Marvel Comics: The Time Keepers Explained | Comics Explained

what's going on guys this is rob and in this video i'm going to make you guys experts on the timekeepers but here's the funny thing about this the timekeepers much like the time variance authority don't have a lot of appearances in marvel comics and in fact the timekeepers themselves have appeared in 39 comic books across the history of marvel comics that's how few times they've appeared right i mean they just don't have a whole lot that they do but whenever they do get involved things are pretty significant right so the time keepers are actually based off the time twisters and so whenever people say that the timekeepers first appeared in thor number 282 that's actually not correct the timekeepers first appeared and thor number 245 and it was actually based off an existing story that goes all the way back to thor issue 242. all of this of course was written by lynn wine and so the whole idea behind this is that somewhere along the line thor was suddenly attacked by what seemed like this giant sentient being right this enormous monster and then over the course of those issues leading into 245 he ended up finding himself and jane foster along with a handful of others were being attacked by the time twisters and so as they began to sort of go through this this kind of tracing back where the time twisters came from we got a kind of origin for them and this all basically coalesced in the future with a being who was referred to as he who remains now he who remains was basically the last member of the time variance authority to ever exist before the end of the universe and one of the things that marvel's always hit on whenever it comes to the creation of the multiverse different things like that that yes alternate realities are oftentimes created by the result of an action right spider-man keeping the venom symbiote instead of getting rid of it the avengers never forming different things along those lines but universes also die naturally it's called a heat death and so when universes die they're basically reborn into a new form and that happens almost as often as divergent realities forming as a result of just characters making arbitrary decisions and so the result of this is that the universe was inevitably going to end naturally right the heat death the universe collapsing in on itself and so in order to ensure that the next generation that came into existence or the next universe that was born could essentially correct all the mistakes of the previous universe before it he who remains had created three beings that would basically live on into the next universe and were essentially living knowledge and they would teach that universe everything it needed to know in order to make the best possible decisions the problem with this is they became the time twisters and so instead of being these individuals that would be born into the next universe and improve things they actually started going backwards in time and so they would kind of appear every 3000 years and they would cause all kinds of problems and this was the trail that thor and jane foster along with a few other people had basically stumbled upon and so in realizing that the time twisters were quite literally destroying reality they traveled all the way to the end of time and met with he who remains to effectively warn him of what his creations were going to do now there wasn't a direct explanation in terms of how we got from the time twister's origin and and how they came into existence running up to the time twisters until 2005. and this was done with a story called marvel knights four so it was basically the marvel knights version of the fantastic four those of you guys who don't know marvel knights was basically marvel having a company called event publications make their comics for them because they were almost broke after the coming bus to the 90s that's why you see marvel knights but this was part of a story that was called divine time and the whole idea behind this is that it gave us this explanation that in the aftermath of thor and jane foster and all them visiting he who remains that he ended up basically dismantling and getting rid of the time twisters by killing off their life support and then recreating them in the form of the time keepers now unlike the time twisters who basically sought knowledge at the beginning of time the time keepers actually exist to maintain their own existence right that's really the the whole point of them that's why you see them crossing over with a whole bunch of individuals one of the first time this happened was explained in thor number 282 when you basically came across what was called space phantom now space phantom is an interesting concept uh a lot of the history that we know about the space phantom is essentially a lie that he kind of makes up his own history so he's kind of similar to the joker in that way that we don't definitively know we did originally get an origin when we first saw him or at least not really when we first saw him that was back in the old avengers comics but in the follow-up in thor 282 we got an origin insofar as that his race basically found a way to master time travel before they mastered space travel which led to a big cronal war between all of them but then later on marvel changed it and they kind of danced on that a little bit and saying like maybe his origins real maybe it's not that kind of a thing but what ended up happening is that somewhere along the line because of the fact that kane the conqueror was so involved in the nature of time travel that he was eventually conscripted by the time keepers for a couple different purposes the first one was to monitor all of time between 3000 bc and 4000 ad and make sure that there were no credible threats that would arise that would become an enemy of the time keepers now initially immortus wouldn't really do this or at least kang wouldn't really do this but the nature of the timekeepers is they have the ability to manipulate all facets of time so if they appear to you they could de-age you down to nothing right or they could age you all the way up until you're like minutes away from dying and just leave you there right but they don't usually get involved personally they usually send agents to do their bidding for them but one of the things that had happened here and this was kind of interesting while the timekeepers themselves didn't actually receive an origin in until thor 282 and really even with marvel knight's fantastic four issue number 16 that what you actually ended up getting was marvel coming back through a combination of different stories really across their landscape especially when he got into the mark wade fantastic four run and kind of go back and change things and so what we ended up learning here is that when you initially had space phantom who first showed up and encountered the avengers in issue number two that what we ended up learning is that that was done at the behest of the time keepers that the avengers would at some point become a credible threat to the time keepers themselves when that threat would be we didn't know but it was the desire of the time keepers to eliminate the avengers before they become a threat and so that was when space phantom was first introduced with avengers issue number 10 back in 1964 by stan lee and jack kirby the first time you saw a mortise appear in marvel comics that was an action of the time keepers and so it was one of those instances where you had these kind of characters who would appear and they would face off against the avengers and there seemed to be no real useful purpose for them outside of stanley and jack kirby just wanted to tell a story and then marvel following up a couple decades later and saying actually there was a motivation behind this and it was all the time keepers who were doing it so again that's one of the interesting concepts you get when you start manipulating with time in marvel comics