Saturday, July 28, 2007
Comic Art
I could get some de- bate as to whe- ther the char- ac- ter we are to looking at today is really "omnipotent" or not. He is Kang the Conqueror. A descendant of the Fantastic Four in some "alternative timeline" Kang is not so much powerful as he is strategic.
You see, Kang's real power comes from his plots and machinations which he executes throughout time. And because, under the Marvel Universe theory of time travel, whenever you alter time, you don't change history, you just create multiple timelines, there are countless Kangs throughout the timestreams that even work together.
If your brain does not hurt alreay, it probabaly ought to. Reading a Kang story often requires having a pen and paper nearby so you can track the players and the teams and the timelines. It makes reading Russian literature seem simple, Often the only way you can tell one Kang from the other is some extremely minor costume alteration, so you end up with notes like "Kang-A light purple accents -- Kang-B deep purple."Which brings me to one of the more interesting aspects of this character - his look is so Jack Kirby and it has changed so little over the years. In an age when characters are constantly getting redesigned, this one never changes. You would think all those alternative Kangs would develop different sartorial tastes over the centuries, but no - here is purple and green boy variant 10,645 and counting.
I think Kang is a writer's dream because of the complex plotting, and ease of dilemma solving the whole time travel thing allows. I also think he is a reader's nightmare. Not too long ago I bought a graphic novel of one of the more complicated Kang storylines, one where he tried to unite all his disparate selves into one superpowerful ultra-Kang or some such nonsense. I had read the storyline years ago in its serialized form and thought the graphic novel might make it easier. I admit, it was easier to flip back a few pages to check something than it was to dig out older issues, but I also could only read in short bursts - it was just too busy a plot to swallow whole.
Despite my issues with this character, he is one of the most enduring of the Marvel Universe. And if you think it is complex now, we have only begun to consider this character in the Omnipotents series. He is going to be back in different forms and names! Might as well take some aspirin now - you're gonna need it.
Related Tags: comics, comic books, comic art, omnipotents, Kang
