LENGTHY INTRODUCTION

Key Ideas

Idea #1Everyone inhabits the same universe, regardless of who publishes the mainstream continuity versions of them. Characters are constantly interacting in far more natural and logical ways than their artificial segregation into publisher-specific universes allows in mainstream continuity. A good deal of pointless duplication of teams and organizations is eliminated. The All-Winners Squad (the postwar successor to the Invaders) in the 1940s and the Avengers and Mighty Crusaders in the 1960s never existed as such – the heroes who would have been members of those teams instead joined an expanded postwar JSA and an expanded JLA. Checkmate also never existed – the individuals who would have joined it instead became Agents of SHIELD. There was never a chaotic proliferation of intelligence agencies that eventually resulted in a Janus Directive and “Sarge” Steel never became an “intelligence Czar” – he became the right-hand man of Nick Fury instead. The overall organizational structure of this universe is largely dominated by Marvel Universe elements, which IMO offers a good counterbalance to the way DC/Fawcett/Quality/Charlton Universe characters tend to predominate on an individual basis due to their greater power levels. Inevitably, some duplication of character concepts remains. This universe has both a Sub-Mariner and an Aquaman, for example. The city where the Sub-Mariner lives has been renamed Amphitriteis, while the city where Aquaman lives is still called Poseidonis and the one where Lori Lemaris lives is still called Tritonis. (In mythology, Amphitrite was the wife of Poseidon and Triton was their son.) Where the coexistence of duplicate versions of a character concept just doesn’t seem workable, I’ve given priority to the best-known or longest-established character. The personification of Death in this universe is the one associated with Thanos, while the embodiments of Order and Chaos are the ones associated with Dr. Fate. The Hercules who exists here is the version associated with Thor. In some cases I think it’s perfectly reasonable to actually amalgamate characters. There’s a single Zeus-Jupiter who has connections to both Hercules and Wonder Woman, for example.

The DC Universe elements incorporated into this universe are arranged in a way that reflects how I imagine things might have looked if “Flash of Two Worlds”, “Crisis on Earth-Two” and numerous other stories through to Crisis on Infinite Earths had never been published and DC Comics had restricted itself to a single core universe for most of its stories like Marvel Comics did. Or, equally, they reflect how things might have looked if some alternative version of the Crisis had merged multiple universes to create a single composite universe which gave priority to the Earth-2 (Golden Age) versions of formerly duplicated characters rather than the Earth-1 (Silver Age) versions. Characters introduced by DC following the Crisis, who we’re now told had originally existed on the unseen Earth-8 before the Crisis occurred, can be assumed to exist in this universe only if their origins aren’t inherently tied to events that could only have occurred if the Crisis had occurred as published. You could possibly also consider incorporating versions of the “multicultural 1980s” Justice Alliance of America characters of Earth-D as modern successors to the Earth-1 versions, most of whom will by now will be decidedly elderly and will have long since retired. (That’s if you’re prepared for the work involved in fleshing out characters who’ve only been seen a couple of times. I’m not.)

No Image characters exist here. This isn’t due to any kind of negative judgment as to their merits on my part, but rather to the fact that the made-to-order past histories of the Image Universe and its studio-specific sub-universes incorporate many characters who are essentially modified clones of DC and Marvel characters and who IMO can’t plausibly exist in the same universe as the originals. This goes for Wildstorm Studios characters too, even though they’re no longer part of the Image Universe. The same principle excludes the Squadron Supreme and the Heroes of Angor.

No Edgar Rice Burroughs characters exist here either. All major Burroughs characters inhabit a largely internally-consistent universe of their own, in which the Earth and Moon are hollow with humanoid-but-not-human races inhabiting their interiors and Mars and Venus have humanoid-but-not-human races inhabiting their surfaces – this is totally incompatible with the DC and Marvel elements which predominate in this universe, as well as with real-life basic geology and selenology. (Personally I don’t much care for Burroughs stories in any case, to be honest, due to their frequent instances of casual racism.)

Although this Timeline only deals with the 20th Century and the 21st-31st Centuries, most DC and Marvel characters from other historical eras can be assumed to have existed in this universe too. The same applies to certain historical characters from other media whose adventures have been adapted into comics format over the years, plus a few who haven’t. I’ve been selective with this, though. I don’t much care for the principle of cherry-picking one well-known character for incorporation out of all those created by a prolific author whose stories were usually set in the same universe, as I feel that departs too much from the original intent of the author. To give one example: I haven’t chosen to include Captain Nemo[1], because if I did I’d feel obligated to include not only the likes of Robur the Conqueror, Master of the World but also the likes of Phileas Fogg as well. Robur would fit into a superheroes-and-supervillains world just fine, but Fogg might be a bit of a stretch. There’d also be the headache of trying to explain away the various inconsistencies in the works of Jules Verne. (The Mysterious Island is a supposed to be a joint sequel to both the classic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea and the more forgettable The Children Of Captain Grant, but it contradicts both of them. In TMI Nemo was revealed to be an Indian Prince driven into exile by the British, but this contradicts a few cryptic hints given in TTLUTS which reflected the original idea for his secret identity that Verne had in mind when he created the character, which was that he was a Polish Nobleman driven into exile by the Russians. That’s bad enough, but far worse is that the dates given in TMI are totally incompatible with the dates given in TTLUTS and TCOCG.) The Jules Verne universe also has yet another version of Atlantis and an underground world that would be difficult to reconcile with the Subterranea of the Mole Man. OTOH, where a prolific author usually wrote his stories to be self-contained, rather than sharing a common universe, I’m not so completist. To give another example: Sherlock Holmes is a part of this universe even though Professor George Edward Challenger, the only other Sir Arthur Conan Doyle character most people today are likely to have heard of, isn’t because some of his stories aren’t compatible with the DC and Marvel elements either. (The planet Earth is not a gigantic mollusk-creature with the crust for a shell. Trust me on this.) Other well-known historical characters who definitely existed here include the Scarlet Pimpernel, El Zorro and the Lone Ranger and Tonto.

Although I haven’t mentioned them in the Timeline, the likes of James Bond (novels version) and John Steed (plus Cathy Gale, Emma Peel, Tara King, Mike Gambit and Purdey) can also be assumed to have existed in this universe if desired. The same with the likes of Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin.

[1] What about the secret origin of Neptune Perkins in The Young All-Stars, which had him being revealed to be the grandson of Captain Nemo, had Nemo being revealed to be Arthur Gordon Pym and had Pym/Nemo powering the Nautilus with Vril Energy and sinking the Titanic? Just forget about it! Please! In the name of sanity!

Idea #2Characters participate fully in world history as it unfolds around them. If a major war or humanitarian catastrophe breaks out, heroes will get involved to the fullest of their ability in whatever ways their powers and their personalities would naturally suggest. The most extreme case of this is Superman, of course. IMHO, only a fanatical pacifism that would leave him unwilling to ever strike a single

blow against anybody could possibly allow someone like Superman to stand idly by while things like the Cambodian, Bosnian or Rwandan genocides were happening, in which case he’d have allowed Doomsday to destroy first Metropolis and then the rest of the world unopposed as well. The version of Superman who exists in this universe has the hard-bitten personality of the Golden Age version and the power levels of the modern version, which makes him very bad news for Fascist and Communist dictators as well as mad scientists and alien invaders. He never kills if he can help it, but doesn’t lose much sleep over it if he’s satisfied he had no choice. He didn’t try to dismantle the Soviet Union during the Cold War because that would have triggered World War III, but the Khmer Rouge got everything they deserved. Other heroes are just as ready in principle to take an active role in international affairs, although those with lesser power levels naturally have more limited freedom of action. Captain Marvel might be under orders from Shazam to refrain from trying to shape the course of human history, while Thor might be similarly constrained by Odin and Hal Jordan would certainly be prohibited from doing so by the Guardians of the Universe, but Alan Scott would be under no such constraints and Captain Atom would be bound by the wishes of the State Department only for as long as he chose to be. All this adds up to major differences between the history of this universe and that of the real universe or that of any major publisher.

Not every character created specifically in order to be shown getting involved in major historical events has been included here just on the strength of that alone. For example, Stalnoivolk, the Soviet champion of World War II, doesn’t exist in this universe. This is because I always had the impression that he was intended to be a counterpart to the Nazi champion Übermensch, who was himself only created to function as the nemesis of "Iron" Munro. If the Crisis hadn't deleted the Golden Age Superman from existence and left a vacuum to be filled, Munro would never have existed and neither would Übermensch. Therefore, it seems to me that Stalnoivolk shouldn't exist either in a universe where the GA Superman does.

With regard to Soviet champions in general, this Timeline doesn't provide extensive coverage. DC and Marvel created quite a few of them over the years, but in a very haphazard and illogical way. The whole point of the late unlamented Soviet Union was collectivism and centralization, yet in print their superhumans were clustered into small groups which functioned without any apparent coordination. I've chosen to arrange things in a way that seems to me to be more consistent with my admittedly superficial understanding of the Soviet mindset. Only a few of the more well-known or more powerful, or those who I personally found interesting, are mentioned individually.

As the alternate histories of real-world Middle Eastern and North African countries in this universe might suggest, the fictitious countries of Qurac and Bialya are still ruled by fictitious conservative monarchies and have never had to endure the rule of President Marlo and Colonel Harjavti (although the Queen Bee II might still be a possibility). The only Arab Nationalist state in the world is the first one, Egypt, while the nearest thing to an Islamist state is Saudi Arabia. The likes of Ravan and some of the other members of The Jihad/The Onslaught may still have existed, but they’ll probably never have come together as a team, let alone had a national government backing them and giving them a secure base of operations. Without the presence (or at least the success) of Arab nationalism or Islamist extremism to anything like the same extent as in our history, their only obvious motivation would be a generic hatred of Israel – Ravan might be a recurring enemy of the Seraph and Sabra, for example. If you particularly want such clichéd motivations for Middle Eastern characters, about the only other thing that springs to mind is some kind of hero-worship of the memory of Gamal Abd el-Nasser or something (not really very plausible IMO). If you want to use any of these characters, you’ll probably have to think up modified origins for them. All this may sound rather alarming for GMs and players who like having their villains be generic superhuman Husaynite thugs

and generic superhuman bin Ladenite frothing-at-the-mouth fanatics! The fact is, nobody outside their own circles of family and friends has ever so much as heard the names of Saddam Husayn or Osama bin Laden in this universe. You’ll either have to start looking for some more original campaign ideas or just selectively plunder this Timeline for ideas you feel can use without your having to incorporate the radically different Middle East which plays such a significant part here.

Idea #3Real time is passing in this universe and most characters are aging and accumulating wear and tear naturally. There’s no sliding timescale to keep the beginning of their careers perpetually only “a few years ago” and prevent them from ever growing up or growing old. This means that, for example, a published Robin story involving the "teenagerhood" of Tim Drake as a fundamental element of the plot simply can’t happen here as originally written after about 1993. And of course, the Batman whom Tim would be training under at the time is Dwayne Taylor, not Bruce Wayne, which could affect many other things too. I had the first two Batmen retire around 25 years after they first donned the cowl. That should probably be taken as an upper limit for normal-human Olympic-level athlete characters, with most perhaps not being able to last more than 20 years before their bodies start to give out. Dwayne will have to find a successor by 2014 at the latest. Tim is only about a decade younger than he is, making him too old to be a satisfactory prospect in the long term. Jean-Paul Valley is probably older than Dwayne, putting him out of the running altogether.

Of all my key ideas, this one has perhaps the most room for flexibility. With some modifications to the Timeline, you could essentially abandon it in favour of the excellent concept of the León Genetic Sequence.

Idea #4Real time passing means that events predicted to occur a certain number of years in the future as of any given point in time *will* occur after that many years have passed, whether it be in the mainstream timeline or in a divergent timeline. The future will eventually arrive and will thereby become first the present and then the past. Events *will not* hover in a perpetually-deferred future that’s always “a few years from now” and never actually arrives. This means that the Earth-H Timeline is mapped out, at least in outline, for a thousand years into the future. Although I’ve tried to keep as close to the original sources as the Amalgam-type nature of this Timeline will allow, in the interests of (hopefully) achieving at least a bare minimum level of credibility I’ve felt the need to “rationalize” most Silver Age futuristic characters who are supposed to exist in the 21st Century. The mid-century era that the likes of Tommy Tomorrow belong to is now too near in time to the present day for it to seem remotely possible that we could develop the level of technology and the technocratic mentality that were featured in their original stories by then. Tommy Tomorrow himself is now essentially a military policeman serving with a UN standing military who upholds law and order in space stations and moonbases scattered across the Solar System, rather than a cop with a raygun and a rocketship whizzing from planet to planet at the drop of a hat. (Think of the movie Outland and you won’t go far wrong.) The same sort of re-imagining applies to the likes of the Space Ranger. Earlier in the 21st Century the likes of Arno Stark and Death’s Head exist, but the society they operate is much more peaceful and law-abiding than the full-fledged generic corporate-dominated cyberpunk dystopia of their published stories. Both of them have to be much less overtly ruthless (or much more covertly ruthless) in fulfilling their mercenary contracts with the comparatively few organizations ruthless enough to employ them.

As you may have gathered by now, I have a deep-seated aversion to sliding timescales and deliberately indeterminate futures and I strongly favour incorporating real time into my timelines whenever possible. However, this is difficult with the Legion of Super-Heroes for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they live in the 30th Century rather than the 20th, so they obviously can’t have their

adventures occurring at the exact time of publication! The nearest thing to that which can plausibly work is to set every LSH story exactly 1,000 years after the date of publication. Secondly, they were originally intended as mere one-shot characters. After their first appearance at the end of 1957 they weren’t seen again for another 20 issues, until the middle of 1959. They continued to appear only intermittently until the middle of 1962, when they gained a regular slot for the rest of the 1960s. It seems rather unimaginative and rather wasteful of a significant part of their “teenagerhood” to try to impose real time on this period right from the get-go, so I’ve compromised a little by assuming that those intermittently-appearing earliest stories were set closer together in time than their frequency of publication would indicate. Otherwise, the principle that stories are set more or less exactly 1,000 years after their year of publication still applies to the 1960s stories. The pointless and confusing retconning which states that some of the earliest stories did not occur in the same order from the viewpoint of the 20th Century Legionnaires as they did from that of the 30th Century ones is ignored here.

After the end of their 1960s run more problems arise, from my rather pedantic viewpoint anyway. I’ve always hated it when a publisher depicts a future for a character or team which they declare at the time to be the authentic, actual future, only to renege on that when a later writer arrogantly refuses to have his precious creativity restricted by his being constrained to work towards the future that was depicted in the earlier stories. Once many of the LSH had adopted new costumes designed by Dave Cockrum in the funky 1970s, it was always going to take a rather credibility-straining contrivance to ever get them all to revert to their original ones ready for the Adult Legion stories to occur. The ground had already been partially prepared for Paul Levitz to eventually retcon those stories as part of a divergent timeline, which of course he duly did. That story was a good read, but I still hate the basic premise of it all the same. So, in my timeline things begin to diverge from Legion history as chronicled in print soon after beginning of the 1970s run. Around that time, with most of the Legion in their early 20s at least, most of the male Legionnaires replace the “Boy”, “Lad” or “Kid” in their codenames with “Man” while most of the female Legionnaires replace the “Girl” or “Lass” in their codenames with “Woman”. This makes for slightly less catchy codenames in some cases, but that can’t be helped. All of them stick with their original 1960s costumes on a permanent basis. The broad outlines of the events chronicled in the 1970s stories will still happen for the most part, but some further details will be different. The last major published event to be pretty much duplicated here is the Great Darkness Saga. Soon afterwards, this timeline breaks with the published mainstream timeline when Tasmia Mallor tragically dies saving the Science Asteroid from Khund raiders. This was the first event predicted by the Adult Legion stories which failed to occur in the published mainstream timeline and it was made pretty clear that its failure to occur marked the point when the published mainstream timeline diverged from the Adult Legion one, so as I’ve decided to mirror the Adult Legion timeline with this one it’s (very regrettably) necessary for it to occur here. After that we start to move towards the few other known events of the Adult Legion era. There are some fairly large gaps between these events, with what happens during said gaps and after the Adult Legion era being pretty much up for grabs. Beyond this point, though, most of the Legion will probably start to think about retiring, or in some cases will have already retired. By then there may be a new generation of Legionnaires ready to replace them, some of whom will be their own children.

