stunned by the news. Realizing he may have to give up both his place in the Avengers and his teaching job, T’Challa joins his teammates in the mansion’s living room. He regales them with the tale of how he became the Black Panther and exposed B’Tumba’s treachery before announcing his bad news. T’Challa then goes out to be alone among the rooftops of the city to ponder his future. Once again, he realizes, the throne feels more like a prison than a privilege.

Black Panther attends a meeting of the Avengers with Captain America, Goliath, Thor, Iron Man, the Vision, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch. Afterwards, Goliath, Thor, and Iron Man head to the Caribbean to protect an experimental weather-control station for the United Nations while T’Challa and the others make a television appearance for charity. When the trio returns, they report that they battled the Hulk, the Silver Surfer, and the Sub-Mariner until some Atlantean scientists convinced them the project needed to be shut down. The Avengers then hold their third annual Christmas charity benefit, at which Cap introduces his new partner, the Falcon, to his teammates. T’Challa admits to a bit of jealousy toward the Falcon, as his students in Harlem seem to be bigger fans of their homegrown hero than they are of the Black Panther. The two men hit it off and enjoy discussing their different approaches to the issues facing the Harlem community. Then, over the next week, T’Challa begins making arrangements to return to Wakanda, planning to leave New York by the middle of January.


Notes:

March 1964 – The Black Panther teams up with the Inhumans and half the Fantastic Four to battle the microscopic menace of Psycho-Man in Fantastic Four Annual #5. The shockwave that ended T’Challa’s fight with the illusory panther-monster was generated by Gorgon stamping his hooves.

April 1964 – Black Panther and Captain America join forces against the phony Baron Zemo in Tales of Suspense #97–99 and Captain America #100. The title change occurred due to favorable business conditions that allowed Marvel to move away from double-feature books. The story also weaves in and out of Avengers #51, which occurs simultaneously. T’Challa is then inducted into the Avengers and appears in Avengers #52 and following. T’Challa credits himself as one of the world’s richest men, so it seems unlikely to me that he would room at Avengers Mansion and eat Jarvis’s cooking when he could have his own place, though the evidence is inconclusive. The Wasp’s chauffeur, “Charles Matthews,” is secretly the super-villain Whirlwind.

May 1964 – The Avengers’ assault on Magneto’s island fortress detours briefly into Uncanny X-Men #45.

July 1964 – The Fourth-of-July picnic at Avengers Mansion occurs behind the scenes and is suggested by the date. Due to the machinations of the Scarlet Centurion, the Avengers do not travel back into their own past but into the parallel universe now known as Earth-689, which, incidentally, is the same world depicted in Avengers Annual #2 and What If? #4. However, Captain America does not remember the events of that night clearly enough (partly from the trauma itself and partly because of his post-cryogenic amnesia) to realize it, despite there being significant differences in how the events played out. The most important difference is that the Captain America of Earth-689 is killed by the same explosion that kills Bucky. The Avengers then travel to the 1964 of Earth-689 in Avengers Annual #2, where they battle the Scarlet Centurion and their own counterparts. As the Avengers finally return to their own reality, though, the Watcher erases their memories of this adventure, since the Scarlet Centurion, Pharaoh Rama-Tut, Kang the Conqueror, and Immortus are all the same person. Later, the Black Panther looks on as Jarvis meets the Vision in one of the many flashbacks in Avengers #280.

September 1964 – Captain America’s premature funeral is held in Captain America #113. The battle in Drearcliff Cemetery continues in the flashback in Avengers #106. In addition to M’Baku and N’Gamo, Avengers #62 also introduces T’Challa’s ally W’Kabi. The white gorillas of the Wakandan highlands must have been mutated by vibranium exposure, just like the heart-shaped herb that gives the Black Panther his powers, so that by consuming their flesh and blood M’Baku gains superhuman strength. This is doubtless why the cult of the white gorilla has long been suppressed. Black Panther has a cameo in Sub-Mariner #14 in a montage of heroes listening to Egghead’s broadcast, then appears briefly at the beginning of Captain America #114, when the Avengers talk about Cap behind his back. T’Challa’s meeting with N’Jadaka, who will return in a few years as Erik Killmonger, is depicted in flashbacks in Jungle Action #7 and #16. T’Challa is unaware that Killmonger’s snake-loving henchman Horatio Walters, a.k.a. Venomm, has stowed away aboard the Quinjet and is thereby smuggled into Wakanda. The nature and intent of the foreign incursion seen in Avengers #68 is not clearly explained in the story, but this scenario makes the most sense to me. This is also the issue that introduces Taku.

October 1964 – The Invaders’ battle with the Black Panther, Yellowjacket, and the Vision is revisited, with a few extra details added, in Invaders Annual #1. Silas X. Cragg drops by Avengers Mansion in Captain America #121. The Avengers attempt to capture the Hulk in Hulk #128. T’Challa helps the Scarlet Witch with her metal belt behind the scenes during Avengers #77. For more information, see OMU: Scarlet Witch – Part Three. When the Black Panther and Daredevil team up against the forces of Zodiac, T’Challa has not yet learned the Man Without Fear’s secret identity, so they probably meet on the rooftops of the city after the Black Panther has caused the blackout to slow the invasion down. Also, though they mention battling the Thunderbolts gang, that doesn’t actually happen until next January.

November 1964 – Black Panther guest-stars in Daredevil #52. Yellowjacket’s appearance in this issue is an error, as he’s off in Alaska. T’Challa was probably actually speaking with the Vision. Daredevil’s scheme to prevent Starr Saxon from exposing his secret identity plays out over the next couple of issues. The presidential election occurs behind the scenes. For more on Morris N. Richardson, see OMU: POTUS – Part Three. Hercules returns to the mansion briefly in a bizarre little story published in Ka-Zar Quarterly #1. I assume T’Challa went home to Wakanda over the Thanksgiving break since he was not present in that flashback in Avengers #280.

December 1964 – The Carver brothers come to T’Challa’s attention in the flashback in Daredevil #69. He is unaware that meeting the Black Panther inspires Billy Carver to secretly contact District Attorney Nelson and volunteer to infiltrate the Thunderbolts gang, which triggers the change in Lonnie’s attitude. T’Challa’s reminiscences about his origins following news of N’Baza’s death bring us up to Avengers #87. The Black Panther then has a brief cameo in Sub-Mariner #35. The Avengers’ Christmas party—and the Black Panther’s first meeting with the Falcon—occurs behind the scenes. T’Challa’s students expressed their preference for the Falcon back in Avengers #77.


Jump Back: The Black Panther – Year One

Next Issue: The Black Panther – Year Three

OMU: Power Man -- Year One

Looking to expand their readership, Marvel introduced Luke Cage in March 1972, inspired by the early blaxploitation films Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and Shaft. The groundbreaking series was initially written by Archie Goodwin with pencils by George Tuska, who was paired with the African-American inker Billy Graham. A relative newcomer, Graham drew most of the Hero for Hire covers and provided pencils on several issues. He would later work on Marvel’s other black superhero, the Black Panther. Unlike King T’Challa of the black utopia Wakanda, Luke Cage inhabited the grimy neighborhoods around Times Square in Manhattan and struggled to make money by selling his super-powered services. And whereas the Black Panther was a member of the Avengers, Luke had little interaction with the wider Marvel Universe, though that would slowly change over time. As the blaxploitation genre faded, Luke moved away from his gritty private detective / mercenary milieu into more typical superhero territory by adopting the codename Power Man.

Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale). Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.


Breaking out with… The True History of Luke Cage, Power Man!


September 1964 – Carl Lucas, serving his fifth year of a 20-year sentence in Seagate Prison, is badgered by two other inmates, known as Shades and Comanche, about staging a mass protest when the new warden arrives. Carl is not interested and gets violent when they try to threaten him. Carl is then ordered to meet with the captain of the guard, an abusive racist named Albert “Billy Bob” Rackham, who wants him to become an informer so the protest can be prevented. Carl refuses to cooperate and is sent to solitary confinement, where he is viciously beaten by another guard, William Quirt. However, the new warden, Tyler Stuart, arrives unexpectedly and intervenes. The warden fires Quirt and demotes Rackham, giving Carl hope that his treatment will improve.

Several days later, a medical researcher brought in by the new administration, Dr. Noah Burstein, offers Carl the chance to volunteer for a dangerous experiment, promising that it would improve his chances of being approved for parole. Carl is at first reluctant, but when Rackham threatens to make his life in Seagate a living hell, he gives Burstein his consent. When Carl is brought to his laboratory, set up in a disused section of the prison, Burstein explains that his experiments grew out of a project funded by a Stark Industries grant to develop an electro-biochemical system for stimulating human cell regeneration. Burstein gives Carl an injection, then seals him in a tank filled with a strange chemical brew. However, while the scientist is checking his instruments, Rackham slips into the lab and changes the settings on the control panel, hoping that Carl will be killed. Burstein catches him in the act, but it is too late—Carl undergoes a painful transformation that leaves him with super-strength and impenetrable skin. Smashing free of the tank, Carl sees Rackham has drawn his gun and slaps him down, knocking him out. Worried that he’s killed the guard, Carl punches the wall in frustration and is shocked to find he’s put a hole in the stone without hurting his hand. Seeing his chance for freedom, Carl breaks through the wall and makes a run for it. As he reaches the edge of a cliff, Carl is gunned down by the guards and falls into the water. To his surprise, he is unharmed and, leaving his bullet-riddled shirt behind, lays low until nightfall, then makes good his escape.

The next day, Carl reads in the newspaper that he is believed dead, shot while trying to escape from prison. He procures some clothes, shaves off his mustache, and hits the road.

October 1964–August 1965 – Carl slowly heads north through Georgia and up the Eastern Seaboard, adopting a succession of aliases and working what odd jobs he can get with no identification. Not wanting to draw attention to himself, he avoids using his newfound powers and keeps on the move, never staying anywhere too long or getting too close to anyone. He is driven by his desire for revenge against his former friend and partner-in-crime, Willis Stryker. Carl remembers bitterly how he and Stryker fell into a life of petty crime while growing up in Harlem, though while Stryker found success as a racketeer, Carl grew sickened by the escalating violence and tried to go straight. Getting a job, Carl soon became infatuated with Reva Connors, the sister of a neighborhood acquaintance, only to have Stryker deliberately move in and start dating her. When Stryker was brutally beaten by rival gangsters one night, Reva ran to Carl for help. She revealed that she had been planning to leave Stryker anyway, as his lifestyle terrified her, and she and Carl started dating while Stryker was recovering in the hospital. However, Stryker felt betrayed and planted two kilos of uncut heroin in Carl’s apartment before tipping off the police. Arrested for drug trafficking, Carl was quickly found guilty and sent to jail, despite his protestations of innocence. Not long after, Carl learned that Reva had been killed in a drive-by shooting while with Stryker, having been lured back into the racketeer’s life with promises that he could get Carl released from prison. Since that day, Carl has nursed his hatred for Stryker and planned to hunt him down and avenge Reva’s death.

September 1965 – Carl finally arrives in his hometown, New York City. A chance encounter with an armed robber that brings Carl a cash reward inspires him to make a living as a superhero. He goes to a costume shop in the Theater District and buys a second-hand outfit that once belonged to an escape artist. Accessorizing the yellow silk shirt and black leather pants with a steel headband and matching wristbands and a length of chain as a belt, Carl realizes he’ll need to choose a permanent new name. He settles on Luke Cage, then goes to set up an account with an answering service and orders a set of business cards. With the remainder of his reward money, Carl rents a room at a fleabag hotel, then heads out to a Harlem cemetery to visit Reva’s grave. He renews his vow to avenge her death, then finally leaves his life as Carl Lucas behind him.

Over the following days, Luke Cage makes trouble for Stryker’s crime syndicate, beating up the guys who try to collect protection money from neighborhood shops and restaurants. He then passes out business cards which read “Luke Cage, Hero for Hire” to the onlookers, hoping to draw Stryker into a confrontation. Sure enough, about a week later, Stryker sends two hitmen after Luke, but he shrugs off their bullets and easily defeats them. Thinking Luke has been shot, a woman runs up and offers to treat his wounds, introducing herself as Dr. Claire Temple. She is shocked to find the bullets merely bruised Luke’s chest. Finding her attractive, Luke agrees to accompany Claire to her neighborhood clinic, which has been ransacked several times since it opened. When they arrive, though, Luke discovers that Claire’s partner is none other than Noah Burstein. Fearing that Burstein has recognized him, Luke leaves, cursing his luck.

The next day, Luke rents some rooms above the Gem Theater on W. 42nd St. to serve as his office and living quarters. He hits it off with the theater manager/building superintendent, a young movie buff named David “D.W.” Griffith. However, he is summoned back to the clinic by a frantic Burstein, who reports that Claire has been kidnapped by Stryker and his henchmen. Expecting a trap, Luke heads to a run-down parking garage to confront Stryker. Luke quickly frees Claire from Stryker’s assassins, then pursues his old friend up to the roof. Impulsively revealing himself as Carl Lucas, Luke mocks Stryker’s street name, “Diamondback,” and his snakeskin jumpsuit. Shocked that his former rival is still alive, Stryker goes on the offensive with his high-tech throwing knives. During the battle, though, Stryker stumbles through a skylight and is killed when an explosive knife detonates on impact. When the police arrive on the scene, Claire informs them that Luke rescued her from the gangsters and Burstein elects to keep silent about Luke’s true identity.

Later, at the clinic, Luke confronts Burstein, who has indeed recognized him as his test subject from Seagate Prison. Burstein is torn as to whether he should turn Luke in to the authorities, but Luke storms out before the matter is settled. He returns to the Gem Theater and, too agitated to sleep, spends the night pacing around and talking with D.W. In the morning, Luke is hired by a Vietnam veteran, Owen Ridgely, who has discovered a plot by a disgruntled former Army colonel named Gideon Mace to use a combat veterans’ protest to cover a series of bank robberies. A trio of hitmen manage to kill Ridgely, but Luke overpowers them and forces one of the crooks to drive him out to Mace’s compound on the New Jersey Palisades. There, Luke fights his way through a gang of mercenaries and battles Mace, though the old soldier gets away from him by spraying Chemical Mace in Luke’s face. Nevertheless, Luke stops Mace from escaping in his helicopter, causing the chopper to crash into the Hudson River. Assuming Mace has drowned, Luke returns to his Times Square office. Though Ridgely paid him before he died, Luke decides to send the money to his client’s wife and daughter, feeling that they need it more than he does.