now one of the other interesting aspects of the time keepers is that we also saw them crossing over in a bunch of different stories as well right for example if you go back and you look at quasar volume 1 issue number 30 while it doesn't necessarily have to do with any major conflict that was going on you actually see the time keepers encountering the watcher this is kind of interesting thing because marvel kind of bounced back and forth they never really gave us a definitive answer as to whether or not it was the time keepers or the time twisters who had somehow returned but quasar number 30 of course was written by tom defalco and for all you batman fans out there was actually drawn by greg capullo but the important thing here is that they actually encountered the watcher and because the nature of uwatu is to basically monitor all of creation one of the things that he'd also been doing was monitoring the multiverse but because the watchers by their definition are supposed to be non-intervention under normal circumstances the time keepers wouldn't really care but because uwatsu the watcher had actually intervened in time over different periods when he first appeared to the fantastic four and warned them of the coming of galactus and other things besides that the concern of the time keepers or possibly the time twisters is that uatu would actually intervene in alternate realities and in doing so start creating all kinds of different problems among the time stream and possibly even disrupting the existence of the time keepers themselves and so they ended up giving him or allowing him to use a kind of dimensional portal that let him see other realities but the ability to continue using this was predicated on his ability to go into alternate realities and destroy those realities versions of the living laser now the reason for this is because prior to the quasar comics arthur parks was never really a wildly interesting character right he had like laser emitting diodes on him and that was really all he could do but eventually he gained the ability to become pure energy and during a conflict with quasar on the moon he jumped through one of the watchers portals to alternate realities what this did is it created a kind of multiversal imbalance now this was back before marvel would like invoke the living tribunal for all this kind of stuff and a desire to tell a story about the time keepers they use them instead and so because you had the living laser that was essentially hopping through different time periods the desire of the time keepers was to eliminate this guy and so that was the watchers task was to eliminate all the different variations of arthur parks from across the entirety of the multiverse now of course by the end of issue number 30 quasar had gone to this alternate reality he had snatched up arthur parks and then brought him back to the main marvel universe and the day was saved not a whole lot doing there but the concern the timekeepers had with regards to the avengers being a credible threat to them came to fruition with probably one of the most significant stories in the history of the avengers which was a story called avengers forever now depending on who you talked to some people loved kurt music's avengers forever some people hated it it really depends on the person but the whole idea behind avengers forever is that it's actually a story that deals with avengers being pulled onto a singular team from different timelines so it's literally all these different avengers from across time and it was an awesome concept it was great in terms of how it was done but the overall just behind this is that there's a couple things taking place here the first is that there's something called the destiny force and the destiny force was originally introduced in the cree scroll war when it was bonded to rick jones who was a long time friend of the incredible hulk and eventually became a huge friend of really most of the superheroes on earth but as essentially this kind of energy force that imbues all of humanity and potentially has the ability to give humanity incredible powers in terms of exactly how this works marvel's been pretty ambiguous about it i've seen different theories where they said like the celestials imbued humanity with the ability to tap into the destiny force i've also heard other people say it was just an inherently divine thing that humanity was just born with and it was only a matter of time before they achieved it but the important thing is that the time keepers came to the realization that humanity as a whole possessing the destiny force would be a credible threat to them the other part of this was the scarlet witch and the idea is that with the scarlet witch being a nexus being or essentially the kind of focal point for all magic within a particular universe that the scarlet witch was destined to be this enormously powerful being that could be a threat to the time keepers as well and so the idea was to have kane the conqueror or immortus basically bring all these different avengers together and then set them up to essentially be destroyed by the the time keepers who actually look to destroy as few universes as possible in order to nullify or minimize the effect the destiny force would have so they wouldn't have to worry about like the multiversal whole of humanity possessing the destiny force and then facing off against them the issue with this is a mortise did a couple things the first is that immortus actually ensured the scarlet witch would end up in a relationship with vision by going back in time and ensuring the two of them fell in love the second thing is that he actually allied himself with the avengers against the time keepers now the big thing about this and kind of the big moment for them is that it's largely eluded by marvel that the timekeepers were destroyed or at least disbanded uh in the in the aftermath of avengers forever we largely haven't seen them since then and a big part of that is because they're pretty much considered to be old hat their idiot isn't really a reason to see them anymore i'm not aware of them being there if they are it's in a story that i haven't read in marvel and i'd like to believe i've read um current pretty much on all the comics so maybe it's just something that i missed but the timekeepers don't currently seem to exist anymore they might uh but i don't really think we'll see or hear from them anytime soon although with them being in loki we'll probably see them there and that's kind of interesting because one of the big differences between the time keepers in loki and the timekeepers as they exist in in marvel comics is that the time keepers don't really seem to exist to preserve their own existence granted it's possible we don't really know enough about them all we really know about them is that little animation that we got in the show and the things that we've seen over the course of the news leaks and so on and so forth that they created the time variance authority and that's really it but how deep and how far reaching the time the timekeepers go we're not really sure we do know that like in marvel comics in relation to king the conqueror for example that kang has like a giant multiversal empire right so he rules entire universes we don't necessarily know if the time keepers are going to have something of their capacity in the comics where they also monitor huge sections of the entire multiverse and more or less rule it we don't know that's really going to be the case we'll see as time unfolds with the series but regardless as far as the comic book stuff goes that's really all there is again 39 issues not a whole lot due in there but with that being said guys we're gonna bring this video to an end thank you guys for watching and i will catch you all later peace

Channel: Comics Explained

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Id: 5npFT6h31sk

Length: 12min 15sec (735 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021