Although Legionnaires who were introduced in the 1970s or 80s do still exist here, I envision them as wearing 1960s-style costumes like those of their teammates in order to avoid having their existence clash with the theme of trying to depict a smooth progression from the Teenage Legion to the Adult Legion as originally envisioned in the 1960s.

Here the Time Trapper really is just a renegade Controller. His retconned origin as an all-powerful embodiment of entropy from the end of time was largely prompted by the Crisis and the resulting need to set up the Pocket Universe

storyline to provide a new explanation for the existence of Superboy. With no equivalent of the Crisis ever occurring in this timeline, all of that becomes redundant. It’s doubly so since Superboy never existed here either. Kal-El/Clark Kent didn’t go public with his powers until he was 22 years old, in 1938. He went on to become such an awe-inspiring legend – and a sufficiently intimidating figure in the history books – as Superman that the teenage Legion would never have had the presumption to try to meet him when he was 14, in 1930, even if he had had a career as Superboy at that age. Supergirl was rather less forbidding, though. Similarly, although Captain Marvel was also too overawing a figure for the Legion to approach, Captain Marvel Jr. and Miss Marvel [Mary Marvel] seemed more on their level. They essentially replace Superboy here in the role of having adventures with the early Legion via time travel. The Legion don’t meet Superman until the Adult Legion era, when they’re in their mid-40s and so is he. Superman already knows of the existence of the Legion from what Supergirl has told him about them, but this is the first time he actually meets them himself. Supergirl never meets the Adult Legion while she’s still a teenager – but she goes on to become one of them as the adult Superwoman many years later.

Since this is an Amalgam-type universe, I thought I should include some token Marvel (mostly Guardians of the Galaxy) elements in its future to dilute the overwhelming predominance of DC (mostly Legion of Super-Heroes) elements a little. I’m assuming that, since no version of the Magic Wars and the collapse of the United Planets economy happened here, the Khunds had no golden opportunity to invade the UP presented to them in 2989. They reluctantly refrained from major conflict with the UP for a further eighteen years until their craving for war grew too great to resist. After 3007 they play a role as a menace to the UP vaguely comparable to the one the Badoon played as a menace to Earth in the early GotG stories. Since the human race of this Timeline have had access to interstellar spaceflight for the best part of a millennium by then, it isn’t very logical for Nikki Gold, Charlie-27 and Martinex T’Naga to all be from planets within the Solar System. I’m therefore assuming that in this Timeline they’re the genetically-engineered descendants of people who picked planets far more distant than Mercury, Jupiter and Pluto to colonize, with those worlds unfortunately being close to Khundish space and therefore soon devastated when this war breaks out. Here Yondu Udonta is descended from aliens who originally lived a hunter-gather lifestyle on a world in the Alpha Centauri system, but gradually began to adopt a technological one after centuries of contact with neighbouring humanity. Some of them eventually emigrated to a more distant world resembling their original one where they could live in greater isolation and preserve their traditional way of life. This made them easy meat for the techno-barbarian Khunds. Vance Astrovik was never frozen in suspended animation for a millennium in this Timeline (since I couldn’t think of any remotely logical reason for him to be) and so is long dead by the 31st Century.

And now, finally, without further ado, I present to you…

THE EARTH-H TIMELINE

PART 1: THE 20th CENTURY

1902

English gentleman adventurer Adam Adamant is frozen in suspended animation by his arch-enemy the Face[2].

[2] No, there’s no reason you should have ever heard of this character! He was featured in the BBC TV series Adam Adamant Lives! from 1966-67. He was created by some of the people who came up with Doctor Who.

1903

Renowned consulting detective Sherlock Holmes retires from practice.

1911

The insidious Dr. Fu Manchu embarks upon a long career of seeking to achieve world domination. He will be consistently thwarted by the efforts of Sir Denis Nayland Smith and others.

1912-14

Sherlock Holmes reluctantly comes out of retirement to break up a German spy ring for British Intelligence.

1914

July-AugustOutbreak of the First World War.

1915

English nobleman Lord Montgomery Falsworth becomes the patriotic costumed champion Union Jack, the first of all costumed champions.

Englishman Peter Hunter becomes the patriotic costumed champion Albion, the first costumed champion to possess superhuman abilities, which in his case are mystical in nature. They are derived from the Green Knight, an ancient supernatural entity embodying benevolent mystical forces which desire the preservation and health of the biosphere of the Earth. Albion has been given his powers primarily in order to enable him to serve as the latest of many champions of the Green Knight in its ancient struggle with the Red Lord, an ancient supernatural entity embodying malevolent mystical forces which desire the sickness and destruction of the biosphere. He is permitted to use his powers in the service of his country only because servants of the Red Lord are known to be aiding its enemies for reasons of their own.

1916

The distant planet Krypton is destroyed in a cataclysmic explosion. The forces unleashed in the process transmute its rubble into a radioactive element that will come to be known as kryptonite. A spacecraft constructed by the scientist Jor-El escapes the destruction of Krypton by means of an experimental space-warp drive, carrying his infant son Kal-El to safety on Earth, where he will be adopted by humans and given the name Clark Kent. The wormhole created by the drive is torn wide open by the force of the explosion of Krypton and remains so for several years before finally collapsing. During this time various other objects pass through the wormhole, including two other spacecraft which had previously been in parking orbits around Krypton and a number of kryptonite rocks. Some of the latter go on to fall to Earth as meteorites.

The popularity of Union Jack and Albion among the public of Great Britain inspires the creation of more such costumed champions, namely the Steel Knight and his kid sidekick the Silver Squire in Great Britain and the Crimson Cavalier in France.

1917

Albion, Union Jack, the Steel Knight, the Silver Squire and the Crimson Cavalier band together form a team known as Freedom’s Five[3].

[3] The published version of these events is limited to flashbacks in issues of The Invaders and a few other places. It made no reference to Albion, because he hadn’t been created at the time. Rather, the fifth member of the team was the aviator hero the Phantom Eagle. I always thought that his inclusion made little sense. Would Blackhawk ever join the All-Star Squadron? Not unless he had a truly inept writer – he belongs to a different genre altogether. The same applies to the Phantom Eagle and Freedom’s Five. Albion was introduced much later in The Knights of Pendragon from Marvel UK. He couldn’t be declared to have been a member of the team because it would have contradicted the earlier accounts, but there was never any logical reason given as to why he shouldn’t have been. I’ve changed this situation here in the interests of what I see as common sense.

1918

Union Jack inconclusively battles a German vampiric costumed assassin codenamed Baron Blood.

NovemberEnd of the First World War.

Freedom’s Five disbands. Its individual members retire from their roles as costumed champions.

1919

Former Royal Flying Corps pilot James “Biggles” Bigglesworth begins an adventurous civilian career as a charter pilot, occasional secret agent and later member of the Special Air Police.

1920

Former British Army officer Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond begins an adventurous civilian career as a gentleman private detective.

1925

February-AprilThe lost city of R’lyeh briefly emerges from the Pacific Ocean and the primordial alien Great Old One Cthulhu almost escapes from his long entombment within it. Around the world, artists and poets report various degrees of horrific dream states, while outbreaks of bizarre mental illnesses and group manias abound.

1928

FebruaryU.S. government forces conduct a series of raids in Innsmouth, Massachusetts, followed by the burning and dynamiting of a number of houses along the waterfront. A submarine fires torpedoes into the abyss at the base of Devil Reef, partially destroying Y’ha-nthlei, a city of the immortal amphibian Deep Ones.

OctoberKent Allard, alias Lamont Cranston, begins a covert war against evil as the Shadow.

1931

JanuaryThe Miskatonic University Expedition to Antarctica discovers a lost city built by the primordial crinoid beings known as the Elder Things.

1932

The first giant ape to be called King Kong rampages in New York City before being killed by the U.S. Army Air Force[4].

NovemberDr. Clark “Doc” Savage Jr. begins a covert war against evil in New York City.

[4] Before anyone rushes to point out my staggering error in dating the events of the original King Kong movie to 1932 rather than 1933, I’d like to explain that according to Wikipedia, the first appearance of Kong in any medium was in a novelization of the script published in late 1932, months prior to the theatrical release of the movie in 1933. I’ve therefore decided to assume that both the book and the movie were delayed accounts of events that had actually occurred months before, earlier in 1932.

1933

MarchKanzler [Chancellor] Adolf Hitler, the German head of government, assumes dictatorial powers with the assent of the Reichstag [Imperial Diet], the German national legislature, which is seeking an end to fifteen years of endemic political and social instability brought about by fiercely partisan, ideologically-driven power struggles between the radical left, the radical right, liberals, conservatives and centrists.The first of many German concentration camps opens at Dachau.

June-JulyHitler orders the dissolution of all political parties in Germany except for his own, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei [National Socialist German Workers’ Party] or NSDAP, commonly known as the Nazipartei [Nazi Party]. The NSDAP is a totalitarian movement based upon mass appeal, intense nationalism, all-pervading racism, rabid anti-Semitism and dictatorial rule. In almost every respect it is an anti-intellectual movement, emphasizing the will of the charismatic dictator as the sole source of inspiration of a people and a nation, as well as a vision of the annihilation of all enemies of the “Arisch Deutsche Herrenvolk [Aryan German Master Race]” as the one and only goal of Nazi policy. At the top of its list of openly-declared enemies are Judaism and the Jewish race, Communism and the Slavic races, but although it does not generally say so openly, its leaders are also implacably hostile to traditional Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism. Its brown-shirted paramilitary corps, the Sturmabteilung [Assault Division] or SA, already have a long track record of violence and intimidation against Jews and political opponents: they now rampage unchecked.

1934

January“Flash” Gordon, Dale Arden and Dr. Hans Zarkov first travel to the planet Mongo and battle its tyrant ruler Ming the Merciless.

JuneFirst recorded adventure of Mandrake the Magician and his sidekick Lothar.Hitler orders the arrest and summary execution of a number of his political rivals both within and outside the Nazi Party. The Schutzstaffel [Protective Echelon] or SS, a black-shirted elite corps within the SA, carries out a purge of dozens of SA leaders during the “Night of the Long Knives”: it is subsequently separated from the SA and made responsible to Hitler alone.

AugustHitler makes himself Prasident [President] of Germany and Commander-in-Chief of the Army while still remaining Kanzler [Chancellor], thereby becoming head of state and head of the armed forces in addition to already being head of government. He then creates the new title of Fuhrer [Leader] for himself to supersede the established titles. His power in Germany is now absolute.Over the next five years the SS, headed by Heinrich Himmler, grows into a massive and labyrinthine bureaucracy, divided mainly into two groups, the Allgemeine-SS [General SS] and the Waffen-SS [Armed SS]. The Allgemeine-SS takes control of all German police forces and is placed in charge of foreign and domestic intelligence and espionage: its most notorious branch is the dreaded political police, the Geheime Staatspolizei [Secret State Police] or Gestapo. The Waffen-SS administers the system of concentration camps and will send units of elite combat troops to fight alongside the regular army in the event of war.

1935

JuneFirst recorded supernatural adventure of Dr. Richard Occult and Rose Psychic.

June-JulyThe Nathaniel Peaslee Expedition discovers the remains of the Lost City of Pnakotus, built by the primordial cone-shaped beings known as the Great Race of Yith, in the Great Sandy Desert of Australia.

1936

JanuaryBritt Reid begins a covert war against evil as the Green Hornet in Detroit, aided by his karate-master chauffeur Kato.

FebruaryFirst recorded adventure of Christopher “Kit” Walker as the Phantom, the twenty-first of his line to carry on a legendary centuries-long war against evil in the guise of “The Ghost Who Walks”.

1937

MayThe Hindenburg airship disaster.

JulySix years of progressively-escalating military incursions by Japanese forces into Chinese territory finally culminate in the outbreak of full-scale war between Japan and China. Arguable beginning of the Second World War in Asia.

SeptemberThe Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien is published in Great Britain.

1938

During this year an infiltrator scout is sent to Earth by the alien Thanagarian Empire, to spend a year assessing the feasibility and desirability of conquering it. In the event, the scout grows to like and admire the people of Earth to such an extent that he eventually decides to turns in a report which will present its supposed findings in such a deliberately distorted way as to inevitably lead, when read, to the conclusion that Earth is definitely not worth attempting to conquer. During his time spent on earth the scout meets and befriends a young Egyptologist named Carter Hall, who has acquired some puzzling Ancient Egyptian relics which suggest the existence of some long-forgotten highly advanced technology in Ancient Egypt. The scout is shown these relics and is astonished to recognize them as components for the flying harnesses, involving the use of antigravity belts and artificial wings, which have been used by the military and paramilitary police forces of his homeworld of Thanagar for millennia. He concludes that some long-forgotten scouting expedition from Thanagar had once stumbled upon Earth and then somehow become marooned there, millennia before its rediscovery by more recent scouts, sharing their technology with some of their Ancient Egyptian captors in return for their lives. Having become firm friends with Carter Hall by this time, the scout does the exact opposite of what his standing orders should dictate – killing Hall and making off with the artifacts for return to Thanagar – and instead subtly feeds him ideas which may, eventually, enable him to deduce the working principles of the relics and perhaps, ultimately, even succeed in creating working duplicates of them. The scout then returns to Thanagar to deliver his falsified report, which as intended leads to the abandonment of any plans to invade Earth. The scout is then reunited with his wife and son, who have not seen him for a year. It had in fact been the coincidental similarity between the name of Carter Hall and the name of his son, whom the scout was missing along with his wife while he was away from them on his mission, which had led him to seek out and befriend the young Egyptologist: the name of his son is Katar Hol.

FebruaryClark Kent makes his first public appearance as Superman in Metropolis [New York City].First recorded adventure of wealthy playboy private detective Tex Thompson and his comedic sidekick Bob Daley.First recorded adventure of jungle explorer and safari hunter Congo Bill.

MarchGermany annexes Austria.The Hobbit is published in the United States.

JuneLee Travis begins a covert war against evil as the original Crimson Avenger in New York City, aided by his karate-master chauffeur Wing.

September-OctoberThe ethnic Germans of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia demand autonomy, a cover for their actual goal of outright union with Germany. Great Britain and France compel Czechoslovakia to agree to their demands, in an effort to avoid a general European war. The Sudetenland is transferred to Germany.A wave of regionalist agitation within Czechoslovakia forces the weakened government to restructure itself into a federation of three autonomous provinces – Czechia, Slovakia and Ruthenia.

NovemberSlovakia and Ruthenia are forced to cede much of their territory to Hungary.

1939

JanuaryMillionaire playboy Bruce Wayne makes his first public appearance as the Bat-Man in Gotham City [New York City].Hitler makes a speech threatening European Jewry with annihilation in the event of war.

FebruaryFirst clash between Superman and the Ultra-Humanite.

MarchGermany annexes Czechia and makes Slovakia a protectorate.Hungary annexes the remainder of Ruthenia.Wesley Dodds begins a covert war against evil as the original Sandman in New York City.

AprilItaly invades and occupies Albania.

JuneFirst reported sighting of Prince Namor of Atlantis, the Sub-Mariner, in the North Atlantic Ocean.

JulyThe android calling himself “Jim Hammond” makes his first public appearance as the original Human Torch in New York City.

AugustGermany and the Soviet Union reach a secret agreement to divide Poland between them.Darrel Dane makes his first public appearance as Doll Man.

SeptemberGermany invades and occupies western Poland. The Soviet Union invades and occupies eastern Poland. The Polish government flees into exile, eventually arriving in London. Great Britain and France declare war on Germany. Beginning of the Second World War in Europe.Jay Garrick makes his first public appearance as the original Flash in Keystone City [Kansas City].The Egyptologist Carter Hall finally succeeds in duplicating Thanagarian flying harness technology. He soon uses it to make his first public appearance as the original Hawkman in New York City.Joe Higgins makes his first public appearance as the original Shield, the first costumed champion with a costume design inspired by the American flag, in Washington, D.C..John Dickering makes his first public appearance as the original Comet.Johnny Thunder and Thunderbolt have their first adventure in New York City.First clash between the Shadow and the would-be world-conqueror Shiwan Khan.