October 1965 – Luke’s encounter one night with a mysterious phantom leads him to investigate the history of the Gem Theater and its former owner, Adrian Loring, who died in a mysterious fire in the late 1940s. The phantom has been terrorizing local theaters that are part of the same chain as the Gem, and the company’s owner, Jasper Brunt, hires Luke to get to the bottom of it. Luke discovers that the phantom is really Loring’s son Armand, an acrobatic dwarf, and his partner, a silent strongman called Jacques, who want revenge on Brunt for causing Adrian Loring’s death. Before Luke can stop him, Armand knocks Brunt through a window and they fall to their deaths on the street below. While working on the case, Luke meets an annoying gossip columnist for the Daily Bugle, Phil Fox, who is sniffing around for a story on the city’s new “Hero for Hire.” Not wanting that kind of publicity, Luke gives Fox a wide berth.

November 1965 – Luke’s attempt to meet a new client, Frank Jenks, goes awry when the man is stabbed to death during an apparent mugging. To make matters worse, the body is stolen by a phony ambulance crew before the police arrive. Luke promises the victim’s widow, Mimi Jenks, that he’ll investigate free of charge, as he feels responsible for not preventing the murder. With some dubious help from a local informant known as Flea, Luke tracks the fake ambulance to a warehouse in Chelsea. There, he learns that the ambulance is used to make off with the recently deceased, after which the gang strips the bodies of any valuables and then uses the keys and ID they find to burgle the victims’ homes. Outraged, Luke beats up the crooks but is unwilling to fight with their leader, an enormously obese woman called Black Mariah. After slapping Luke around a bit, Black Mariah tries to escape in her speedboat, but Luke smashes it and captures her. However, Black Mariah and her gang turn out to be merely criminal opportunists and were not involved in Jenks’s murder. Heading back to the Gem Theater, Luke is harassed by Flea, who wants money for the information he provided, even though it was of little use. Unfortunately, Mrs. Jenks misinterprets their argument and thinks Luke is going back on his promise to work for free. She throws the money in his face and storms off. Frustrated, Luke pays off Flea and goes up to his office, thinking that his superhero business isn’t quite what he thought it would be.

A few days later, Luke is attacked in his office by five hitmen, but he beats them up and drives them off. He is then hired by two wealthy white women, Catherine and Laura Forsythe, to protect their terminally ill grandfather from being murdered. Luke accompanies them back to their vast country estate, where he feels out of his element. The young chauffeur’s thinly disguised racism doesn’t help matters, though he becomes much friendlier after Luke saves the sisters from a falling chandelier. During the night, Luke is attacked by the family’s collection of medieval suits of armor, which have been converted into radio-controlled robots. The battle is meant as a diversion to keep Luke busy while the grandfather’s iron lung is turned off, but Luke quickly demolishes the primitive robots and saves the old man. Confused as to why anyone would want to murder someone so close to the grave already, Luke studies the family’s genealogical records and realizes the chauffeur is really Catherine and Laura’s long-lost brother, who will only inherit the family fortune if his grandfather dies before his 25th birthday. His plot exposed, the would-be killer attacks Luke with a blowtorch, but Luke easily knocks him out and calls the police. In the morning, Catherine and Laura drop Luke off in Times Square, but while they are both giving him a kiss of thanks, Claire happens to see them and assumes Luke spent the night in bed with them. As the sisters drive off in their limousine, Luke tries to reassure his jealous friend that the women were just clients.

December 1965 – On Christmas Eve, Luke stops at the neighborhood clinic to pick up Claire for a date. While waiting for Claire and Burstein to close up shop, Luke sees a boy being beaten in the street by a man straight out of a Charles Dickens novel. Luke drives the man off, then takes the boy inside, where Claire treats his cuts and bruises. While she’s occupied, Burstein warns Luke that Phil Fox has been around, claiming to want to do a story about the clinic. Burstein is worried that if Fox digs into his background, he’ll find out about the experiments at Seagate Prison, which could lead him to discover Luke’s true identity. Luke and Claire then head to a nearby bar but pause along the way to help a beggar who lost both legs in Vietnam. Seized by hallucinations of the Viet Cong, the beggar suddenly produces a machine gun and opens fire on Luke. Shielding Claire with his body, Luke disarms the vet and mangles his gun, though he and Claire decide that the man is mentally ill and not responsible for his actions. Sometime after midnight, Luke and Claire leave the bar, only to be accosted by a man in a futuristic uniform brandishing a laser gun, who claims it is Christmas Day, 1984. During the ensuing fight, Luke realizes that all three of the violent characters he’s encountered are the same man. Luke is knocked out and wakes up to find himself chained up in the man’s apartment. His foe, now dressed as a modern-day executioner, reveals that he plans to detonate an atomic bomb that he stole piece by piece back in 1946 while serving with the O.S.S. Luke tries to talk him out of it but to no avail—the man has lost all faith in humanity despite Luke’s own bravery and compassion. When a burglar suddenly comes down the chimney, Luke takes advantage of the distraction to break free and defeat the mad bomber. He then calls the police, who take both criminals into custody. The atomic bomb is quickly located by the authorities and dismantled. Luke enjoys the rest of his holiday, gratified that his “Hero for Hire” business is going well enough to provide a steady income, though he worries that his past will soon catch up with him.


Notes:

September 1964–August 1965 – Luke Cage is introduced in Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #1, where his past as Carl Lucas is detailed in lengthy flashbacks. Additional details are provided in Power Man and Iron Fist #50. It is later revealed that the gangsters who put Willis Stryker in the hospital were with the Maggia, and the heroin that Stryker used to frame Carl was stolen from the Harlem crime boss Cottonmouth. It was actually Cottonmouth’s enforcers who killed Reva Connors while trying to get at Stryker. The fact that Noah Burstein’s early research into human cell regeneration was funded by Stark Industries suggests that Tony Stark hoped it would lead to a treatment for his injured heart. However, after the Carl Lucas debacle, Burstein resigned in disgrace and his research program was abandoned. He then came home to New York and started the neighborhood clinic with Claire Temple. Warden Stuart was fired for greenlighting the experiments, and not long after, Seagate Prison was shut down and sold off by the government, also putting Albert Rackham out of a job. These repercussions all become seeds for future stories.

November 1965 – The “muggers” who murder Frank Jenks are actually enforcers for the mob boss known as Señor Muerte, who also hires the five hitmen who try to eliminate Luke in the next issue.

December 1965 – This sweet Christmas story brings us up to Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #7.


OMU Note: The final canonical appearance of Luke Cage is in Power Man and Iron Fist #125.


Jump To: Power Man – Year Two

Next Issue: Secrets of the Scarlet Witch – Part Four

OMU: Frankenstein Family

When the story of Frankenstein was imported to comics by Gary Friedrich & Mike Ploog as part of Marvel’s monster craze in the early 1970s, they decided to approach it more as a sequel to the novel rather than a straightforward adaptation. Thus, the series opens with the Frankenstein Monster being discovered in the Arctic in 1898 by Captain Robert Walton’s great-grandson (conveniently named Robert Walton IV). The story of Mary Shelley’s novel is then told in flashback over the next few issues before the Monster goes off to have new adventures. Eventually, in an effort to boost sales, Marvel brought the Monster into a modern-day setting so he could interact with more-popular characters. As such, we see the Monster active in three distinct time periods. An oft-repeated trope of the series, then, is the Monster encountering the “last living descendant” of his creator (ignoring the fact that Victor Frankenstein died childless), which introduces us to various members of the Frankenstein family over several generations. Due to Marvel’s infamous sliding timescale, unfortunately, the genealogy of this family has become muddled, so I decided to straighten it out using my timeline for the Original Marvel Universe.

Luckily, Mary Shelley neglected to kill off Victor Frankenstein’s brother Ernest before the end of the novel, so we can safely assume it is through him that the family line reaches to the present day. The lives of Ernest and his son were never detailed in any canonical story, though, and information about other generations is often very sketchy. Thus, I indulge in more speculation here than is customary. As a guiding principle, I decided that James Whale’s Frankenstein movies actually depicted a composite of characters and events from various generations of the horror-haunted family. This was mixed with elements from the established history of the Original Marvel Universe, as well as real-world history, to flesh out what we know from the published comics.

Note: The following timeline depicts the Original Marvel Universe (anchored to November 1961 as the first appearance of the Fantastic Four and proceeding forward from there. See previous posts for a detailed explanation of my rationale.) Some information presented on the timeline is speculative and some is based on historical accounts. See the Notes section at the end for clarifications.


Lumbering on with… The True History of the Frankenstein Family!


1774 – Alphonse Frankenstein, the current Baron von Frankenstein, is a retired government official from Geneva, Switzerland, and he and his much younger wife, Caroline Beaufort Frankenstein, are touring the sunnier climes of southern Europe for health reasons. While in Naples, Italy, they have their first child, Victor Frankenstein.

1775 – Elizabeth Lavenza is born in Milan, Italy, to an Italian nobleman and his German-born wife. Elizabeth’s mother dies in childbirth, so her father places the baby in the care of a wetnurse. However, the father soon disappears while on a military campaign in Austria, leaving Elizabeth a penniless orphan.

1779 – The Frankensteins find Elizabeth Lavenza living in squalor and make her their ward, rescuing her from abject poverty.

1781 – When their second child, Ernest Frankenstein, is born, Alphonse and Caroline settle down at an estate in their native Geneva, Switzerland. Victor and Elizabeth are raised as cousins and become very close, but the parents hope they will one day marry. Though by nature a loner, Victor befriends a schoolmate named Henry Clerval, the adventurous son of a Geneva merchant.

1787 – Victor becomes obsessed with the works of medieval alchemists such as Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa, and Paracelsus, especially their search for the “elixir of life.”

1789 – After witnessing the power of lightning firsthand, Victor abandons the alchemists to take up the study of modern science.

1790 – William Frankenstein is born in Geneva, Switzerland, the third son of Alphonse and Caroline Frankenstein.

1791 – Weeks after his mother dies of scarlet fever, Victor leaves Geneva to attend the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria, where he is soon recognized as a brilliant student of chemistry and biology. One of his professors, Monsieur Waldman, renews Victor’s interest in the alchemists, suggesting their esoteric wisdom could be combined with the scientific method to perform wondrous feats.

1793 – Victor discovers a means of reanimating dead tissue and begins constructing an eight-foot-tall human figure out of the parts of a dozen corpses. Believing he has discovered the key to immortality, he works obsessively on his secret project, driving himself to the point of nervous exhaustion.

1794 – In November, Victor finally succeeds in animating his cadaverous creature. Horrified by what he has done, the young scientist rejects his creation, leaving it to wander off into the surrounding forests. Victor suffers a nervous breakdown but is nursed back to health by his childhood friend, Henry Clerval.

1795 – Traumatized by his experience, Victor abandons science altogether and spends the year studying Middle Eastern languages and literatures with Clerval.

1796 – When his youngest brother, William, is murdered in May, Victor leaves the University of Ingolstadt and returns to Geneva. He is horrified to discover that his Monster has committed the crime and framed the family’s servant-girl, Justine Moritz. Victor is consumed with guilt when Justine is executed, but he knows no one would believe his incredible tale. Two months later, he retreats into the Alps, where the Monster confronts him. Having learned to speak and read French, the Monster has managed to track his creator down by reading Victor’s journal, which he inadvertently carried off with him when he escaped from the laboratory. Tired of being all alone in the world, the Monster demands a mate. Giving in to the creature’s threats, Victor agrees to create a female monster. However, realizing he needs to consult with certain scientists in London, Victor plans a trip to England first. His father insists on Clerval accompanying him, and after a slow trek across Europe, the two old friends reach London by mid-December.

1797 – After parting ways with Clerval, Victor sets up a laboratory in a remote house on the Orkney Islands of northern Scotland. There, with great reluctance, he assembles a female figure out of numerous dead women, some of whom are murdered by the Monster for their organs. However, fearing that he would be the creator of a monster race, Victor destroys the new creature moments after animating it. He flees to Ireland, but his vengeful Monster finds Clerval and murders him, framing Victor for the crime. Languishing in prison, Victor suffers another nervous breakdown.

1798 – Victor is released from prison due to his father’s efforts to clear his name. They return to Geneva, where Victor and Elizabeth are finally married. That night, however, the Monster sneaks into the bedroom and strangles Elizabeth to death. A few days later, Alphonse dies from grief, making Victor the new Baron von Frankenstein. However, Victor suffers another psychotic break. After a few months, he pulls himself together and swears to hunt down and destroy his murderous creation. The chase leads Victor across much of the world, with the Monster always remaining just out of reach.

1799 – Pursuing the Monster to the Arctic, Victor comes upon the ice-bound ship of Captain Robert Walton, where the last of his strength finally gives out. Victor tells his story to Walton, who transcribes it into a series of letters to his sister, Margaret Saville, in England. After a few weeks, Victor Frankenstein dies at the age of 26. Soon after, the Monster boards the ship and is grieved to find his creator dead. After a confrontation with Walton, the Monster wanders off into the frozen wastes. Abandoning their ill-fated expedition, Walton and his crew make their way back to civilization.

1800 – When Victor’s body is at last returned to Geneva, his brother Ernest becomes the new Baron von Frankenstein. Devastated by the death of his entire family, Ernest uses his inheritance to buy a remote 500-year-old castle in the Swiss Alps, where he takes up residence. The dilapidated structure then comes to be known as Castle Frankenstein.

1813 – Growing weary of his solitude, Ernest finally marries, taking a young Geneva woman named Elsa Manoir as his wife. She joins him at his secluded retreat and tries to brighten up their gloomy abode.

1814 – Ernest and Elsa have a son, Henry Frankenstein, who is born in the remote castle.

1818 – Following the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, Ernest suffers greatly from the infamy it brings his family, even though most of the world believes the story to be fictional. Many people in Geneva, however, recognize that there is much truth in it. The revelations about the deaths of Justine Moritz, Henry Clerval, and Elizabeth Lavenza cause many to conclude that Victor Frankenstein was a murderous madman. The resulting scandal leads Ernest to become a total recluse.

1830 – Her relationship with her husband having slowly disintegrated, Elsa Frankenstein decides she can no longer live with the shame and ostracism resulting from Shelley’s novel. She commits suicide by throwing herself off the castle’s highest tower. With no suicide note, Ernest is investigated by the authorities on the suspicion of murdering his wife. He is ultimately exonerated but lives under a shadow for the rest of his lonely, miserable life. Henry, a frail and sickly boy, is traumatized by the death of his mother, but his stern, emotionally remote father can offer no comfort.

1831 – At the age of 17, Henry leaves home and settles in Munich, Germany, where he becomes obsessed with the idea of contacting his mother’s spirit. This leads him to a group of occultists in Dachau led by Margareta Vogel, a woman some years his senior. Margareta soon seduces Henry, and within a few months, they are married.

1832 – With the release of a revised edition, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein becomes more popular than ever. To cash in on the novel’s success, Robert Walton Jr. publishes a limited-edition volume of the unedited text of his father’s letters from the 1798–99 expedition.