OctoberBilly Batson is transformed into the original Captain Marvel.First clash between Captain Marvel and Dr. Thaddeus Sivana.Alan Armstrong makes his first public appearance as the original Spy-Smasher.First clash between the Spy-Smasher and the Mask.The ghost of murdered Policeman Jim Corrigan makes his first public appearance as the original Spectre.

Prince Amentep makes his first public appearance as Ibis the Invincible in Fawcett City [New York City].Germany initiates a program for the mass murder (described as euthanasia) of mentally retarded, physically disabled and emotionally disturbed Germans who depart from the Nazi ideal of Aryan supremacy. It will become known as the T4 Program, after the offices that direct it from the Berlin address Tiergartenstrasse 4. The Nazis pioneer the use of gas chambers and mass crematoria under this program.

NovemberThe Soviet Union demands territorial concessions from Finland: Finland refuses the demands and war breaks out.First clash between Batman and the Joker.Rex Tyler makes his first public appearance as the original Hourman in New York City.Hank Heywood makes his first public appearance as Steel, the Indestructible Man, in New York City.

DecemberDick Grayson makes his first public appearance as Robin the Boy Wonder, the kid sidekick of the Batman, in Gotham City [New York City].First clash between Superman and Lex Luthor.

1940

During the course of this year the U.S. government and military establish a top-secret research program codenamed Operation Rebirth to develop a means of creating physically superior soldiers. The program is based upon the work of Jewish-German scientist Dr. Abraham Erskine, who has been driven to emigrate to the United States by the anti-Semitism of the Nazi Party in Germany. (He is assigned the false identity of Dr. Josef Reinstein for secrecy.)

Operation Rebirth recruits African-American soldier Isaiah Bradley to be the first human guinea pig for the Super-Soldier Serum: he is successfully transformed into a nearly perfect human being. Only afterwards does Bradley learn that he was only selected as a test subject because the racism of his superiors led them to consider him more expendable than a white man. He is told that once the scientists have finished testing him he will be returned to ordinary duties, under strict orders to say nothing of the experiment to anyone.

Operation Rebirth then recruits scrawny fine arts student Steven Rogers to be the next human guinea pig for the Super-Soldier Serum: he too is successfully transformed into a nearly perfect human being. A German spy who has secretly infiltrated the program suddenly panics at the thought of the United States being able to field an army of such soldiers against Germany. He shoots Dr. Erskine dead before being killed himself. Since Erskine had committed the most crucial part of the formula for the Serum to memory and refused to make any written record of it, the secret dies with him.

The U.S. authorities eventually decide that the most effective use they can make of the one Super-Soldier they have is to turn him into a patriotically-themed costumed champion in the mold of the Shield and Steel, the Indestructible Man. They create the identity of Captain America for this purpose. Isaiah Bradley becomes embittered at the thought that he is not considered fit to play any such role himself and attempts to prove his worth by stealing the prototype Captain America costume and going on an unauthorized mission into Germany to destroy its own super-soldier research project. On his return to the United States he is imprisoned in Fort Leavenworth. Steve Rogers learns nothing of these events and so assumes himself to be the only Captain America in existence[5].

January

First recorded supernatural adventure of Kent Nelson as Dr. Fate and his first recorded clash with Wotan.Jim Barr makes his first public appearance as Bulletman in Fawcett City [New York City].The original Black Condor makes his first public appearance.

MarchFinland sues for peace and cedes the territory demanded by the Soviet Union.Alan Scott makes his first public appearance as the original Green Lantern in Metropolis [New York City]. His second follows a month later in New York City. A month later in turn, his third follows in Capitol City [Washington, D.C.], which then becomes his base of operations for the next few years. He will eventually relocate to Gotham City [New York City].The first of several clashes is fought between the Human Torch and Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner.

AprilThe Eternal Makkari makes his first public appearance in the modern era using the alias of the Ancient Roman god Mercury. He clashes with the Deviant Kro, who is using both the alias of the Ancient Roman god Pluto and the alias of the leading German Nazi Rudolf Hendler.

MayThomas Raymond makes his first public appearance as Toro, the kid sidekick of the Human Torch, in New York City.Lanford “Happy” Terrill makes his first public appearance as the original Ray in New York City.The Spirit of America makes his first public appearance in decades as Uncle Sam.

May-JuneGermany invades France, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Belgium; Denmark, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Belgium capitulate; Germany occupies Denmark, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Belgium.British and some French and Belgian forces evacuated from Dunkirk (Dunkerque) in northern France back to Britain.Norway capitulates; Germany occupies Norway.Italy declares war on France and Great Britain.Great Britain and France declare war on Italy.France capitulates; Germany occupies three-fifths of France.

JunePOINT OF DIVERGENCE FROM ACTUAL HISTORY. Clark Kent renounces his American citizenship (in order not to contravene American neutrality laws) and travels to Great Britain to offer his services as Superman to the British war effort. He is initially met with general disbelief in his usefulness from the authorities, to the point that futile efforts are made to arrest him as an illegal alien.Al Pratt makes his first public appearance as the original Atom in New York City.Matthew Burland makes his first public appearance as the first Black Hood of the modern era.

June-SeptemberSuperman aids the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain despite persistent obstruction from the authorities. Positive word-of-mouth from RAF pilots begins to win strong support for his efforts among the British public: this in turn leads to his activities being reported by British newspapers, and then abroad by war correspondents from other countries. To the positive dismay of most of the authorities, Superman rapidly comes to be seen worldwide as one of the most important symbols of the British struggle to uphold the cause of freedom against Nazi tyranny.

July

“Ma” Hunkel makes her first public appearance as the original Red Tornado in New York City.The extradimensional being Aarkus makes his first public appearance as the original Vision in New York City.Max Mercury makes his first public appearance as the original Quicksilver.

AugustFormation of the Justice Society of America or JSA, the first major team of costumed champions, in New York City.

SeptemberGermany, Italy and Japan form a military alliance which subsequently becomes known as the Axis.British Prime Minister Winston Churchill witnesses Superman in action in the Battle of Britain and subsequently interviews him in person: in an effort to demonstrate the extent of his readiness to cooperate with the British authorities, Superman takes the decision to reveal his true identity as Clark Kent to Churchill and his aides. Finally becoming convinced of his potential value to the war effort, Churchill appoints Superman his personal bodyguard and orders his military chiefs to begin considering how Superman and other individuals with superhuman abilities can best be utilized: a general attitude of skepticism or outright hostility among the latter leads to these orders being circumvented or simply ignored by the general staffs, but the intelligence services MI5 and MI6 investigate possible uses for superhuman spies and assassins and soon begin cautious recruitment efforts.Ted Grant makes his first public appearance as Wildcat in New York City.

OctoberItaly invades Greece.Jack Weston makes his first public appearance as Minute-Man in Fawcett City [New York City].

NovemberSlovakia, Hungary and Romania join the Axis.Steve Rogers makes his first public appearance as Captain America.James Buchanan Barnes makes his first public appearance as Bucky, the kid sidekick of Captain America.First clash between Captain America and Bucky and the German costumed champion the Red Skull.The Eternal Makkari switches to using the more conventional costumed champion identity of Hurricane.

DecemberFighting begins between British and Italian forces in North Africa.Ted Knight makes his first public appearance as the original Starman in New York City.Dr. Charles McNider makes his first public appearance as the original Dr. Mid-Nite in New York City.

[5] This is not exactly what’s depicted in Truth: Red, White & Black. That series as published contained far too much retroactive continuity for my liking and is simply too grim and bleak for my taste. The U.S. was certainly rife with racism in the 1940s, but it wasn’t virtually interchangable with Nazi Germany as depicted there. But I do think the basic concept is an interesting one and I’m incorporating a less extreme version of it here.

1941

January-FebruaryAt his own request, Superman undertakes extensive combat training under British Army commando instructors. Churchill subsequently infuriates his

already-disdainful military chiefs by awarding Superman an honorary commission as Captain Clark Kent.

FebruaryGerman forces begin arriving in North Africa to reinforce the Italians.

MarchBulgaria joins the Axis.The United States implements a program of Lend-Lease to Great Britain.John Dickering is seemingly killed in action as the Comet, becoming the first costumed champion to suffer this fate. He will subsequently be revived under unrevealed circumstances.

March-AprilGermany invades and occupies Yugoslavia, dividing it into an array of puppet states under German or Italian control.

AprilGerman forces invade Greece to rescue the floundering Italians.Obstruction from British military chiefs prevents the implementation of plans by Churchill to deploy Superman in support of British forces in North Africa.“Eel” O’Brien makes his first public appearance as Plastic Man in New York City.Bob Frank makes his first public appearance as the original Whizzer in New York City.Roy Lincoln makes his first public appearance as the Human Bomb in Washington, D.C..Rod Reilly makes his first public appearance as Firebrand in New York City.Dinah Drake makes her first public appearance as the original Black Canary in New York City.Sandra Knight makes her first public appearance as the original Phantom Lady in New York City.Movie starlet Linda Turner makes her first public appearance as the original Black Cat in Los Angeles.

MaySylvester Pemberton and Pat Dugan make their first public appearance as the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy.Johnny Chambers makes his first public appearance as the original Johnny Quick in New York City.Sir Justin of Camelot makes his first public appearance in the modern era as the Shining Knight in New York City.

JuneGreece capitulates.Greece is divided up between Germany, Italy and Bulgaria.Germany invades and occupies Soviet-controlled eastern Poland and then invades the Soviet Union itself.Finland joins the Axis and invades the Soviet Union, intending to regain the territory it had recently lost.As the German regular army advances into the Soviet Union, it is accompanied by units of the SS called Einsatzgruppen [Deployment Groups] – special killing squads. They begin the mass murder of Soviet Jews by shooting, gassing in vans and other means. Local police and militia assist in the killings.Libby Lawrence makes her first public appearance as Liberty Belle in Philadelphia[6].First clash between Starman and the Mist.

JulyMillionaire playboy Oliver Queen makes his first public appearance as the Green Arrow in Star City [Los Angeles].Roy Harper makes his first public appearance as Speedy, the kid sidekick of the Green Arrow, in Star City [Los Angeles].

First reported sighting of Arthur Curry as Aquaman in the North Atlantic Ocean.Madeleine Joyce makes her first public appearance as Miss America in New York City[7].The United States pre-emptively occupies Iceland.Nazi leaders make the decision in principle to exterminate all Jews in the territories under their control, referring to it as the “Endlösung der Jüdischen Frage [Final Solution to the Jewish Question]”.

AugustChurchill meets with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the Riviera Conference in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, Canada.“Diana Prince” makes her first public appearance as Wonder Woman in Washington, D.C..Shiera Sanders makes her first public appearance as Hawkgirl, the sidekick of Hawkman, in New York City.Sandy Hawkins makes his first public appearance as Sandy the Golden Boy, the kid sidekick of the Sandman.Formation of the team that will become known as the Seven Soldiers of Victory.

August-SeptemberFirst clash between Captain Marvel and the German costumed champion Captain Nazi.Freddy Freeman is transformed into Captain Marvel Jr., the kid sidekick of Captain Marvel.

October-DecemberGerman forces fail in their efforts to capture the Soviet capital, Moscow.

NovemberThe United States extends the Lend-Lease program to the Soviet Union.

DecemberBob Crane, alias Paul Dennis, makes his first public appearance as the original Robotman in New York City.Susan Kent makes her first public appearance as Bulletgirl, the sidekick of Bulletman, in Fawcett City [New York City].Japan stages a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, before declaring war on the United States and Great Britain. Beginning of the Second World War in the Pacific.First clash between American costumed champions and their Japanese counterpart the Dragon King.The U.S. and Great Britain declare war on Japan.Germany and Italy declare war on the U.S..Dannette Reilly takes over the role of Firebrand from her brother Rod, who has sustained debilitating injuries during the attack on Pearl Harbor.The U.S. declares war on Germany and Italy.Churchill and Roosevelt meet in Washington, D.C. to discuss war aims. They briefly discuss the question of how and by whom the services of Superman should be utilized (without consulting him), but come to no firm conclusions at this time.Steel, the Indestructible Man, is promoted and renamed to Commander Steel by President Roosevelt.First clash between American costumed champions and their German counterpart Baron Blitzkrieg.Policeman Jim Harper makes his first public appearance as the Guardian, aided by his kid sidekicks the “Newsboy Legion” (Big Words, Tommy, Gabby and Scrapper) in Metropolis [New York City].

[6] This is retroactive continuity on the part of DC. Her first appearance in print wasn’t for another year, but when they wanted to include her in the All-Star Squadron they decided to declare that Liberty Belle had actually begun her

career at this time and simply not gotten her adventures into print until a year afterwards.

[7] This is retroactive continuity on the part of Marvel. Her first appearance in print wasn’t for another two years, but when they wanted to include her in the Invaders they decided to declare that Miss America had actually begun her career at this time and simply not gotten her adventures into print until two years afterwards.

1942

JanuaryTex Thompson and Bob Daley make their first public appearance as Mister America and Fatman, the Americommandos.Will Everett makes his first public appearance as Amazing-Man.First clash between the Ultra-Humanite and a large assembly of costumed champions, which to his disappointment does not include his old enemy Superman, who is currently an ocean away.Nazi officials meet to plan the details of the annihilation of all Jews in Europe.

FebruaryFirst clash between the Justice Society of America and the original Brain Wave.Germany stages a surprise attack on Atlantis before declaring war on it.Atlantis declares war on Germany.Italy and Japan declare war on Atlantis.Atlantis declares war on Italy and Japan.Formation of the Invaders.Formation of the Liberty LegionAt the request of President Roosevelt, most of the costumed champions in the United States band together to form the All-Star Squadron, which absorbs the Justice Society of America and other existing teams, and place themselves at the disposal of the U.S. War Department. Most of the individual members offer to enlist in the military in their true identities, but are rebuffed on the orders of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who are skeptical of their value to the war effort.Formation of the Freedom Fighters.First clash between the Invaders and Baron Blood, the vampiric costumed assassin who had fought for Germany in the First World War and has now returned to do the same in the Second.

MarchJacqueline Falsworth, the daughter of the original Union Jack, makes her first public appearance as Spitfire.Brian Falsworth, the son of the original Union Jack, makes his first public appearance as the second Union Jack.Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr. are temporarily mind-controlled by the Nazis into battling their fellow members of the All-Star Squadron. They are freed from their controlled state before any lasting harm is done.First reported sighting of Neptune Perkins in the North Pacific Ocean.Miya Shimada makes her first public appearance as Tsunami in San Francisco.Colonel James Doolittle leads an American bombing raid on the Japanese capital, Tokyo. While the raid does little damage, it greatly bolsters U.S. morale and causes the Japanese to shift precious resources to air defense.At the request of President Roosevelt, Superman is inducted as an honourary member of the All-Star Squadron despite his no longer possessing American citizenship or being resident in the United States.

AprilThe All-Star Squadron clash with a group of costumed criminals and inhuman creatures calling themselves the “Monster Society of Evil”, led by a shadowy figure calling himself Mr. Mind.

Hitler proclaims the existence of the Arisch Übermensch Korps [Aryan Overman Corps] or AUK, a division of the Waffen-SS which is intended to be a more overtly paramilitary counterpart to the American All-Star Squadron. Directed by the metal-masked Baron Blitzkrieg, its function is to carry out a campaign of sabotage and terrorism against the American and British home fronts, and in particular to stage assassination attempts against Allied leaders and leading American superhuman champions. Its superhuman operatives subsequently become known in Allied military intelligence circles as “Auks” (pronounced “Orcs”). The first of these, Baron Blut [Baron Blood], has already made his presence felt in Britain. More quickly begin infiltrating Britain by parachute at night. Among the more notable others who will be encountered during the course of the War are the super-speedster Der Zyklon [The Cyclone], the twin-sister-and-brother assassins Nacht und Nebel [Night and Fog] and the powered-battle-armoured Die Eisen Kreuz [The Iron Cross]. Another notable member is the renegade Atlantean Meranno, known by his German codename U-Mann [U-Man]. The established Nazi champions Die Rote Totenkopf [The Red Skull] and Hauptmann Nazi [Captain Nazi] are not directed by the SS to join the AUK, since the former is high in the personal favour of Hitler while the latter is the most physically powerful and intimidating of all the German superhumans and both are simply far too arrogant to take any orders from Baron Blitzkrieg. The Axis partners of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan, also loan the AUK the services of some of their own superhuman operatives on occasion. Among the more notable of those encountered by Allied champions will be Lady Lotus, the rocket-armoured Kamikaze, Sumo the Samurai and Kung, the shape-shifting Assassin of a Thousand Claws.Soviet dictator Iosif V. Stalin proclaims the existence of various superhuman operatives amongst the Soviet security apparatus. This is in fact a lie, but Stalin does then issue secret orders to his security chiefs for the immediate identification and conscription of all Soviet citizens with superhuman abilities for espionage, counter-espionage and commando work.A Norwegian scientist-occultist and his Latverian assistant in the employ of the AUK succeed in summoning the Ancient Scandinavian-Germanic god Thor from the extradimensional realm of Asgard to Earth, where Hitler briefly dupes him into aiding Nazi Germany on the grounds that its people are among the descendants of those who once worshipped him. Thor engages the Invaders and then Superman in a titanic battle, but calls a halt to it after be begins to suspect that he has been manipulated into doing so under false pretenses. When he receives confirmation of this and learns the true natures of the Nazis, Thor angrily abandons them and returns to Asgard, casting a spell to make everyone who encountered him forget he was ever there.

MayThe Soviet military begins a domestic propaganda effort to promote two volunteers it has selected to the status of costumed champions of the Soviet Union in the minds of the public. They are the original Red Guardian, a male normal human athlete who is represented as a counterpart to Captain America, and Fireball, a teenaged female superhuman. The remainder of the available superhumans will be trained to serve as non-costumed commandos, assassins and spies.The Invaders battle a group of minor American costumed champions who have converted to the cause of Nazism and betrayed their country to work for an Axis victory.A renegade Asgardian Valkyrie, Gudra, having learned how the Nazis had unsuccessfully attempted to obtain the aid of Thor, defies the laws of the Asgardian monarch Odin and travels to Earth to offer them her own aid. She is welcomed into the AUK and soon proceeds to develop an unrequited love for Captain Nazi.

JuneChurchill attends two conferences with Roosevelt in Hyde Park, New York and Washington, D.C.. On his return to Britain he narrowly escapes being publicly assassinated when Superman kills two AUK operatives who had targeted him

while newsreel cameramen look on. Their footage is subsequently screened around the world, handing the Allied cause a major propaganda victory and greatly boosting its morale.Efforts by Churchill to have Superman deployed in support of the besieged British garrison of Tobruk (Tubruq) in Libya come to nothing, due to the combination of continued obstruction by military chiefs and opposition from his security personnel to leaving Churchill himself vulnerable to further assassination attempts by the AUK.AUK operatives begin infiltrating the U.S. from German submarines surfacing off remote coastal areas at night.President Roosevelt creates the Office of Strategic Services or OSS to bring together the fragmented and uncoordinated strands of U.S. foreign intelligence-gathering in a single organization. The OSS immediately begins recruiting, and in some cases conscripting, non-costumed superhuman operatives for espionage and counter-espionage work.

JulyThe SS begins mass deportations of Jews from across German-occupied Europe to dedicated extermination camps in Poland, where thousands at a time can be killed in gas chambers and then burnt in mass crematoria. Over the next three years millions of Jews – and millions of others, such as Gypsies (Roma) – will die in the course of what will later become known as the Holocaust (from the Greek word holokauston, a translation of the Hebrew word olah, meaning a burnt sacrifice offered whole to God).

AugustChurchill meets with Stalin in Moscow to discuss war aims.Mary Batson is transformed into Little Miss Marvel, the second kid sidekick of Captain Marvel[8].

SeptemberThe Battle of Stalingrad begins in the Soviet Union.Lance Gallant makes his first public appearance as Captain Triumph in New York City.

OctoberGeneral Bernard Law Montgomery, commander of British forces in North Africa, rejects the suggestion by Churchill that Superman should be deployed in support of his troops during the Battle of El Alamein (al-Alamayn) in Egypt.

NovemberAmerican forces begin arriving in North Africa to reinforce the British.Germany occupies the remaining two-fifths of France.Beginning of an epic struggle between Captain Marvel and the returning Mr. Mind and a new version of his “Monster Society of Evil”, now working as operatives of the AUK.

[8] Yes, this is a change! I’ve always found it ridiculous that she could supposedly operate without a proper alias and yet never have her true identity discovered by anybody except the Sivana Family, who already knew it.

1943

JanuaryThe Battle of Stalingrad ends in defeat for German forces.Churchill and Roosevelt meet for the Symbol Conference in Casablanca (ad-Dar al-Bayda), Morocco. Superman saves both leaders from assassination by the AUK, killing six of its operatives in the process. Roosevelt publicly announces a demand for the unconditional surrender of Germany, Italy and Japan.

MayThe last German and Italian forces in North Africa surrender to American and British forces.Churchill and Roosevelt meet for the Trident Conference in Washington, D.C..First clash between the original Flash and the Thinker.

JulyAllied forces invade southern Italy.

July-AugustThe last major German offensive on their Eastern Front fails when their forces are defeated by Soviet forces in the Battle of Kursk.

AugustThe Green Lantern saves Roosevelt from assassination by the AUK, seemingly killing its operative Vandal Savage. In the process, Savage reveals himself as a millennia-old immortal and claims to have played major roles in most of the key eras of human history.Churchill and Roosevelt meet for the Quadrant Conference in Quebec, Canada.Only recorded meeting of the Crime Crusaders Club.

SeptemberWith southern Italy under Allied control, the Italian government attempts to capitulate to the Allies. German forces immediately take control of northern and central Italy and the capital, Rome.

OctoberBeginning of a series of Soviet offensives which slowly drive German forces back all along their Eastern Front.

NovemberChurchill and Roosevelt meet for the Sextant Conference in Cairo, Egypt. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin then meet for the Eureka Conference in Tehran, Iran. Superman, aided by MI5, OSS and Soviet superhuman operatives, saves all three leaders from assassination by the AUK, killing four of its team of operatives and capturing the remaining two.

1944

JanuarySoviet forces push German forces back across the Polish border.

MarchSuspecting (correctly) that its ally Hungary is making secret peace overtures towards the Soviet Union, Germany places it under partial military occupation.

MayThe extradimensional mischief-maker Mr. Mxyztplk (later called Mr. Mxyzptlk) wreaks havoc in London before being tricked into returning to his native Fifth Dimension by Superman. He will subsequently return to plague Superman many times over the ensuing years and decades.

JuneAllied forces liberate Rome.Allied forces invade northern France in the “D-Day” landings. Almost solely due to the insistence of Churchill, Superman accompanies the first wave of the invasion force, but still-continuing skepticism and obstruction from Allied military chiefs greatly diminishes his effectiveness. His contributions to the offensive are nonetheless important: he single-handedly destroys most of the German gun emplacements along the Normandy coast, greatly reducing the number of Allied casualties sustained in the initial landings, then goes on to destroy many

strategic bridges across major rivers, forcing German reserves to make long detours before they can reach battlefields. He is recalled to Britain before he can accomplish more, at the insistence of the military chiefs who had never wanted him to be involved in the first place, on the grounds of the continuing need for him to bodyguard Churchill from assassination by the AUK.Germany begins firing V-1 flying bombs at England and Belgium.Soviet forces begin to advance into Poland.The existence and nature of the complex of SS-controlled prison, slave-labour and extermination camps centred on Auschwitz (Oswiecim) in German-occupied Poland is revealed to Jewish leaders in the West and Allied intelligence officials by escaped inmates. Jewish leaders request Allied bombing of the gas chambers: the Allied Bomber Command refuses, judging that its efforts should be directed only at military targets and that the best way of helping the Jews is to hasten the defeat of Nazi Germany.

JulyDisaffected German civilian dignitaries and military chiefs mount a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler.Jewish leaders appeal personally to Churchill for action to be taken over Auschwitz. Churchill subsequently briefs Superman on the existence of Auschwitz and the suspected existence of other extermination camps in German-controlled Poland, leaving Superman to decide for himself what action, if any, to take in response.In the early afternoon of July 12th, Superman flies to Auschwitz and sees for himself the true scope of the horrors being perpetrated there. Becoming overwhelmed with grief and guilt at having failed to prevent them, he kills the camp staff and guards to the last man, frees the remaining inmates, then scours the surrounding countryside for German military personnel, killing all those he encounters within a radius of tens of miles around the camp complex. Amongst the hundreds of dead Nazis are Rudolf Hoss, the deputy chief of the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, who had recently been temporarily seconded back to his former post of commandant of the Auschwitz complex at his own request; Josef Kramer, the commandant of the secondary camp of Birkenau (Brzezinka), notorious for his cruelty; and Dr. Josef Mengele, the camp doctor at Birkenau, known as the “Angel of Death” for his inhuman medical experiments on the inmates.Superman then systematically searches the Polish countryside until he has located the similar camps at Majdanek, Plaszow, Gross-Rosen, Kulmhof (Chelmno) and Stutthof and done the same in those areas[9]. Amongst the Nazis killed there is Amon Goth, the notoriously sadistic commandant of Plaszow and friend of Oskar Schindler. Over the following days, Superman constantly shuttles back and forth between the various camp areas to protect the freed inmates from repeated attempts by German reinforcements to retake the camps – all of which result in nothing but large piles of German corpses accumulating throughout the Polish countryside. He intimidates the generally-hostile inhabitants of the local villages into providing the freed inmates with such food, water and medicine as they can find.Responding to the presence of Superman in Poland and the proximity of advancing Soviet forces, the Polish Underground stages a mass uprising in the capital, Warsaw, against German occupation forces. Stalin orders Soviet forces not to aid them, since he secretly wishes to ensure the destruction of the Underground because of its support for the Polish government-in-exile in London. As German reinforcements counterattack, the Underground urgently dispatches envoys to plead for the help of Superman. He subsequently descends upon Warsaw like an angel of death, wiping out dedicated anti-partisan units such as the infamously brutal Sonderkommando Dirlewanger [Dirlewanger Battalion] to the last man and killing hundreds of regular German troops in the battle zone before the remainder, their morale destroyed, beg him to allow them to surrender. After a tremendous internal struggle to overcome his intense urge to kill them all regardless, Superman just barely manages to control himself and commands them to surrender to the fighters of the Underground, who then take control of the city. Abandoned by his bodyguards, SS-

Obergruppenführer [SS General] Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, the commander of anti-partisan operations in Poland and a notorious war criminal, is caught trying to flee the Warsaw area by Underground fighters and is summarily executed.Disaffected German civilian dignitaries and military chiefs mount a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler.Stalin reverses his previous stance, ordering Soviet troops to support the efforts of Superman and the Underground, since he now fears that they will lose their opportunity to occupy Poland themselves if they do not. Superman swiftly intimidates Red Army commanders in the field into extending their full cooperation to General Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski, the leader of the Underground, who declares himself the acting governor of liberated Warsaw on behalf of the Polish government-in-exile. Superman then unleashes a reign of terror against German occupation forces in the rest of Poland, ranging through the country at random, killing Germans in droves and then moving on, leaving the Soviet forces and elements of the Underground trailing along in his wake to deal with the few shell-shocked survivors: he particularly singles out units of the SS upon whom to vent his rage, rarely leaving a single man alive.As the Soviets advance into Poland, they encounter the camp complexes which have already been liberated by Superman and take over responsibility for the welfare of the former inmates. After visiting Majdanek, W.H. Lawrence, a reporter for The New York Times who is accompanying the Soviet forces, opens an article on it with the words, “I have just seen the most terrible place on the face of the earth.”, and proceeds to describe the operation of the death camp. Since these revelations come as the result of the actions of the internationally-renowned Superman, who gives a lengthy interview about what he has seen and what he has done in response, they are generally accepted despite a lack of film documentation, and the horrors of the genocide are soon being reported worldwide.As the number of Germans killed by Superman climbs into the thousands, confused reports of the slaughter begin to reach the German commander in Poland, Field Marshal Walther Model. Urgent efforts are made to conceal what is happening from the rank-and-file, but they fail completely as Superman deliberately makes himself seen, heard and feared everywhere. First a trickle, then a flood of soldiers begin to desert their posts and retreat in confusion towards the eastern borders of Germany. Disregarding pleas from Model to be allowed to order a strategic withdrawal, Hitler orders all German troops in Poland to fight to the death and further orders the summary execution of any who desert their posts. Facing death if they try to fight and death if they flee, many Germans in despair begin throwing down their weapons and offering their surrender to the advancing Soviets or to groups of Polish Underground fighters. Some German units disintegrate as those soldiers wishing to surrender and those determined to fight and die “with honour” turn their guns on each other: where the diehards prevail, all they gain is the opportunity to be killed in short order by Superman or the advancing Soviets.

AugustField Marshal Model defies his orders from Hitler and orders all surviving German troops in Poland to surrender immediately: he then commits suicide. The last organized German forces either obey his final order and surrender or fight on to the bitter end until they have all been killed by Superman or Soviet forces. The Soviets advance to the eastern borders of Germany, but do not attempt to cross them at this time: they have already considerably overextended their supply lines, and their commanders wish to consolidate their gains, and eliminate the last few scattered pockets of disorganized diehard German resistance, before invading Germany itself. Stalin quickly moves to publicly recognize the Communist-dominated Polish Committee of National Liberation, led by Wladyslaw Gomulka, as the provisional government of Poland. General Bor-Komorowski flatly refuses to acknowledge its authority.Having learned from freed inmates at Auschwitz that an 800-strong force of Gestapo agents has been operating in Hungary (albeit with only the reluctant consent of its government) to round up Jews for deportation to Auschwitz,

Superman flies to the Hungarian capital, Budapest, and hunts them down to the last man. Their leader, Adolf Eichmann, the chief administrator of the Nazi program of genocide, and his closest aides, barricaded inside their headquarters in the Budapest Hotel Majestic, are the last to die: after ensuring that there are no innocent civilians still in the building, Superman reduces it to rubble with the Gestapo men still inside. He then publicly executes Laszlo Endre, the Hungarian Interior Minister; Laszlo Baky, the civil servant in charge of the police; and Laszlo Ferenczy, the head of the police force, all dedicated anti-Semites who had worked closely with the Gestapo to expedite the deportations. The spineless Hungarian dictator, Admiral Miklos Horthy, is spared, in order that he can be compelled to announce the withdrawal of Hungary from the war and to order all remaining German forces in the country to withdraw immediately. The latter refuse to comply and begin rounding up Hungarian civilians to use as hostages: large sections of the indigenous Hungarian fascist Nyilaskeresztes Part [Arrow Cross Party] go over to their side. Superman then begins killing the Germans en masse and liberating the hostages. Faced with court-martial and execution for cowardice if they withdraw over the borders into German-occupied Austria or Czechia, the German forces and their Hungarian fascist allies all eventually either lay down their weapons and surrender to the Hungarian army or die in futile resistance to Superman. Members of the Nyilaskeresztes Part who are taken alive are generally summarily executed as traitors: Superman conspicuously makes no attempt to compel the Horthy regime to grant them proper trials first.An elite SS commando unit led by the widely-renowned Standartenfuhrer [Colonel] Otto Skorzeny takes advantage of the upheaval throughout Hungary to kidnap the son of Admiral Horthy, intending to hold him hostage and force Horthy to call a cease-fire. Superman intercepts their aircraft and tears it apart in mid-air, extracting the hostage unharmed and returning him to safety but leaving the SS men tumbling to their deaths.Romania agrees an armistice with the Soviet Union and submits to military occupation by Soviet forces.