1833 – Henry and Margareta have a son, Jason Frankenstein, who is named for the hero of Greek mythology.

1836 – Henry seems to succeed in communicating with his mother’s spirit, and she urges him to raise her from the grave. Henry is eager to do so but lacks the necessary mystical power. Thus, the spirit agrees to instruct him and his circle of friends in the arts of black magic and necromancy. Over the next 25 years, the group devotes itself to the study of sorcery, often stealing bodies from Munich-area graveyards on which to practice their resurrection spells. Henry and Margareta shield young Jason from the more gruesome aspects of their endeavors to raise the dead, but he grows up aware of his parents’ practice of black magic.

1847 – Normal teenage rebellion leads Jason to a desire to be an Egyptologist, so he strives to reject the occult and embrace rationalism.

1850 – Jason leaves home to attend the University of Munich. There, he meets Dr. Septimus Pretorius, a professor of philosophy, who helps Jason reconcile science and magic in the pursuit of knowledge.

1852 – Jason marries Yvonne Teufel, the daughter of members of his parents’ coven.

1853 – Jason and Yvonne have a son, Vincent Frankenstein, who is born in the same house in Munich as his father was twenty years earlier.

1856 – Jason travels to Cairo, Egypt, to explore the Giza Plateau and other sites. There, he stumbles upon a hidden chamber dating back to Hyborian-era Stygia, where he discovers one of the lost parchments of the Darkhold. Intrigued, he takes it back to Munich to consult with Dr. Pretorius. Convinced he is on the cusp of a momentous discovery, Jason devotes the next five years to studying the scroll and deciphering its arcane inscriptions. He makes frequent trips to Egypt in a fruitless search for further traces of this lost civilization.

1861 – Ernest Frankenstein dies at age 80 after a lifetime of loneliness and ill-health. Henry thus becomes the new Baron von Frankenstein at the age of 47. He relocates his coven to Castle Frankenstein in the Swiss Alps, where he finally exhumes his mother’s corpse. The resurrection spell that the group casts takes effect and the body is returned to a semblance of life. However, they discover too late that the spirit Henry had been in contact with was not Elsa Frankenstein at all, but a demon seeking physical form so as to escape from Hell. The demon murders Margareta and several of the other occultists before going on a rampage through the nearby communities. A mob of torch-wielding villagers then chases the demon into an old mill and sets it on fire. As its host body is incinerated, the demon is sent screaming back to Hell. Henry remains in the castle, a broken man.

1862 – Jason takes his wife and son to live in Castle Frankenstein so they can care for his heartbroken father. Jason continues to work on his ancient parchment, enjoying a lively correspondence with Dr. Pretorius. He also travels extensively, consulting with experts in many disciplines, but his ideas about the parchment are ridiculed and rejected.

1866 – Vincent discovers the notebooks of his great-great uncle Victor inside a locked cabinet in the castle library and is intrigued by the bizarre mixture of 18th-century science and medieval alchemy within. Though he doubts the macabre tales about Victor Frankenstein are true, Vincent nevertheless becomes fascinated by the idea of creating a powerful artificial lifeform to serve him.

1870 – Vincent leaves home to go to college in London, England, as he is ashamed of his family’s tarnished reputation and wishes to leave Europe. There, he studies the chemical and biological sciences as his ancestor had done. Now left alone with her ailing father-in-law, Yvonne grows bitter and resentful toward Jason, but this only drives him to extend his excursions to foreign lands.

1875 – Henry Frankenstein drinks himself to death at age 61, never having recovered from the horror of his experience. Jason, who is in Munich visiting Dr. Pretorius, learns that he is now the Baron von Frankenstein. Soon after, Jason brings Pretorius to the castle, as they have made a breakthrough in translating the parchment’s inscriptions. Pretorius has recognized the text to be a magical incantation and convinces Jason they should weave the spell, believing it would call forth a genie to grant them power and riches. However, the spell actually conjures up a gigantic, demonic spider referred to as a “Child of Zath.” Stricken with horror, Jason panics and runs away as the spider attacks. Before he can make a move, Pretorius falls into the spider’s clutches, and it sucks out his soul, leaving him little more than a zombie. The spider then chases Jason through the castle, causing tremendous damage as it goes. Yvonne blunders onto the scene, and the spider turns her into a zombie as well. Finally, Jason manages to lead the spider to a deep stone pit, which it falls into. The spider is unable to scale the slimy stones and is trapped. Jason locks the two zombies in the dungeon and flees the castle in mortal terror. He travels to London to take refuge with his son, warning Vincent never to return to Castle Frankenstein.

1883 – After eight years of vainly studying the parchment in hopes of discovering a counter-spell, Jason Frankenstein becomes gravely ill and soon dies at the age of 50. Becoming the new Baron von Frankenstein, Vincent donates his father’s mysterious parchment to the British Library, where it is filed away with numerous other unidentified artifacts. Inheriting what remains of the family fortune, Vincent uses the money to finance his biochemical experiments, allowing the castle to fall to ruin.

1884 – Vincent meets a Russian hunchback named Ivan and hires him to be his manservant—and test subject. In the course of his experiments, Vincent injects Ivan with chemical solutions that greatly increase his size, strength, and resistance to injury.

1895 – At age 42, Vincent marries a much younger English woman named Lenore Carlyle. To suit his wife’s station as a baroness, Vincent hires a lady’s maid, Betty Baker, to serve her. However, Vincent often neglects his young wife while working obsessively in his basement laboratory, which angers Betty.

1898 – When Lenore becomes pregnant, Betty’s resentment of her master’s neglectful behavior grows. She is infuriated when Vincent suddenly leaves for a trip to the continent just as Lenore’s pregnancy is coming to term. Having heard rumors of a gruesome giant traveling around the Balkans with a troupe of gypsy performers, Vincent takes Ivan and tracks the brute to a cave in Transylvania. There, Vincent realizes he has found his ancestor’s creation, the infamous Frankenstein Monster, somehow still alive a century after he was last seen. After smuggling the Monster into his London laboratory, Vincent decides to transplant Ivan’s brain into the Monster’s body. However, Ivan refuses and tries to kill Vincent, relenting only when Betty informs them that Lenore has gone into labor. Vincent races to his wife’s bedroom and delivers his son, Basil Frankenstein, with Betty’s help. Taking a pistol, Vincent then returns to the laboratory, where he sees Ivan fighting with the Monster. To protect his ancestor’s creation, Vincent shoots Ivan in the back, killing him. The Monster attacks Vincent with a sword, forcing him to shoot the creature twice in the chest. While bemoaning the loss of such a fascinating specimen, Vincent ignores Betty’s urgent pleas to return to his wife’s bedside. By the time Vincent emerges from the laboratory, Lenore has died, and Betty, disgusted by her master’s behavior, shoots him dead. Fearing arrest, Betty takes baby Basil and flees the country, settling in Hamburg, Germany, where she raises the boy as her own son.

1914 – With the declaration of war between Germany and England, Betty is deported as an enemy alien. To enable 16-year-old Basil to remain in the only home he’s ever known, she reveals that he is actually the son of the former Baron von Frankenstein, a title which he inherited on the day he was born. She also tells Basil that she has one other terrible secret, which she vows to reveal to him on her deathbed. After Betty has been sent back to England, Basil moves to Berlin and enrolls in the university there to study medical science.