SeptemberAllied forces complete the liberation of France, Belgium and Luxembourg from German occupation forces.Finland signs an armistice with the Soviet Union, agreeing to cede it additional territory.Germany begins firing V-2 rockets at England and Belgium. Without consulting any Allied military chiefs, Superman begins shuttling back and forth across Germany and occupied Czechia to attack the German defending armies from the rear, killing thousands, and to destroy most major rail links, cutting off most of the flow of munitions and food to the front lines and largely halting the movement of Jewish and other prisoners through German territory[10]. He also descends upon the concentration camps at Theresienstadt, Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbruck, Neuengamme, Bergen-Belsen, Dora-Mittelbau, Buchenwald, Flossenburg and Dachau to kill the staff and guards to the last man, before aiding the freed inmates in fortifying the camps against any attempts by local German military forces to retake them while the inmates are waiting for permanent liberation at the hands of advancing Allied forces. As before, he compels the inhabitants of the local villages to provide the freed inmates with such food, water and medicine as they can find. He also forces many of them to file through the camps and see for themselves the crimes that had been perpetrated there in their name.Superman conspicuously avoids trying to locate and kill Hitler himself: he has forced himself not to give in to his longing to do precisely that. He has come to believe that it will look better for posterity if ordinary soldiers kill or capture the top Nazi leadership, and also feels that the Soviets, whose total number of war dead is greater that that of any other combatant nation, deserve the opportunity to finish Hitler and his minions themselves – especially as Hitler probably fears falling into the hands of the Soviets even more than he fears what Superman might do to him. Superman also vengefully desires that Hitler should live long

enough to see his “Thousand-Year Reich” perish in rubble and flames after just eleven years.Captain Nazi and the renegade Valkyrie Gudra, who have both been held back from the front lines in order to bodyguard Hitler until this point, are now ordered to seek out and kill Superman. Refusing an order that is tantamount to one to commit suicide, Captain Nazi deserts his post and his country, fleeing into exile in Argentina. Horrified at what she considers the cowardice of the mortal she had long loved in vain, the anguished Gudra also abandons Germany to its fate and returns to Asgard.Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin meet for the Argonaut Conference in Yalta in the Soviet Union. Acting at the request of General Bor-Komorowski, Superman turns up at the conference uninvited and bluntly requests that Stalin immediately expedite the return to Poland of its legitimate government-in-exile from London. Initially intending to flatly refuse, Stalin finds himself less than eager to risk provoking the anger of Superman to his face and stalls for time by claiming a need to consider the matter and having the negotiations adjourned. All three Allied leaders then personally witness Superman assisting OSS, MI5 and Soviet superhuman operatives in thwarting a last-ditch attempt to assassinate them by a dozen AUK operatives, all but two of whom are killed. When the negotiations subsequently reconvene, Stalin finds that he now simply lacks the personal courage to dare to refuse Superman his request, and backs down.Polish Prime Minister Stanislaw Mikolajczyk and his government arrive back in Warsaw after their long exile. Under pressure from Stalin, they reluctantly agree to form a government of national unity with the Polish Committee of National Liberation. Mikolajczyk appoints Gomulka his Deputy.An investigation by the Gestapo into the failed assassination attempt against Hitler in July implicates Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the former head of military intelligence for the German Armed Forces, in the plot. Canaris has actually been involved in plots against Hitler since the earliest days of the War and has compiled secret dossiers on Nazi atrocities. As the Gestapo move to arrest him, a superhuman aide who has concealed his powers until now gives his life to buy Canaris the time to make his escape and disappear into hiding.The incredible accomplishments of Superman over the last three months finally begin to convince Allied military chiefs of the value of having him on their side – and the terrible danger of provoking his wrath – but their subsequent requests for him to aid in the accomplishment of specific mission objectives are summarily rejected: they have had many chances to secure his assistance and failed to take any of them. Superman now has more than enough work to do already. He is already fully occupied with his campaign of systematic destruction of the transport infrastructure in Germany, which will aid Allied troops throughout the conflict zone by leaving their enemies low on ammunition and weak from starvation, crippling their ability to offer effective resistance. He is also finding it necessary to check up every day on each of the concentration camps he has liberated, most of which are still entirely surrounded by hostile territory, in order to protect them from being retaken by German forces and to compel the local villagers to keep the inmates supplied with food. Allied forces liberate The Netherlands.Allied forces cross over the western borders of Germany.Hungary concludes an armistice with the Soviet Union. The Soviets place Hungary under military occupation.

October-NovemberSoviet forces enter and occupy Slovakia.The Soviets cross over the eastern borders of Germany. German resistance crumbles rapidly on all fronts. Hitler orders all German troops to fight to the death and further orders the summary execution of any who desert their posts. The number of such executions soon climbs into the thousands, but this does nothing to reverse the accelerating collapse of German morale.The concentration camps at Sachsenhausen, Ravensbruck and Theresienstadt, already effectively liberated by Superman, are now formally liberated by Soviet forces.

Allied forces capture the launch sites for the V-1 and V-2 missiles (which have largely been overlooked for destruction by Superman, due to his focus on liberating concentration camps and destroying transport infrastructure), ending the bombardment of Britain and Belgium, and capture many leading German rocket scientists, who are eager to trade their secrets to their captors in exchange for their liberty.At the cost of his own life, a lone AUK operative succeeds in assassinating General George S. Patton, commander of the U.S. Third Army, his success being largely due to the long-standing refusal by Patton to be accompanied by the superhuman bodyguards assigned to him by the OSS. However, the momentum of the Allied advance is now already so great that it is not significantly reduced by this blow to American morale.Soviet forces enter and occupy Czechia. The formal reconstitution of Czechoslovakia is proclaimed.The concentration camps at Neuengamme, Bergen-Belsen, Dora-Mittelbau, Buchenwald, Flossenburg, Dachau and Mauthausen, already effectively liberated by Superman, are now formally liberated by Allied forces.As an imminent siege of the German capital, Berlin, by Soviet forces looms, Captain America and Bucky are secretly infiltrated into the city to undertake a final mission against their nemesis the Red Skull. This battle ends with the Skull seemingly being killed as his subterranean bunker collapses around him. However, he is actually merely buried alive. A cylinder of an experimental gas is ruptured during the collapse and its contents fill the bunker, placing the Red Skull into a state of suspended animation that will last for the next two decades.Returning to Britain, Captain America and Bucky are sent to try to prevent the theft of an experimental British drone airplane. The AUK operative Baron Heinrich Zemo launches the drone on a flight path direct to Germany with Captain America and Bucky still desperately clinging onto it. Bucky manages to sabotage the plane, but sets off a booby-trap in the process. The resulting explosion destroys the drone plane, seemingly kills Bucky and plunges Captain America into the North Sea, where hypothermia resulting from the icy water temperatures causes him to lose consciousness. However, the Super-Soldier Serum that forms part of his physical makeup saves him from dying, instead causing him to enter a state of cryogenic suspension. As ocean currents carry him further north into the Arctic Ocean, ice crystals form around him, encasing him in a block of ice which is eventually washed ashore to become part of the Northern Polar icecap.When Captain America and Bucky fail to return, they are presumed dead by their superiors. To avoid a potentially devastating blow to American morale, President Roosevelt selects a man named William Naslund to secretly replace Steve Rogers as Captain America and a boy named Fred Davis to secretly replace Jim Barnes as Bucky. Meanwhile, the U.S. military decides to preserve the only remaining product of Operation Rebirth for possible future study by removing Isaiah Bradley from Fort Leavenworth and placing him into suspended animation in a secret facility.As the Soviet siege of Berlin moves into its final phase, the few remaining AUK operatives, led by Baron Blitzkrieg in person, join in the final defense of the city: all available Soviet superhuman operatives are mobilized against them. The Soviets gradually gain the upper hand, but it takes the arrival of Superman to complete the final destruction of the AUK. Superman overpowers and kills Baron Blitzkrieg in single combat: the Brandenburg Gate is reduced to rubble in the process. Soviet domestic propaganda will subsequently seek to conceal the fact of his participation in this battle, portraying it as a purely Soviet victory, but the truth gradually filters into public awareness in the Soviet Union through word-of-mouth from soldiers who witnessed the battle.German resistance disintegrates completely. Hitler commits suicide as Soviet troops capture Berlin.German occupation forces in Denmark and Norway capitulate without offering any resistance.Mr. Mind and the Monster Society of Evil abandon their struggle with Captain Marvel, disperse and disappear into hiding.

Germany capitulates and is placed under Allied military occupation. The Nazi Party and its numerous subsidiary organizations are outlawed.

[9] The extermination camps at Belzec, Sobibór and Treblinka had already completed their assigned shares of the Holocaust and then been closed and dismantled by this time.

[10] It’s likely that Anne Frank, her sister Margot and their parents will never be moved on beyond the transit camp at Westerbork in The Netherlands where they were first interned and will all survive the war.

1945

January-MarchChurchill, Roosevelt and Stalin meet for the Terminal Conference in Potsdam in occupied Germany. Superman attends the conference both in his emerging capacity as an unofficial representative of the Polish government and in his established capacity as bodyguard to Churchill, but his presence proves unnecessary in the latter. While the conference is still in progress, the Conservative government led by Churchill loses a general election held in Britain and the Socialist Labour Party comes to power. Churchill is replaced as Prime Minister by Clement Attlee, who takes his place at the conference.Agreement is reached by the Allied leaders to transfer a large stretch of territory from Poland to the Soviet Union. As compensation, another large stretch of territory is to be transferred from Germany to Poland. The Polish provisional government is not consulted: Prime Minister Mikolajczyk subsequently protests vigorously, but his position is publicly undermined when Deputy Prime Minister Gomulka declares his acceptance of the move. The already-acrimonious working relationship between the two men breaks down completely and the provisional government becomes paralyzed by infighting: Mikolajczyk finally dismisses Gomulka and the other Cabinet Ministers drawn from the Polish Committee of National Liberation from office. Gomulka secretly appeals to the Soviets to remove Mikolajczyk from office by force and install him as Prime Minister in his place, but Soviet commanders are unwilling to take such a step without the express authorization of Stalin. For his part, although furious at this setback for his plans to turn Poland into a Soviet satellite, Stalin remains too personally afraid of Superman to risk granting such authorization. In consequence, the Polish Committee of National Liberation is soon left politically marginalized: on the orders of Stalin, it subsequently deposes Gomulka as its leader and replaces him with Boleslaw Bierut.President Roosevelt offers Superman the fast-tracked restoration of his American citizenship: this is motivated in part by a desire to induce Superman to feel an obligation to defer to pressure from the U.S. State Department for him to appease Stalin over Poland. Superman stuns Roosevelt by flatly refusing the offer and stating that he feels his current status as a stateless person is actually far more appropriate for a man “who alone holds the destinies of nations in his hands”: the use of such grandiose language is a deliberate choice on his part, intended to convey bluntly the message that Superman will now act as his own conscience dictates regardless of the wishes of, or consequences for, any government.

AprilPresident Roosevelt dies from a massive cerebral haemorrhage. He is succeeded by his Vice President, Harry S. Truman.Beginning of a year-long series of trials of surviving Nazi leaders for war crimes held at Nurnberg, Germany, which eventually result in death sentences or lengthy prison terms for most of the defendants. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris is a key witness for the prosecution.

JulyThe United States develops the atomic bomb.

AugustThe United States drops atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.The Soviet Union declares war on Japan.First clash between Captain Marvel and his evil counterpart Black Adam.Little Miss Marvel changes her name to Miss Marvel.

SeptemberJapan capitulates and is placed under American occupation. The Second World War ends.

OctoberCreation of the United Nations or UN.The All-Star Squadron is disbanded. The majority of its members retire from their roles as costumed champions and go back to trying to live ordinary lives.The Invaders are disbanded.The Liberty Legion are disbanded.The Freedom Fighters are disbanded.The Soviet military orders the Red Guardian and Fireball to retire from their roles as costumed champions.Superman begins devoting himself to aiding humanitarian and reconstruction efforts across war-ravaged Europe: he accepts the invitation of the Polish authorities to make Poland his base of operations.With his time no longer being taken up almost exclusively by tracking down spies, saboteurs and black marketeers, the Batman returns to an old investigation, which he had begun shortly before American entry into the War but then felt compelled to postpone for its duration, into the activities of Dr. Clark “Doc” Savage Jr..

Captain Marvel Jr. and Miss Marvel have their first encounter with the teenage Legion of Super-Heroes, who have time-traveled back from the 30th Century to meet them. They visit the future and join the LSH.

1946

JanuaryFirst meeting of the General Assembly of the UN.

MarchAt a speech in Fulton, Missouri, Churchill denounces the military, political and ideological barriers being erected by the Soviet Union to seal itself and its Central and Eastern European satellites off from open contact with the West and other noncommunist areas: “From Rostock in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”. The expression “Iron Curtain” soon enters general use in the West.

The Batman discovers that “Doc” Savage has been waging his covert war against evil using methods such as experimental brain surgery on captive criminals. His own tendencies towards ruthlessness notwithstanding, the Batman cannot bring himself either to condone such methods or to stand by and allow Savage to continue using them. The two vigilantes become locked in an epic covert war of their own: eventually the Batman is forced to the conclusion that he is outmatched, and that he must put aside his pride and seek help. In his secret identity as multi-millionaire Bruce Wayne, he travels to Poland, where he uses the leverage he obtains with the authorities by agreeing to make a series of massive investments in the Polish rebuilding effort to obtain from them a request for Superman to grant him a private meeting. The request is reluctantly granted: at the subsequent meeting Wayne reveals himself as the Batman to Superman and describes his covert war against “Doc” Savage and his reasons for waging it, ending by asking Superman for his help. Superman agrees, and secretly

accompanies Wayne back to the United States. The resulting massive escalation of the struggle finally culminates in the deaths of Savage and his circle of aides in a cataclysmic explosion in the Canadian Arctic: the true circumstances of their deaths are concealed from the authorities and the public by the combined efforts of Superman and the Batman. Superman then secretly returns to Poland, with no-one there ever realising he had even been away.

A general election is held in Poland. The Polish Peasant Party led by Prime Minister Mikolajczyk wins a parliamentary majority, but the individual parties collectively making up the Polish Committee of National Liberation win a large enough share of the vote between them to give them renewed political importance in the role of the official opposition.

OctoberWilliam Naslund is killed helping his fellow members of the Justice Society of America to save Congressional candidate John F. “Jack” Kennedy from being murdered by the malevolent android Adam II, the evil “brother” of the original Human Torch. He is secretly replaced as Captain America by Jeff Mace.

NovemberAn Algerian Communist, Albert Malik, begins impersonating the Red Skull and proclaiming the conversion of the Skull to the cause of world Communism, undertaking terrorist activities to further its goals.

DecemberFirst clash between the Justice Society of America and the original Wizard.

Formal disbanding of the moribund League of Nations, the failed precursor of the United Nations. Established at the initiative of the victorious powers at the end of the First World War, this organization for international cooperation had been able to help to settle some minor international disputes during the 1920s, but it had subsequently been discredited in the 1930s due to its failure to prevent the aggressions committed by countries such as Japan and Italy against their neighbours. The League had granted authorizations to some of its member nations to govern certain territories which had been confiscated from the powers defeated in the First World War but had been judged not yet ready to govern themselves: these territories had been called Mandated Territories, or Mandates. The United Nations is to grant some Mandates independence in the near future, while others will be converted into UN Trust Territories.

1947

The OSS is replaced by the Central Intelligence Agency or CIA.

The U.S. Army Air Force is renamed the U.S. Air Force.

JanuaryFirst reported sighting of Namora, the first cousin of Prince Namor of Atlantis, the Sub-Mariner, in the North Atlantic Ocean.

AprilSuperman begins making return visits to the United States on an occasional basis. During the first of these, he and the Batman assist the Justice Society of America with a case.

JuneFirst clash between the Justice Society of America and the Injustice Society of the World, the first gathering of costumed criminals previously known for their vendettas against individual costumed champions to join forces against a group

comprised of their opponents. Amongst the members of the ISW is Vandal Savage, now revealed not to have perished four years earlier after all.

AugustThe British colony of India is granted independence as the two sovereign states of India and Pakistan. A simultaneous mass exodus of Muslims from India to Pakistan and of Hindus from Pakistan to India claims a million lives as columns of refugees from the two groups attack one another on sight, blaming one another for their having had to uproot themselves from their homes.Fred Davis retires as Bucky after sustaining debilitating gunshot injuries. Betsy Ross adopts the costumed champion identity of Golden Girl to succeed him as the sidekick of Captain America.

OctoberFearing that the poverty, unemployment and dislocation left in the wake of war is reinforcing the appeal of Communist parties to voters in Western Europe, the United States establishes the European Recovery Program or Marshall Plan, a unified plan for Western European economic reconstruction to be financed by aid from the United States. Its purpose is to rehabilitate the economies of Europe in order to create stable conditions in which democratic institutions can survive. Aid is initially offered to almost all the European countries, including those under military occupation by the Soviet Union. However, the Soviets soon withdraw from participation in the Plan and coerce the other Eastern European nations under their domination into following suit. Poland refuses to toe the Soviet line and continues to accept American aid: this gesture of defiance will later come to be regarded as the first decisive step taken by the Poles towards the reassertion of their national sovereignty. Still too afraid of Superman to risk attempting to establish a Communist regime in Poland by force, Stalin subsequently orders the Soviet troops stationed there to begin the construction of a number of large military bases which will be almost totally sealed off from the surrounding countryside: he has decided to gamble that the Polish government will be prepared to accept the loss of control over these enclaves in return for tacit Soviet recognition of their authority over the rest of the country. After protracted internal debate, the Mikolajczyk government reluctantly accepts the situation.

NovemberWith the British Mandate to govern Palestine due to expire in six months, the UN General Assembly votes in favour of a British proposal to partition the territory into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab, with an International Zone containing Jerusalem and Bethlehem to remain under UN administration. The decision is immediately opposed by the Arab nations. Guerrilla warfare quickly erupts between Arab Nationalist and Zionist (Jewish Nationalist) paramilitary groups within Palestine, with atrocities being perpetrated against civilians by both sides.

Galactus the Devourer approaches the distant planet Zenn-La and prepares to consume it. One of its people, Norrin Radd, offers to become the herald of Galactus in exchange for his world being spared. Galactus accepts the offer and empowers Radd with the Power Cosmic, transforming him into the Silver Surfer. The task of the Surfer will be to search out planets rich in life-energy for Galactus to consume and to warn any sentient inhabitants of such worlds of his coming, in order that they may prepare themselves mentally for their imminent destruction.

1948

The Soviet Union concludes Agreements of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance with Poland and Finland, which include mutual defense provisions and prohibit Poland and Finland from joining any organization considered hostile to the Soviet Union.

FebruaryWhile on his first return visit in a decade to the family home he had inherited following the deaths of his human adoptive parents, Clark Kent discovers a device that had been concealed aboard the spacecraft which had carried him to Earth as an infant. The device is automatically activated when he picks it up, commencing to rapidly upload vast quantities of information directly into his brain, revealing to him for the first time his Kryptonian origins. He learns the Kryptonese language and the history and accumulated scientific and technological knowledge of Krypton, along with his family history and his Kryptonian name of Kal-El.Superman subsequently constructs the Fortress of Solitude at the North Pole to be his home. In a public statement to the international media, he effectively declares it a sovereign state with himself as its sole citizen: his claims are tacitly recognized by the Western powers, but not by the Eastern bloc.

MayBritish forces withdraw from Palestine as their Mandate expires. On the same day the State of Israel is declared by Jewish leaders and within a few hours wins de facto recognition from the United States and de jure recognition from the Soviet Union. The following day units of the regular armies of Syria, Transjordan, Iraq and Egypt cross the frontiers of Palestine to support the cause of the Palestinian Arabs. The Israeli forces, desperately short of arms and training, nonetheless have high morale. The Arab invaders far outnumber the Israelis but can field only a few well-trained units. In addition, some Arab logistical lines are long, making supply and communications difficult. Their governments also have different objectives. This internal strife, disorganization and military ineptitude prevents the Arabs from mounting a coordinated attack. Small numbers of Israeli forces manage to keep Egyptian, Iraqi and Transjordanian units from entering their capital, Tel Aviv, or cutting off the International Zone containing Jerusalem from the Jewish state during the crucial first month of the war.

JuneBoth sides in the Israeli-Arab conflict accept a UN-brokered cease-fire. The nearly-exhausted Israelis reequip themselves, sometimes from secret sources. Notable is the clandestine effort by Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia, which offers Israel both arms and an airfield: Stalin has decided that the Jewish state may be a useful thorn in the side of Great Britain and the United States.

July-SeptemberBoth sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict attempt to resume fighting. At this point Superman suddenly intervenes, descending on battlefields to mangle tanks and artillery pieces, taking care not to seriously injure their crews in the process, and to methodically disarm nearly every soldier on both sides, confiscating small-arms and explosives and dumping them out at sea. A few of the more fanatical soldiers on both sides continue fighting one another with their bare hands, but their commanders are soon compelled to order them to withdraw behind the previous cease-fire lines. For the next two months Superman essentially wages a war of nerves against the military commanders and civilian leaders of both sides, resolutely turning back every attempt made by either side to break out of their current positions. Eventually the Arab leaders become the first to crack, asking Superman for his demands, and within hours the Israeli leaders do the same. He orders both sides to withdraw behind the borders drawn up by the UN in November of the previous year. All attempts at bluffing or procrastination meet with short shrift. Eventually both sides have no choice but to simply obey.

OctoberThe Western Allies establish the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO, a formal military alliance intended to be a counterweight to the Soviet armies stationed in Eastern and Central Europe.First clash between the original Flash and the Rival Flash.

NovemberThe areas of Germany occupied by the Western Allies are organized into the Federal Republic of Germany, which becomes commonly known as West Germany.Israeli and Arab leaders conclude a formal peace treaty through UN mediation conducted by Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte. During the course of the negotiations, Superman is obliged to save Bernadotte from assassination by Zionist extremists. He is also required to personally intervene in the negotiations themselves in order compel the Israeli leaders to expedite the return of thousands of Arab refugees to their homes in Israeli-controlled territory, in the process making it clear to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and his Cabinet that he will hold them personally accountable for the safety and well-being of the returning refugees in the days to come.When the last of the troops have been withdrawn behind their UN-designated borders, Israel retains control of the northern areas containing the major towns of Zefat, Tiberias, Bet She’an, Afula and Haifa and the central area containing the major towns of Netanya and Tel Aviv. It also controls most of the Negev desert in the south, an area which currently contains no major towns. The International Zone containing Jerusalem and Bethlehem remains under United Nations control. Egypt continues to occupy the southern area containing the major towns of al-Majdal, Gaza, Rafah and Auja. Transjordan similarly continues to occupy the central area containing the major towns of Janin, Tulkarm, Nabulus, Lydda, Ramla, Ram Allah, Jericho, Hebron and Beersheba. These territories soon come to be treated by their occupying powers as additions to their own territory, with little regard being given to their supposed sovereignty. The only Palestinian Arabs to gain true self-government are those in the northern region containing the major towns of Acre and Nazareth (bordered by Israel on two sides and by non-expansionist Lebanon on the third) and those in the tiny central area containing the major town of Jaffa (bordered by Israel on all sides).The formal end of the fighting does not bring peace. The Arab states, bitterly divided amongst themselves, are nonetheless united in their refusal to recognize the Jewish state. Many Palestinian Arabs living in Israel begin forming small, diffuse organizations for the purpose of mounting resistance to Israeli rule. A few Arabs living in the supposedly sovereign Palestinian state begin forming similar organizations whose goal is the expulsion of Transjordanian and Egyptian occupation forces from their territory.

1949

Apartheid program established in South Africa.

JanuaryThe now-adult Dick Grayson, considering himself to have graduated from his role as Robin, adopts the adult costumed vigilante identity of Nightwing.

AprilThe area of Germany occupied by the Soviet Union is organized as the Communist-controlled German Democratic Republic, which becomes commonly known as East Germany.

JulySuperman has his first encounter with Kryptonite.

AugustThe Soviet Union acquires the atomic bomb.

1950

Great Britain launches the first man into space in a brief 15-minute suborbital flight.

FebruaryU.S. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin is catapulted him into headlines across the country when he publicly alleges that the State Department is riddled with Communists and Communist sympathizers. Despite his inability to produce the name of a single “card-carrying Communist” in any government department, he gains increasing popular support for his campaign of accusations by capitalizing on the fears and frustrations of a nation appalled by Communist advances in eastern Europe and China. McCarthy proceeds to instigate a nationwide, militant anti-Communist “crusade”. He appears to his supporters as a dedicated patriot and guardian of genuine Americanism, but to his detractors as an irresponsible, self-seeking witch-hunter who is undermining American traditions of civil liberties.

MarchSuperman has his first encounter with fellow Kryptonians in the form of the “Evil Three” or the “Foes From Krypton”, three criminal brothers named Mala, U-Ban and Kizo. Prior to the destruction of the planet Krypton, the three had been imprisoned in suspended animation aboard a spacecraft in orbit around Krypton as punishment for their crimes. The spacecraft had subsequently become the first of two to survive the cataclysmic explosion of Krypton – albeit in a severely damaged condition – and to eventually pass through the wormhole previously created by the space-warp drive of the spacecraft that had carried the infant Kal-El to Earth. Having drifted through the Solar System for decades, its systems gradually failing, it now shuts down completely. Its three passengers are freed from their imprisonment and soon set out to conquer Earth, only narrowly being defeated by Superman after he dupes them into fighting amongst themselves. He manages to jury-rig some repairs to their spacecraft and re-imprison them in suspended animation within it.In the wake of this event, Superman realizes the danger that other Kryptonian criminals may also be wandering through space, liable to discover and become a threat to Earth at any time. Accordingly, he takes the decision to reveal his origins – and thus the existence of sentient extraterrestrial life – to the world.The initial reaction across most of the developed world is stunned disbelief: this will subsequently be followed by the story rapidly receding to the back of the public mind in response to other events later in the year (a reaction perhaps amplified by the population – who have generally begun to sink into a fearful state of denial – subconsciously seizing on distractions that can aid them in avoiding confronting the issue).

June-JulyCommunist North Korea invades South Korea: the United States redeploys troops from its occupation forces in Japan to reinforce the overwhelmed South Koreans. The UN swiftly ratifies the American action and calls upon its members to render assistance to South Korea: 15 additional nations send armed contingents.

September-OctoberUN forces drive North Korean forces from South Korea and then invade North Korea with the intention of removing its aggressor government.

October-DecemberSuperman repels a prolonged attempt by Communist Chinese forces to invade Tibet. He initially restricts himself to disarming Chinese soldiers and leaving them at the mercy of Tibetan soldiers, but when the Chinese keep coming he forces himself to kill hundreds of them in order to destroy the morale of the rest, until the Chinese rank-and-file become more afraid of him that they are of being shot for cowardice and refuse to obey orders to attack again. Superman then

begins shuttling back and forth between Tibet and North Korea, where he aids UN forces in crushing the remaining North Korean Communist forces.Communist leader Kim Il-sung and his retinue flee into exile in China: his pleas to Chinese leader Mao Zedong for Chinese troops to be sent into Korea to renew the conflict are refused.Korea is unified under South Korean leadership.

DecemberAlmost all of the members of the Justice Society of America retire from their roles as costumed champions: with Wonder Woman now the only member still remaining active in such a role, the team thereby effectively ceases to exist. Its disbanding is formally declared.Amongst those retiring at this time are Jeff Mace as Captain America and Betsy Ross as Golden Girl. They will subsequently marry.

1951

Without his realizing it at this time, Superman ceases to age: he becomes frozen at the physical age of approximately thirty-five.

FebruaryAdam Blake makes his first public appearance as Captain Comet.

1952

A fanatical hero-worshipper of the original Captain America with a Ph.D. in American History, who is undertaking postgraduate research into the life of his hero, stumbles upon an overlooked copy of the lost formula for the Super-Soldier Serum that had created him. Rather than turn it over to the U.S. military, he strikes a deal with them to become the new Captain America himself. He undergoes plastic surgery to give him a face identical to that of Steve Rogers and vocal cords capable of reproducing his voice, then legally changes his own name to Steven Rogers. Before he can take the final step, recreating the Serum and administering it to himself, the project is unexpectedly cancelled, leaving him outraged and embittered.

AprilFirst recorded supernatural adventure of the Phantom Stranger.

AugustThe now-adult Roy Harper, considering himself to have graduated from his role as Speedy, adopts the adult costumed vigilante identity of the Red Arrow.

OctoberGreat Britain acquires the atomic bomb.

NovemberThe United States develops the hydrogen bomb.Senator Joseph McCarthy obtains the chairmanship of the U.S. Government Committee on Operations of the Senate and of its permanent subcommittee on investigations. For the next two years he is constantly in the spotlight, investigating various government departments and questioning innumerable witnesses about their suspected Communist affiliations. Although he fails to make a plausible case against anyone, his colourful and cleverly presented accusations drive some persons out of their jobs and bring popular condemnation to others. The persecution of innocent persons on the charge of being Communists and the forced conformity that this practice engenders in American public life will come to be known as McCarthyism. Meanwhile, less

flamboyant government agencies actually succeed in identifying and prosecuting cases of Communist infiltration.

1953

Great Britain launches the first man into orbit from Woomera, South Australia.

MarchStalin dies following a stroke. After a brief power struggle amongst his subordinates, Georgy M. Malenkov and Nikita S. Khrushchev effectively become co-leaders of the Soviet Union.

AugustDriven by their growing anger at the ongoing terrorist activities of the second Red Skull and the prevailing atmosphere of McCarthyism, the second Steve Rogers and his friend Jack Monroe take the decision to administer the Super-Soldier Serum to themselves and make their first public appearances as the fourth Captain America and the third Bucky, operating without military or government sponsorship. They go on to repeatedly battle the Skull and other Communist threats. However, due to a flaw in their re-creation of the process for administering the Serum to themselves, their mental stability subsequently begins to erode. They become paranoid and start to see Communist conspirators everywhere.

The increasingly irresponsible attacks on alleged Communists and Communist sympathizers by Senator Joseph McCarthy grow to include President Dwight D. Eisenhower and other Republican and Democratic leaders.

1954

The first giant monster to be called Gojira (or Godzilla) rampages in Japan before being killed by Superman.

A reorganization of the Soviet security apparatus places most of its superhuman operatives under the control of the newly-created Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti [Committee for State Security] or KGB.

The influence of Senator Joseph McCarthy finally begins to wane as a result of a sensational, nationally televised, 36-day hearing on his charges of subversion by U.S. Army officers and civilian officials. This detailed television exposure of his brutal and truculent interrogative tactics discredits him and helps to turn the tide of public opinion against him.

MarchSuperman has his second and last encounter with Mala, U-Ban and Kizo. The three escape from their imprisonment in suspended animation again after the jury-rigged repairs made to their spacecraft by Superman fail and return to Earth to avenge themselves upon him. Realizing that even if he should succeed in defeating them without killing them a second time, he will be unable to then return them to their imprisonment a second time without the likelihood that they will soon escape it yet again, Superman decides that he cannot take the chance that they will eventually overcome and kill him and then enslave the Earth. Accordingly, this time Superman sets out from the start to fight the three brothers to the death, ultimately succeeding in killing them all one by one due to his superior training in unarmed combat. He places their bodies aboard their derelict spacecraft for the last time and then sends it plunging into the Sun.

June-July

The mental instability of the fourth Captain America and the third Bucky grows to the point that they begin randomly attacking and beating innocent people in the street as supposed Communist agents. Unwilling to see the good names of Captain America and Bucky continue to be endangered by the deranged activities of their current users, the authorities order the Federal Bureau of Investigation or FBI to secretly take them into custody.

JulyThe Lord of the Rings Vol. 1: The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien is published in Great Britain.

OctoberThe Fellowship of the Ring is published in the United States.

NovemberThe Soviet-dominated Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe establish the Bucharest Treaty Organization or Bucharest Pact, a mutual-defense organization to provide for a unified military command and for the maintenance of Soviet military units on the territories of the other participating states. Although Poland does not join the Pact, it is pressured into signing a separate treaty which grants the Soviet Union the right to maintain its existing military enclaves within Polish territory for as long as the Pact remains in effect.The Lord of the Rings Vol.2: The Two Towers is published in Great Britain.

Senator McCarthy is dismissed from the chairmanship of the Committee on Operations of the Senate. Soon after, the Senate feels secure enough to formally condemn him on a vote of 67 to 22 for conduct “contrary to Senate traditions”. McCarthy is largely ignored by his colleagues and by the media thereafter.

1955

The second giant monster to be called Gojira (or Godzilla) rampages in Japan, battling and slaying fellow giant monster Angirasu (or Anguirus) before himself being killed by Superman.