1915 – Early in the year, Basil gets a local girl, Hedwig Schultz, pregnant, so he decides to marry her. When his son Ludwig Frankenstein is born nine months later, Basil considers trying to claim his family’s land holdings in Switzerland in order to escape the war. Unfortunately, he has insufficient evidence to back his claim, so he instead signs up to serve the war effort in a Berlin military hospital.

1916 – Confronted by the horrors of war, Basil recognizes an opportunity for unprecedented medical research. In the course of treating thousands of wounded soldiers, he develops numerous advanced surgical techniques and masters the intricacies of human anatomy.

1919 – Following the end of the war, Basil becomes one of Berlin’s most successful surgeons, amassing a small fortune in the process. The long hours that he works leave him little time for his son, so Ludwig grows up extremely attached to his doting mother.

1926 – Enjoying a luxurious lifestyle, Basil sends for Betty to come live with them as his mother. When she arrives, Basil introduces her to Ludwig as “Oma” [Grandma]. Basil is also pleased to find that Betty has brought most of Vincent Frankenstein’s papers, which had been put in storage by the family solicitor back in 1898. Among the papers, Basil discovers the notebooks of his great-great-great-uncle, Victor Frankenstein, and soon becomes obsessed with his ancestor’s attempts to reanimate the dead.

1928 – Basil attends the International Conference on Genetics held in Geneva, Switzerland. There, he meets another young German scientist with similar research interests, Abraham Erskine, as well as Arnim Zola of Switzerland and Wladyslav Shinski of Poland. They all share ideas with each other over the course of the conference. Basil returns to Berlin eager to continue his revivification experiments.

1929 – When a flu epidemic sweeps through Berlin, both Betty and Hedwig succumb to the disease and die. Basil and Ludwig are devastated by their loss. Realizing that Betty hadn’t had the chance to make her deathbed confession, Basil takes her body to his laboratory and experiments on it, determined to revive her. A week later, his studies of his ancestors’ notebooks pay off when Basil succeeds in reanimating Betty’s corpse long enough for her to reveal her dread secret. However, unable to bear the revelation that Betty murdered his father in cold blood, Basil convinces himself that some demon has taken over Betty’s corpse to spout loathsome lies, and he hacks up the body until it is dead again. This terrifying experience crushes Basil’s hopes of bringing his wife back to life, and he goes into a profound depression.

1930 – Lacking any parental guidance, Ludwig gets his girlfriend Greta Henkel pregnant. Basil feels he cannot reproach his son, as he had done the same thing himself, but this merely fuels Ludwig’s sense of entitlement.

1931 – Ludwig agrees to marry Greta so his child will not be illegitimate, though he has already soured on their relationship. In the summer, his daughter, Victoria Frankenstein, is born. Soon afterwards, Ludwig leaves Berlin to go to college in Geneva, Switzerland, glad to finally be out of his father’s house. Greta and Victoria remain behind, as Basil agrees to support them in a modest lifestyle. He provides them with a small house on the west side of Berlin, though in his inconsolable grief he rarely makes time to see them. Meanwhile, Universal Studios releases James Whale’s film Frankenstein, launching a popular franchise based on accounts of Victor Frankenstein and his descendants.

1933 – Basil finally returns to his research, becoming ever more obsessed with perfecting his reanimation techniques.

1934 – At the University of Geneva, Ludwig is recognized as a brilliant student of biochemistry, though he is known as a notorious rake and a libertine. One of his lovers gets pregnant and bears him another daughter, Veronica Frankenstein. Though the baby is born out of wedlock, Ludwig accepts her as his own and provides financial support, due to his continuing fondness for her mother.

1936 – Basil meets a young Japanese woman, Dr. Kitagowa, who is studying advanced surgical techniques at the University of Berlin teaching hospital, and they become good friends. He takes to calling her “Kitty” when the proper pronunciation of her given name eludes him. After several months, Basil confides in her the nature and purpose of his reanimation experiments, and to his great relief, she is fascinated by his research.

1937 – Upon receiving his Ph.D. in biochemistry, Ludwig is invited to join the faculty of the University of Geneva, though the nature of his research becomes increasingly controversial.

1938 – Basil suffers a terrible accident in his laboratory that leaves him completely paralyzed from the waist down and renders his hands capable of only the most rudimentary tasks. Kitty agrees to become his full-time lab assistant, making it possible for him to continue his research. Working so closely together, they eventually fall in love. Kitty soon hits upon a way to combine both their specialties so as to develop a means to transplant Basil’s brain into a younger, healthier, and more virile body.

1939 – With the outbreak of World War II, Basil and Kitty see an opportunity to have the Nazis fund their experiments. They set up a demonstration for Heinrich Himmler and his Ahnenerbe research organization, promising a way to bring dead soldiers back to a semblance of life so they can keep fighting. Himmler is enthusiastic about their work and promises full funding. However, Basil and Kitty keep their brain-transplant project a secret. Meanwhile, Ludwig is relieved that Switzerland remains officially neutral, so he can continue his research unimpeded by the war.

1940 – The Nazis help Basil finally gain possession of his family’s estate in Switzerland, expertly forging papers to definitively establish him as the current and legitimate Baron von Frankenstein. Basil and Kitty then move into the dilapidated Castle Frankenstein, which has been abandoned since 1875 and was heavily damaged in a mysterious flood in 1898. While they set up their laboratory, work crews are brought in to restore the castle to a reasonably habitable state, though the residents of the nearby village refuse to participate.

1941 – Basil becomes fascinated by the American superhero known as the Human Torch, an android recently created by Phineas T. Horton, and comes to believe that the Torch’s artificial body contains secrets vital to his reanimation experiments. Thus, he makes a plan with the Nazi high command to lure the Torch into a trap. In the summer, Basil and Kitty begin stealing freshly buried corpses from the local graveyards, hoping to replicate Victor Frankenstein’s achievement. Their activities stir up the locals, who remember all too well the strange and horrible incidents of the past. By the end of the year, the two scientists have succeeded in creating a living monster from stitched-together body parts from various corpses, with an implant in its brain to keep it under control.

1942 – In January, the Human Torch and his junior partner Toro are lured to Castle Frankenstein and imprisoned. Basil’s analysis of the Torch’s unique android physiognomy is interrupted when Captain America and Bucky arrive to rescue their friends. While the new monster captures the heroes, Basil and Kitty decide that Captain America’s body would be perfect for Basil’s brain transplant. Their plans are foiled, though, when the Sub-Mariner arrives on the scene and, with a powerful punch in the head, destroys the implant in the creature’s brain. Immediately, the vengeful monster grabs Basil and Kitty and, knocking the heroes out of the way, carries them to the top of the castle. To Basil’s horror, the creature leaps to its death, taking its creators with it. Basil is killed instantly when they hit the ground.

Ludwig is informed of his father’s death and that he is to inherit the title Baron von Frankenstein and his family’s estate in the Swiss Alps. Unaware that his family even owned such a property, Ludwig goes to inspect it and is excited to discover the castle’s well-stocked laboratory. Finding the papers of his ancestors within, Ludwig resolves to expand upon—and eventually surpass—the achievements of his forebears. He resigns his position at the University of Geneva, intending to live off the income generated by the vast estate. However, the villagers object to yet another Frankenstein conducting strange experiments in the castle and warn Ludwig that they will not tolerate being threatened by monsters. Ludwig dismisses their concerns and sets about his work. Within a few weeks, Ludwig discovers a hunchback named Borgo living in the bowels of the castle. His first impulse is to throw Borgo out, but the hunchback’s obsequious manner convinces Ludwig to take him on as an assistant.