JanuaryUnable to treat the delusional psychosis of the fourth Captain America and the third Bucky as things stand, the FBI is instructed to place them in suspended animation until a cure can be found.

FebruaryKhrushchev ousts Malenkov from power, becoming sole leader of the Soviet Union.

AprilThe Two Towers is published in the United States.

JulyJ’onn J’onzz, Manhunter from Mars, is accidentally transported to Earth in Denver.

OctoberThe Lord of the Rings Vol. 3: The Return of the King is published in Great Britain.

NovemberThe Soviet Union acquires the hydrogen bomb.

Captain Marvel Jr. and Miss Marvel relocate permanently to the 30th Century, where they will change their names to Captain Marvel II and Ms. Marvel II, become full-time members of the Legion of Super-Heroes and marry.

1956

Two giant monsters called Radon (or Rodan) rampage in Japan before being killed by Superman and Captain Marvel.

Great Britain launches the first three-man crew into orbit.

The United States launches a man into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The Soviet Union launches a man into orbit from Baykonur, Kazakhstan.

JanuaryThe Return of the King is published in the United States.

MayBarry Allen makes his first public appearance as the second Flash in Central City [Kansas City].

JulyAn international crisis erupts in the Middle East when Egyptian president Gamal Abd el-Nasser proclaims the nationalization of the Suez Canal: it has until now been owned by the Suez Canal Company, which is controlled by French and British interests. Britain and France soon become fearful that Nasser may close the Canal and cut off shipments of petroleum from the Persian Gulf to western Europe. When diplomatic efforts to settle the crisis fail, Britain and France secretly prepare military action to regain control of the Canal and, if possible, to depose Nasser. They find a ready ally in Israel, whose hostility toward Egypt has already been exacerbated by its blockage of the Straits of Tiran (at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba) and numerous raids by Egyptian-supported commandos into Israel during 1955–56.

SeptemberFrance, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, West Germany and Italy sign the Treaty of Rome, which establishes the European Economic Community or EEC and creates a common market and customs union among its members.Congo Bill first encounters the legendary Golden Gorilla.

OctoberWalter “Prof” Haley, Kyle “Ace” Morgan, Matthew “Red” Ryan and Leslie “Rocky” Davis make their first public appearance as the Challengers of the Unknown.

October-NovemberIsraeli forces invade Egypt and advance toward the Suez Canal, routing Egyptian forces. Britain and France, following a secret plan agreed in advance with Israel, demand that Israeli and Egyptian troops withdraw from the Canal and announce that they will intervene to enforce a cease-fire ordered by the United Nations. They are unexpectedly forestalled by Superman, who intervenes himself to force the Egyptians and Israelis apart. He then intimidates Nasser into reopening the Canal, restoring control over it to the Suez Canal Company (until their lease on it expires in thirteen years) and restoring Israeli shipping rights in the Straits of Tiran. This humiliation for Nasser destroys his credibility as a supposed hero for the cause of Egyptian and Arab nationalism: three years later he is assassinated, being succeeded by Muhammad Anwar el-Sadat.

The KGB directs Professor Piotr Phobos to establish a secret school where superhuman mutants will be trained to serve as costumed champions of the Soviet Union.

1957

An international organization of superhuman champions, codenamed the Dome, is created at the initiative of the immortal African sorcerer Dr. Mist: its other founding members are the Wingman (from Sweden), the Knight and the Squire (from Great Britain), the Musketeer (from France) and the Legionary (from Italy). They are soon joined by the Gaucho (from Argentina) and the Ranger (from Australia). The group will eventually evolve into a team known as the Global Guardians and grow to include members from every corner of the world, earning formal sponsorship from the UN.

NovemberGreat Britain acquires the hydrogen bomb.

1958

The giant monster Baran (or Varan) rampages in Japan before being killed by Superman.

FebruaryIraq and Transjordan form a loosely-structured Arab federation under the leadership of King Faysal II of Iraq and his cousin King Husayn of Transjordan. Husayn secretly loans Faysal the services of two telepathic spies who have worked for the Transjordanian Royal Family for many years, having originally been recruited by their long-time military advisor Sir John Bagot Glubb.

MarchFirst clash between Superman and Brainiac, an alien scientist from the planet Colu (revealed years later to be an android). The almost-stereotypical nature of Brainiac as a menacing “green man from outer space” fuels a renewed surge of fear in the public mind concerning the countless nightmarish menaces thought to be lurking in the darkest reaches of the night sky. All the major powers subsequently initiate urgent military research programs with the goal of developing ways of defending Earth from alien invasion which do not rely on the continued presence and goodwill of Superman.

MayKing Faysal of Iraq orders the arrest, summary trial and execution of a number of disloyal army officers who have plotted against his rule and now been detected by his borrowed telepathic spies, including General Abd al-Karim Qasim and his lieutenant Abd al-Salam Arif. There is also a crackdown on opposition groups such as the Arab Socialist Ba’th [Revivalist] Party: an anonymous rank-and-file member named Saddam Husayn al-Tikriti violently resists arrest, managing to kill several policemen before being shot dead himself.

AugustArchaeologist Adam Strange is first transported to the planet Rann.

OctoberCongo Bill begins periodically mind-swapping with the Golden Gorilla to become the Congorilla.

1959

The United States launches a three-man crew into orbit.

The Soviet Union launches a three-man crew into orbit.

France launches a man into orbit from Hammaguir, Algeria.

JanuarySupergirl arrives on Earth and adopts the identity of Linda Lee: she does not reveal her existence to the public at this time.First clash between the second Flash and Gorilla Grodd.

FebruaryLancelot Strong makes his first public appearance as the second Shield.Tommy Troy makes his first public appearance as the Fly.First recorded adventure of Rip Hunter, Time Master.

MarchSuperman battles and destroys the strange artificial lifeform known as Bizarro.British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden, once the favoured protégé of Winston Churchill, resigns after becoming progressively debilitated by the ill health that has plagued him since well before his rather unremarkable four years in office. A biographer will subsequently muse that if Superman had not intervened to resolve the Suez Crisis so quickly, it would almost certainly have escalated into a brief Anglo-French war to depose Nasser, inevitably ending in a swift, glorious victory that would have ensured Eden a far more distinguished place in history. He is succeeded by his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Harold Macmillan.

MayHal Jordan makes his first public appearance as the second Green Lantern in Coast City [San Francisco].First recorded adventure of Colonel Rick Flag and Task Force X, the “Suicide Squad”.

AugustWally West makes his first public appearance as Kid Flash, the kid sidekick of the Flash, in Central City [Kansas City].

OctoberFirst reported sighting of Garth as Aqualad, the first kid sidekick of Aquaman, in the North Atlantic Ocean.

NovemberFormation of the Justice League of America or JLA.The JLA establish a secret headquarters in Happy Harbor, Rhode Island.First clash between the JLA and the alien monster Starro the Conqueror. Public hysteria at this alien threat manifesting itself so soon after the one posed by Brainiac drives military research into ways of defending Earth from alien threats along at a greatly increased pace.Allen Adam makes his first public appearance as Captain Atom in Washington, D.C., with much being made of his status as a serving officer in the U.S. Air Force in government Cold War propaganda.

1960

The Commonwealth constructs Space Station Queen Elizabeth in low Earth orbit. The Station is equipped with a battery of missiles armed with nuclear warheads: these are pointed outward into space, ready to be fired at any future alien threat, but military chiefs around the world are well aware that they could easily be redirected towards targets on Earth. The British government has given advance notification of this deployment to both the American and Soviet

governments, rather than risk sparking an international crisis if any attempt at secrecy should later be exposed. The precedent this sets effectively guarantees that all future outposts in space will be at least partly military in nature: all subsequent Stations and bases on other worlds will have a mixture of military and civilian personnel and be armed with nuclear missiles for defense against aliens.

FebruaryFrance acquires the atomic bomb.First clash between the Challengers of the Unknown and Multi-Man.

MarchThe Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa.

AprilSupergirl has her first encounter with the teenage Legion of Super-Heroes, who have time-traveled back from the 30th Century to meet her. She visits the future and joins the LSH[11].First recorded adventure of the team of deep-sea divers known as the Sea Devils.

MayCaptain Atom joins the Justice League of America. Captain Marvel accepts reserve membership.First recorded adventure of “Cave” Carson and his team of cavern explorers.First clash between Aquaman and the Ocean Master.

NovemberThe now-adult Katar Hol and Shayera Thal, his partner in the Thanagarian Hawk Police, come to Earth in pursuit of the Thanagarian escaped criminal Byth Rok. Carter Hall and Shiera Sanders Hall, the original Hawkman and Hawkgirl, are intrigued by news reports of their activities and don their old costumes to go looking for them. Approaching Katar and Shayera after they have apprehended Byth, Carter and Shiera invite them back to their home to discuss the many astonishing similarities between them. A lengthy series of conversations gradually establishes to the satisfaction of Katar Hol that Carter Hall is the human old friend of his father whose coincidental similarity in name to his own had led to that friendship and to many nostalgic reminiscences about it by his father while he was growing up. When he and Shayera Thal are subsequently directed to establish themselves on Earth in assumed human identities and operate publicly as costumed champions, using only their standard-issue Hawk Police equipment, while conducting ongoing surveillance of humanity to assess whether Earth poses any potential to threaten Thanagar, they establish themselves in false identities in Midway City [Chicago], using the assumed names of Carter Hall and Shiera Sanders in honour of their newfound human friends. They then begin making regular public appearances as the second Hawkman and Hawkgirl in Midway City.

DecemberSuperman encounters a derelict Kryptonian spacecraft which had been the second of two to survive the cataclysmic explosion of the planet Krypton – albeit in a severely damaged condition – and to eventually pass through the wormhole previously created by the space-warp drive of the spacecraft that had carried him to Earth as an infant. From it he salvages a collection of dangerous devices which had been placed in orbit around Krypton to keep them from falling into the wrong hands on the surface, along with blueprints for the construction of other such devices. Amongst the devices that are still functional is one capable of projecting living beings into the Phantom Zone, a dimension to which some of the most dangerous criminals on Krypton had been exiled prior to its destruction. Amongst the blueprints that are still readable is one for a prototype device

designed to be capable of viewing the Phantom Zone and communicating with its inmates from this dimension.

[11] In this Timeline Red Kryptonite doesn’t exist, so Supergirl can’t be temporarily aged into an adult by it and thereby temporarily become too old to join during her first tryout for membership. This makes it unnecessary for her to have a second one.

1961

The giant monster Mosura (or Mothra) rampages in Japan before being killed by Superman.

Superman begins to suspect that he is no longer aging.

JanuarySupergirl pays her second visit to the 30th Century with the Legion of Super-Heroes and first meets Brainiac 5, a descendant of the original Brainiac.

FebruaryConstruction of the Berlin Wall.A damaged alien starship crash-lands on Earth. Its unconscious pilot is rescued by Superman shortly before the ship explodes. When the pilot awakens, he is found to be suffering from amnesia, but when he subsequently begins to display superhuman abilities similar to those of Superman himself, he is naturally assumed to be a Kryptonian. Soon becoming firm friends with the young man, Superman begins to regard him almost as a younger brother or even a son and, since he cannot remember his real name, gives him the Kryptonian name of Mon-El and helps him to establish himself in a human identity as Bob Cobb. Eventually he regains his memory and Superman and Mon-El himself learn the truth: he is not from Krypton but rather from the planet Daxam. His species are extremely susceptible to fatal poisoning by even small amounts of lead, which is common in the environment of Earth, and he is already close to death by the time his memory returns. In a desperate attempt to save his life, Superman projects him into the Phantom Zone, where his condition will stabilize. He will remain trapped in the Phantom Zone for a thousand years, unaging, before medical science finally discovers an antidote to lead poisoning in Daxamites. After finally being freed, he will join the teenage Legion of Super-Heroes.

MarchFirst clash between the second Green Lantern and Sinestro.Donna Troy makes her first public appearance as Wonder Girl, the kid sidekick of Wonder Woman, in Washington, D.C..

AprilCuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro is assassinated by superhuman operatives of the CIA as exiled opponents of his regime re-invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs (Bahía de los Cochinos). The revolutionary government is overthrown and a fractious coalition government widely seen as a puppet of the United States is installed in power.

MayThe original Flash meets the second Flash and comes out of retirement to aid him in a case, after they discover that they both possess the power to travel between parallel universes. Feeling somewhat daunted by their momentous discovery, they decide to keep it a secret for the time being.Ralph Hardy makes his first public appearance as the Jaguar.

June

Superman has his first encounters with the adult Legion of Super-Heroes and adult Legion of Super-Villains when they time-travel back from the 30th Century to get involved in a battle between himself and Lex Luthor[12].

JulyReed Richards (Mister Fantastic), Susan Storm (the Invisible Girl), Johnny Storm (the second Human Torch) and Ben Grimm (the Thing) make their first public appearance as the Fantastic Four.

AugustRay Palmer makes his first public appearance as the second Atom in Ivytown [Stamford], Connecticut.

SeptemberThe first recorded incursion by the alien Skrulls is repulsed by the Fantastic Four.Dr. Hank Pym makes his first public appearance as Ant-Man in New York City.Kim Brand makes her first public appearance as Fly-Girl.

OctoberSupergirl reveals her existence to the public.

DecemberCaptain Marvel has his first encounters with the adult Legion of Super-Heroes and adult Legion of Super-Villains when they time-travel back from the 30th Century to get involved in a battle between himself and Dr. Thaddeus Sivana.

Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Orekhov develops shape-shifting abilities following exposure to cosmic rays in space: he subsequently becomes a superhuman operative of the KGB codenamed Volkh. Reports of his transformation inspire the scientist Ivan Kragov to deliberately re-create the exact conditions of his flight, thereby transforming himself and three trained simians into the Red Ghost and his Super-Apes.

[12] This is a modified version of the events of the first Adult Legion story from 1961.

1962

The second giant ape to be called King Kong (this one being five times the size of the original) rampages in Japan[13] before being killed by Superman.

The United States constructs Space Station Jefferson in low Earth orbit.

The Soviet Union constructs Space station Lenin in low Earth orbit.

France launches a three-man crew into orbit.

JanuaryDr. Bruce Banner is transformed into the Hulk.

FebruaryThe Hulk has his first and last clash with the mutant dwarf genius Soviet scientist known as the Gargoyle, which culminates in the death of the latter.

MarchFirst clash between the Fantastic Four and Dr. Victor von Doom.

AprilPeter Parker makes his first public appearance as Spider-Man in New York City.The Ancient Scandinavian-Germanic god Thor makes his first public appearance in the modern era in Norway.

JuneFirst clash in the modern era between Thor and Loki.

JulyAfter more than a year spent working from salvaged blueprints, Superman finally succeeds in constructing a functional viewer device to enable communication between the Earth Dimension and the Phantom Zone, in order to communicate with Mon-El. He is soon confronted with a chorus of pleas and demands from the Kryptonian criminals imprisoned in the Zone for him to release them. Vividly remembering the threat posed to the entire Earth years before by Mala, U-Ban and Kizo, he refuses. Enraged, most of them swear to somehow escape despite him and avenge themselves upon him.

AugustFrench President Charles de Gaulle is murdered by a superhuman assassin in the employ of the right-wing terrorist group known as the Organization de l'Armée Secrète [Secret Army Organization] or OAS. He is succeeded by Michel Debré.

OctoberThe Fantastic Four have their first encounter with the Impossible Man.

NovemberTony Stark makes his first public appearance as Iron Man in Vietnam.A costumed criminal named the Acrobat has his first battle with the second Human Torch.

DecemberThe Fantastic Four become the first human beings to set foot on the Moon. Investigating the mysterious Blue Area within the crater Luther in the Mare Crisium, they discover the ruins of the Blue City, built and later abandoned by the alien Kree a million years before. They are confronted by Uatu, a member of the ancient, highly-evolved alien race known as the Watchers, who has passively observed the history of Earth since before the dawn of humanity from his home amidst the ruins. He orders them to depart and leave him in peace. Daunted by this momentous encounter and uncertain as to whether or not they should risk causing worldwide panic by revealing the existence of Uatu, the FF decide for the present to conceal their achievement in reaching the Moon from the authorities and the public.

Professor Charles Xavier secretly forms a team of superhuman mutants called the X-Men, based at his School for Gifted Youngsters at Westchester, New York.