1945 – With the war’s end, Ludwig stops sending money to his two daughters and never sees them again. Greta struggles to raise Victoria in Berlin, which had been heavily bombed during the fighting and faces strict rationing as part of the Allied occupation. Still, they consider themselves lucky not to have been living on the east side of the city, which is controlled by the Soviets. After school, Victoria volunteers at a local hospital, intent on becoming a nurse. She is unaware of her half-sister living in Switzerland. Veronica and her mother, also finding themselves without income, move from Geneva to Zurich. There, the mother passes herself off as a war-widow, claiming that Veronica’s father died defending Switzerland from the Nazis, and thus manages to marry a wealthy banker much older than herself. They then move into a remote castle in the Swiss Alps, though Veronica is soon sent off to boarding school. She remains unaware that her biological father is living in his own castle not far away.

1950s – Throughout the decade, Ludwig conducts genetic experimentation on war orphans, producing dozens and dozens of deformed, dwarfish cretins who are consigned to the dungeons and the woods surrounding the castle. They sustain themselves by stealing food from the nearby villages and come to be known far and wide as “The Children of the Damned.” Ludwig grows increasingly unhinged as his bizarre experiments inevitably end in failure.

In Berlin, Victoria becomes a nurse and takes a job at one of the city hospitals. Though the economy improves over the years, both Victoria and her mother remain fearful that the city could at any time be absorbed into the communist territory that surrounds it. This leads Victoria to adopt a fatalist attitude, and she decides to never marry or have children. Meanwhile, Veronica enrolls in the University of Geneva, intent on becoming a surgeon. While in college, Veronica discovers Mary Shelley’s novel about her great-great-great-great-great-uncle and tracks down a rare edition of the letters of Captain Robert Walton, on which the novel is based. Through these books, she becomes fascinated by the strange history of her father’s family. On various breaks from school, Veronica travels to Bavaria, Germany, to search for the archives of the long-defunct University of Ingolstadt but never finds any record of Victor’s experiments. Inspired by her ancestor’s example, Veronica majors in biophysics and then attends medical school.

1962 – Hoping to make himself the master of life and death, Ludwig returns to his ancestors’ efforts to reanimate dead bodies. Borgo helps him obtain freshly buried corpses from nearby churchyards, but these experiments are also unsuccessful, causing Ludwig’s rage to grow. However, he does manage to develop a process to transpose the minds of two individuals, which he tests on small animals. Also, using his father’s notes on Phineas T. Horton’s research, Ludwig invents a machine to create a synthetic duplicate of a living being, endowed with the subject’s talents and abilities. The duplicate is formed from a large lump of synthetic material that Ludwig refers to as “clay.” He sees this “Experiment X” as his final triumph over his ancestors, as it would allow him to create new life rather than merely reanimate a dead body. Unfortunately, all the animals he subjects to the process die before the duplicate can be formed, and Borgo balks at procuring live human test subjects. To placate his loathsome assistant, Ludwig falsely promises Borgo that he will never complete “Experiment X.”

In Geneva, Veronica has become a successful surgeon, but when her parents move to Italy for the warmer climate, she takes up residence in her stepfather’s castle. In one wing, she sets up a private laboratory and surgical suite, where she treats wealthy clients who would prefer not to go to a hospital. Finding great success, Veronica invites her rather weak-willed boyfriend, Werner Schmidt, to move in with her.

1964 – By pure chance, Ludwig finds the perfect test subject for “Experiment X”—the Silver Surfer. Claiming the device will be able to purify the mind of evil impulses once properly calibrated, Ludwig convinces the Surfer to cooperate. However, the device instead siphons off some of the alien’s cosmic power to create an evil doppelgänger of the Silver Surfer. Realizing he’s been betrayed, the real Surfer breaks out of the machine, smashing to it to pieces, but the doppelgänger knocks him out with an energy bolt. Ludwig sends his creation out to terrorize the villagers, then tries to kill the real Surfer when he regains consciousness. Ludwig’s bullets have no effect on the alien’s silvery skin, which emboldens Borgo to betray his master by telling the Silver Surfer what’s happened. After the Surfer has set off to destroy his evil double, Ludwig beats Borgo viciously. Soon after, a group of angry villagers storms the castle, but rather than let Ludwig pick them off with his rifle, Borgo tackles his master. They both tumble out of a third-story window and fall to their deaths. Breaking his neck, Ludwig Frankenstein dies at the age of 49.

Shortly afterward, Victoria is informed of her father’s death and that, as his sole legitimate heir, she is to inherit Castle Frankenstein in the Swiss Alps and become the Baroness von Frankenstein. Intrigued, she travels to the remote site, only to be horrified to discover the Children of the Damned living there in filth and squalor. Their leader, a hunchback named Igor, tells her of their origins. The guilt-stricken Victoria immediately resigns from her nursing job in Berlin and dedicates herself to the care of these freakish outcasts that her father created and abandoned. Settling into the castle, Victoria discovers the papers left behind by her ancestors and pieces together the ghastly history of the Frankenstein family. She blames much of the family’s tragedy on the original Monster, believing him to have murdered both his creator, Victor, as well as her great-grandfather, Vincent.

1965 – Not far away, Veronica begins to hear reports that suggest the original Frankenstein Monster has resurfaced after almost 70 years. Believing herself to be the last surviving member of the Frankenstein family, Veronica decides to find the Monster and help him in any way possible, to atone for the suffering that Victor’s reckless experiments caused.

1966 – In the spring, Veronica hires New York City private investigator Eric Prawn to track down the Monster and bring him to Switzerland. Assuming a man like Prawn would not like taking orders from a woman, Veronica has Werner make all the phone calls while passing himself off as a Frankenstein. After several weeks, Prawn reports numerous run-ins with agents of I.C.O.N.—the International Crime Organizations Nexus—who are seeking Frankenstein’s Monster for their own nefarious purposes. Finally, in September, Prawn rescues the Monster from I.C.O.N. and brings him to Veronica’s castle, along with the creature’s loyal friend, a disaffected New Yorker named Ralph Caccone. While Veronica performs throat surgery on the Monster to restore his power of speech, I.C.O.N. sends zombie-like commandos and a hulking robot called the Berserker to recapture the Monster. Prawn cuts down the undead commandos with his machine gun, giving Veronica time to complete the operation. The Monster then fights with the robot, disabling it with a jolt of electricity. Though grateful to be able to speak again, the Monster recoils from Veronica’s expressions of pity and storms off into the mountains, never to return. Werner reveals his treachery by repairing the robot, enabling the Berserker to set off after the Monster. Enraged, Caccone grabs Prawn’s machine gun and fires on the I.C.O.N. helicopter that has landed to extract Werner. The helicopter explodes when the fuel tank is breached, killing Werner and the two agents aboard. Veronica remains cool in the face of Werner’s violent death, not one to brook betrayal. Eventually, Prawn and Caccone go home to America, leaving Veronica to her boutique medical practice.

At Castle Frankenstein, the Children of the Damned report to Victoria that the Monster has been spotted wandering the countryside in the company of a large robot. She orders them to capture the creature at once. Through the sheer weight of numbers, the Children manage to destroy the Berserker and drag the Monster into the castle, where they chain him to a wall. Unfortunately, the Monster breaks free and, in the ensuing fight, kills several of the Children. Victoria arrives in time to stop him from killing Igor. She accuses the Monster of murdering two of her ancestors, but he insists he killed neither man—Victor pursued him into the Arctic and died of exposure, while Vincent was shot by an unknown assailant and was already dead when the Monster found him. Despite her suspicions, Victoria finds she believes the Monster’s account and allows him to stay at the castle unmolested. In the months that follow, the Baroness and the Monster get to know each other, and a deep bond of kinship develops between them.

1967 – The Children of the Damned capture a large black horse with Pegasus-like wings that has been wandering aimlessly around Europe. Using the castle’s laboratory facilities, Victoria tries to return the horse to normal but succeeds only in mutating it further. The horse, which now has a terrifying demonic aspect, is kept inside the castle so it can’t escape and terrorize the villagers.

1968 – In the winter, the Children of the Damned find a Latverian scientist, Bram Velsing, suffering from exposure in the woods. They bring him to Castle Frankenstein, where Victoria is shocked to discover that the frightening metal mask Velsing wears has somehow been fused to his face and cannot be removed. Regardless, she nurses him back to health over the course of many months. Eventually, Velsing reveals that he had rebelled against his master, the cruel despot Doctor Doom, and the gruesome mask is his punishment. Both Victoria and the Monster are sympathetic and give Velsing the run of the castle, not suspecting that he is plotting to use the mutated horse in an elaborate revenge scheme against Doctor Doom.

1969 – Bram Velsing finally makes his move, donning an armored costume and calling himself “The Dreadknight.” He takes Victoria prisoner, attempting to force her to reveal the process which created the Children of the Damned so that he might build an army of mutated soldiers. She refuses to cooperate, and luckily, the Children manage to recruit the American superhero Iron Man to come to their rescue. Iron Man overcomes the Dreadknight’s arsenal of homemade weapons, and with a little help from the Frankenstein Monster, the villain is defeated. Iron Man leaves the comatose Dreadknight in Victoria’s care and departs.

1975 – Victoria is puzzled when both the Dreadknight and the mutated horse suddenly disappear one stormy night. After six years in a coma, Velsing’s recovery is nothing short of miraculous.


Notes:

1774–1799 – Victor Frankenstein’s life is chronicled in the novel Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and briefly retold by Captain Robert Walton’s great-grandson in Marvel’s Monster of Frankenstein #1–3 (with the Monster himself providing additional details). Throughout the novel, Shelley gives the dates as “17—” to indicate it takes place in the 18th century without nailing it down to specific years. However, she boxes herself in somewhat by twice having the characters quote from Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which was published in October 1798. Thus, I can only surmise that Captain Robert Walton picked up a copy of this newly released book on his way out of London at the start of his arctic expedition and had reached St. Petersburg, Russia, by December 11th of that year, when he wrote the first letter to his sister that opens the novel. This puts Walton’s meeting with Victor Frankenstein at August 1, 1799, and working backward from there, the chronology comes together quite simply. Furthermore, we know the story must take place no earlier than the last decade of the 18th century when the Monster mentions having read the Count de Volney’s Ruins of Empires, which was published in 1791. The anachronistic appearance of lines from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1816 poem “Mutability” in chapter 10 is obviously an interpolation by Mary Shelley to promote her husband’s work.

1800 – The castle purchased by Victor’s brother Ernest, which is located in the Swiss Alps, is not to be confused with the original Castle Frankenstein that sits outside the German city of Darmstadt. The earlier fortress, visited by Solomon Kane in Savage Sword of Conan #22, had fallen into ruins by the late 18th century and was uninhabitable.

1818 – Mary Shelley’s novel is discussed in Uncanny X-Men #40, revealing that the book exists in the Marvel Universe even though the events described in it actually happened there. Later, copies of the novel make an appearance in Frankenstein Monster #13 and Astonishing Tales #28.

1832 – In Monsters Unleashed #2, Derek McDowell is shown to be in possession of a volume that is just Robert Walton’s letters from the expedition, with no mention of Mary Shelley. This should be considered a separate book from the novel.

1875 – Jason Frankenstein is mentioned in Frankenstein Monster #6, where it is revealed he abandoned the castle over twenty years before 1898. The story revolves around the spider in the pit, which has been turning human victims into zombie-like creatures for some time. Zath is a spider-god from the Conan mythos.

1898 – Having been revived from a century of suspended animation in the Arctic, the Frankenstein Monster makes his way to Castle Frankenstein in search of a living descendant of his creator. Instead, he finds a Colonel Blackstone using the giant demonic spider to create an army of zombies to further his plans of conquest. The Monster floods the castle, drowning both the spider and the colonel and causing extensive damage to the structure. The Monster’s wanderings then take him to Transylvania where he battles Dracula. In Frankenstein Monster #9, we meet Vincent Frankenstein, who takes the Monster home to London, England in the next issue. Vincent and Ivan’s plans for the Monster go awry while Betty tends to the suffering Lenore. At the end of #11, Betty shoots Vincent and takes the orphaned Basil to raise as her own (although the baby is not named in the story). The Monster wanders off, only to wind up in suspended animation again.

1928 – The International Conference on Genetics held in Geneva is depicted in X-Factor Annual #3. Also seen to be in attendance are Herbert Edgar Wyndham and Jonathan Drew. Wyndham notes that “everybody who’s anybody in the field of life sciences” is at the conference, so I’m sure that would include Basil Frankenstein and Abraham Erskine, even though they aren’t shown.

1931 – Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein films are referenced in Uncanny X-Men #40, Invaders #31, and Fantastic Four #274. Ludwig is seen watching one of the movies in Silver Surfer #7 and, in his madness, appears to believe it to be a reliable account of his ancestor’s experiments.

1942 – Basil Frankenstein and Dr. Kitagowa run afoul of the Invaders in a flashback story in Invaders #31.

1964 – Ludwig Frankenstein is introduced in Silver Surfer #7, though his first name wasn’t revealed until Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme #37 (1992). Before that, he was referred to as “Boris Frankenstein” in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, but that’s a dumb name, especially given that Boris Karloff portrayed the Frankenstein Monster in the Marvel Universe as well as ours. The hunchback Borgo was brought back for the Doctor Strange story, but that occurred only in the Second Marvel Universe. In the original story, he dies alongside Ludwig at the end. Around this time, the X-Men battle an alien robot made in the Frankenstein Monster’s image, as seen in Uncanny X-Men #40.

1965 – The Frankenstein Monster transitions into the modern day in Frankenstein Monster #12, then has a series of misadventures in the black & white magazines Monsters Unleashed and Legion of Monsters, as well as guest-starring in Giant-Size Werewolf #2.

1966 – Veronica Frankenstein is introduced in Frankenstein Monster #16. The multi-issue storyline also features Werner Schmidt, Eric Prawn, and Ralph Caccone along with I.C.O.N. and their various agents. Then, Baroness Victoria Frankenstein and the Children of the Damned show up in Frankenstein Monster #18. Her relationship to Veronica is not made clear in the original story or in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, but making them half-sisters made the most sense to me.

1967–1969 – Victoria returns in Iron Man #101–102, where she, the Frankenstein Monster, and the Children of the Damned are menaced by the Dreadknight. The villain’s mutated steed, called the Hellhorse, originally belonged to the early super-villain called the Black Knight. During this period, the Monster meets Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up #36–37, but Victoria is not involved.

1975 – Castle Frankenstein is seen on the first page of the second issue of the Black Knight limited series when the Dreadknight is finally revived from his coma by Morgan le Fay. However, none of the castle’s other inhabitants make an appearance.


Next Issue: Ant-Man – Year Four