[13] This was in a Toho movie, like all the other giant monster rampages mentioned here.

1963

JanuaryFirst clash between Spider-Man and Dr. Octopus.

FebruaryThe second Flash aids the original Flash and most of the other members of the Justice Society of America in a battle against Vandal Savage.

Janet Van Dyne makes her first public appearance as the Wasp, the sidekick of Ant-Man.

MarchFirst recorded adventure of Dr. Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme.

AprilMost of the members of the Justice Society of America aid the Justice League of America in another case involving travel between parallel universes.First recorded clash between Dr. Stephen Strange and Baron Karl Mordo.

MayLoki manipulates the Hulk into going on a rampage, intending to lure Thor into battle with the behemoth. In the event, not only Thor but also Iron Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp, the Justice League of America and finally Superman are all drawn to the scene. As the rage felt by the Hulk at this perceived persecution grows, he loses control completely and becomes a berserk engine of destruction. As the battle draws near to a densely-populated area, the threat of massive civilian casualties resulting from it drives Superman to desperate measures. Grappling the Hulk, Superman manages to fly to the Arctic at maximum speed taking the Hulk with him, using the buffeting that results from their passage through the atmosphere at such extreme speed to keep the Hulk too disorientated to break his grip on him. Dropping the Hulk at a height of five thousand feet, Superman flies to retrieve his Phantom Zone Projector from the Fortress of Solitude. While the Hulk is still half-stunned from the colossal force of his impact with the ground, Superman uses the Projector to send him to the Phantom Zone.In the aftermath of the battle, Thor, Iron Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp accept an invitation to join the JLA, while Superman accepts reserve membership.First public appearance of the X-Men and their first clash with Magneto.

JuneTony Stark donates a mansion in New York City to the JLA to serve as their headquarters.First clash between the second Flash and the Reverse-Flash.First clash between Iron Man and the original Crimson Dynamo.First clash between the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.Dr. Niles Caulder (the Chief), Rita Farr (Elasti-Girl), Larry Trainor (Negative Man) and Cliff Steele (the second Robotman) make their first public appearance as the Doom Patrol.

JulyAs part of an attempted fraud scheme, the Acrobat briefly dupes the public into believing that he is Captain America, coming out of retirement, before being exposed by his old enemy the second Human Torch.

AugustNuclear technician Owen Reece is transformed into the Molecule Man

NovemberThe Justice League of America stumble upon the original Captain America, frozen in ice in the Arctic. The ice is thawed and he revives. He is soon forced to begin seeking a new place for himself in a world much changed from the one he knew nearly two decades ago, and accepts membership in the JLA in order to have something to give him some purpose to his life in the meantime.U.S. President John F. “Jack” Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. As the authorities search for his killer, a police officer is shot and killed while attempting to arrest a man matching the description of a suspect. School book depository employee Lee Harvey Oswald is subsequently arrested and charged with both murders. Oswald is mind-probed by a Secret Service telepath, who reports that he is mentally unstable but definitely believes that he is the killer and is intensely

proud of the fact, being motivated by a devotion to the cause of international communism and a desire to avenge the death of Fidel Castro. Whilst he is being transferred from a jail cell to an interrogation office, a local nightclub owner named Jack Ruby attempts to shoot Oswald. The telepath senses his intention just before he fires and shoves Oswald clear. Ruby is then overpowered and arrested. The telepath probes his mind and reports that Ruby was acting out of rage and anguish over the death of the President.At his subsequent trial, Oswald is convicted on two counts of first-degree murder. He is condemned to death, but his increasingly erratic behaviour before, during and after the proceedings leads to the sentence being commuted to life imprisonment due to a large question mark regarding his sanity and therefore his culpability. He will eventually commit suicide in prison. During the course of the trial, some witnesses to the assassination dramatically state that they believe they had heard additional shots coming from another direction at the same time that Oswald was firing. These claims have already been investigated by the authorities, but no evidence of any other gunman has been found. Eventually the trial moves on to other evidence and the press and public lose interest in the issue. In later years Kennedy biographers will generally consider it barely worth a passing mention.Meanwhile, at his trial Jack Ruby is found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to seven years in prison. In the event, he dies only three years into his sentence from a blood clot complicated by cancer.

DecemberFirst clash between Spider-Man and the original Green Goblin.KGB agent Aleksey Shostakov becomes the second Red Guardian.KGB agent Natalya Romanova begins operating under the codename of the Black Widow.

1964

The alien giant monster Kingu Gidora (or King Ghidorah) rampages in Japan before being killed by Superman, Captain Marvel and Thor.

The Commonwealth lands men on the Moon. They are generally believed to be the first to set foot there, since the Fantastic Four are still concealing their own prior visit from the authorities and the public.

JanuaryThe Joker dies from a massive heart attack after his lethal electric joy buzzer is accidentally driven against his chest during his final battle with the Batman.

FebruaryBruce Wayne retires as the Batman and is succeeded in the role by his protégé Matt Murdock. This replacement is kept a secret from the public, in order to add to the mystique of quasi-supernatural terror that has accrued to the name over the years by creating the impression that the dread Batman is not subject to such human limitations as the ageing process.

MayFirst clash between the Justice League of America and the time-travelling tyrant Kang the Conqueror.Clint Barton makes his first public appearance as Hawkeye in New York City.

JuneNelson Mandela and others are sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa.

JulyFirst clash between Dr. Stephen Strange and the dread Dormammu.

OctoberChina acquires the atomic bomb.

1965

The French government reaches an agreement with the governments of its fellow member states of the EEC to make them full partners in its space program, under the aegis of a new organization to be called the European Space Agency or ESA.

Japan launches a man into orbit.

China launches a man into orbit.

JanuaryThe original Red Skull is freed from his entombment in suspended animation beneath Berlin. He immediately embarks on a new career of seeking to achieve world domination in his own right.John Mann makes his first public appearance as the Son of Vulcan.Bill Higgins, the son of Joe Higgins, makes his first public appearance as the third Shield.The Fly changes his name to Fly-Man.

AprilColonel Nick Fury becomes Director of the counter-subversion organization Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage and Law-enforcement Division or SHIELD. He and Captain America have their first clash with the fascistic would-be world-conquerors known as HYDRA.

MaySuperman has another encounter with the adult Legion of Super-Heroes and adult Legion of Super-Villains when they time-travel back from the 30th Century to get involved in a battle between himself and the team of Lex Luthor and Brainiac[14].The Justice League of America recruits several reformed costumed criminals as new members, including Hawkeye and two former members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, the twin brother and sister Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch.First clash between Iron Man and the Titanium Man.

JulyBeginning of overt U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.Dr. Bolivar Trask creates the first mutant-hunting Sentinel robots.Peter Cannon makes his first public appearance as Thunderbolt.

AugustFirst recorded case of private investigator and freelance secret agent “Sarge” Steel.

NovemberThe Silver Surfer leads Galactus to the Solar System. Uatu the Watcher appears to the Fantastic Four to warn them of the peril Earth faces and uses his technology in an attempt to hide the planet from the Surfer. The Surfer sees through the illusions and discovers the Earth to be ripe with life-energy. The Fantastic Four battle the Surfer, but are too late to prevent him from signalling his master. Upon his arrival Galactus creates a force field around New York City which prevents most of the major superhuman champions of Earth from approaching him: the combined efforts of Superman, Captain Marvel, Thor, Captain Atom, the Flash and Green Lantern are insufficient to penetrate the

barrier. The Fantastic Four, already inside the barrier, are unable to defeat Galactus on their own. Alicia Masters, the girlfriend of Ben Grimm, encounters the Silver Surfer and convinces him of the value of humanity. The Watcher sends Johnny Storm to Taa II, the immense space station which serves as the home base for Galactus, to retrieve the Ultimate Nullifier, a weapon capable of annihilating the entire Universe. The remaining members of the Fantastic Four ally with the Silver Surfer in battling Galactus. Storm returns with the Nullifier and gives it to Reed Richards, who forces Galactus to back off. Galactus departs, but not before erecting a barrier around Earth that confines the Surfer to the planet.Agents of The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves or THUNDER have their first clash with the forces of the Warlord of the Subterraneans. Dying scientist Anthony Dunn transfers his mind into an android body of his own design. With access to a large number of additional such bodies, he can transfer his mind to any of the others should any harm befall the one it currently occupies. He begins using an invisibility cloak to operate as THUNDER Agent NoMan.

November-DecemberThe white minority government of the British colony of Rhodesia attempt to unilaterally declare independence in order to prevent the British authorities from compelling them to share power with representatives of the black majority. A small force from the British Army which includes superhuman commandos descends on the capital, Salisbury, at night and seizes Prime Minister Ian Smith and his Cabinet, while British Prime Minister Harold Wilson makes an international television broadcast in which he declares the Rhodesian Parliament dissolved and a state of emergency to be in effect. The black majority take to the streets in support of the declaration. The white Rhodesian authorities cave in without significant resistance and a racially-mixed provisional government is set up by the British Governor-General. The first fully-democratic elections are held two years later, installing a black majority government headed by the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole. At his inauguration, Sithole pays tribute to the memory of his late colleague Robert Mugabe, who had died in prison three years before, supposedly of natural causes: he is believed by most blacks to have been murdered. Meanwhile, Ian Smith and his leading accomplices are tried for treason and sentenced to twenty years in prison. The sentences will eventually be commuted after they have served seven years.

[14] This is a modified version of the events of the sixth Adult Legion story from 1965.

1966

Superman becomes certain that he is no longer aging.

January“Sarge” Steel is recruited by SHIELD.

MarchFirst clash between Captain America and the technocratic would-be world-conquerors known as the Advanced Idea Mechanics or the AIM.

JuneAdam Adamant awakes from suspended animation after 64 years and subsequently resumes his career as a gentleman adventurer.

JulyTed Kord makes his first public appearance as the Blue Beetle in Hub City [Chicago].Christopher Smith makes his first public appearance as the Peacemaker.

AugustOliver Queen retires as the Green Arrow. Clint Barton abandons the costumed champion identity of Hawkeye to succeed him in the role.

SeptemberBarbara Gordon makes her first public appearance as Batgirl in Gotham City [New York City].

DecemberSuperman time-travels forward to the 30th Century to aid the adult Legion of Super-Heroes in a battle against the adult Legion of Super-Villains. In the process he meets benevolent namesake descendants of Lex Luthor and Mr. Mxyzptlk[15].

[15] This is a modified version of the events of the seventh Adult Legion story from 1966.

1967

The United States lands men on the Moon.

The Soviet Union lands men on the Moon.

JanuaryFirst clash between the Fantastic Four and Blastaar.

FebruaryFirst reported sighting of Tula as Aquagirl, the second kid sidekick of Aquaman, in the North Atlantic Ocean.Vic Sage makes his first public appearance as the Question in Hub City [Chicago].

JuneThe Three-Day War is fought between Israel and a coalition of Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq and Syria. With an Arab attack imminent, Israeli planes destroy the Egyptian air force on the ground in a pre-emptive strike that begins the total rout of all the Arab forces: Superman intervenes as Israeli forces advance deep into the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Golan Heights, once again destroying tanks and artillery and confiscating small-arms and explosives from the infantry. The Arab forces seek to take advantage of the situation by organizing a counterattack: Superman switches to disarming them. The Israeli forces then seek to renew their offensive: Superman switches back to disarming them. Unwilling to see the wholesale destruction of essential military hardware continue, the Israeli government orders its troops to withdraw behind their own borders. De facto peace is restored, with Superman appearing singularly unmoved by the public opprobrium subsequently heaped upon him by politicians on both sides.China acquires the hydrogen bomb.First clash in person between Captain America and MODOK, the technologically-mutated leader of the AIM.

AugustMar-Vell of the alien Kree makes his first public appearance on Earth as the second Captain Marvel.

1968

The ESA member states construct Space Station Concorde in low Earth orbit.

Japan launches a three-man crew into orbit.

China launches a three-man crew into orbit.

Formation of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce or UNIT to serve as the first line of defense against alien invasion.

The KGB directs superhuman teenager Leonid Kovar to assume the identity of the Red Star, a new costumed champion of the Soviet Union.

January-FebruaryThe Tet Offensive.

MarchCaptain Atom refuses a request by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson for him to aid American troops in Vietnam. His relations with the government and military rapidly deteriorate, to the point that he is left operating essentially independently of their oversight. Since he does not formally resign his commission with the Air Force, his conduct is construed by some as insubordination and being AWOL. However, no attempt is made to arrest him for the simple reason that there are no other superhuman military personnel with the power to subdue him by force.

AprilCreation of the android second Red Tornado.

MayThe second Red Guardian, Aleksey Shostakov, is inadvertently killed during a clash with Captain America and the Justice League of America. The KGB quietly replaces him with Iosif Petkus, with the Soviet public remaining unaware of the replacement.

JuneCreation of the android second Vision.

JulyFirst clash between Captain America and the criminal mastermind Dr. Faustus, a master of psychological warfare and brainwashing.First clash between the Fantastic Four and Annihilus.Franklin Benjamin Richards is born to Reed Richards (Mister Fantastic) and Susan Storm Richards (the Invisible Woman) of the Fantastic Four.

AugustFrance acquires the hydrogen bomb.

SeptemberSuperman battles the sorcerer Mordru, who has time-traveled back from the 30th Century to kill him in order to change history for his own benefit. Mordru is traced and followed by Brainiac 5 of the adult Legion of Super-Heroes, who dupes Lex Luthor into helping Superman defeat him[16].

[16] This is a modified version of the events of the ninth and last Adult Legion story from 1968.

1969

The Commonwealth constructs a Moonbase in the crater Tycho.

Border disputes between China and the Soviet Union come close to triggering all-out war.

MayKing Idris of Libya orders the arrest, summary trial and execution of a number of disloyal army officers, led by Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi, who have plotted against his rule and now been detected by telepathic spies in his employ.

JuneDinah Lance, the daughter of Dinah Drake, makes her first public appearance as the second Black Canary.

OctoberThe Justice League of America establishes its own permanent space station in geosynchronous orbit.

DecemberThe paramilitary Irish Republican Army or IRA divides into “Official” and “Provisional” wings in Northern Ireland. The Provisional IRA subsequently embarks on a campaign of bombings, ambushes and assassinations against British military and political targets in Northern Ireland.

1970

FebruaryFirst clash between the Batman (Matt Murdock) and the Man-Bat.

AprilSupergirl relocates permanently to the 30th Century, where she will change her name to Superwoman, become a full-time member of the LSH and marry her long-time boyfriend Brainiac 5.

SeptemberA Palestinian insurrection against the Transjordanian occupation of the West Bank breaks out: Syria subsequently invades northern Transjordan in support of the Palestinians. Superman intervenes, commencing to disarm all sides until fighting ceases and the Syrians withdraw. He then compels Transjordan to withdraw its troops from the West Bank and Egypt to withdraw its troops from Gaza: the entirety of the Palestinian state declared in 1948 at last comes under the control of the Palestinian government in Acre, only now beginning to exercise true self-government as a unified political entity.

OctoberThe Justice League of America work on another case involving travel between parallel universes.The existence of the immortal alien New Gods of the planets New Genesis and Apokolips is revealed.The Flash (Barry Allen) and his wife Iris West-Allen learn that Iris had originally been born Iris Russell in the 25th Century. She had been sent to the 20th Century via time travel by her biological parents as a baby and there been adopted by a family named West.

DecemberFirst clash between the Batman (Matt Murdock) and Ra’s al-Ghul.

1970-76

The mysterious scientist Dr. John Smith, alias “the Doctor”, serves as the resident Scientific Advisor to the British branch of UNIT, aiding them in defeating a number of covert alien incursions, several of which are aided by the equally mysterious terrorist and criminal Victor Magister, alias “the Master”.

1971

The giant monster Hedora (or Hedorah) rampages in Japan before being killed by Captain Atom.

MarchThe first true national elections are held in the State of Palestine under UN supervision. The Fatah [Opening] movement led by Muhammad Abd ar-Rauf al-Qudwah al-Husayni (known by the alias Yasir Arafat) sweeps to power, pledging to continue to work for the “liberation” of the territory comprising the State of Israel and its incorporation into the State of Palestine: how this is to be achieved when Superman will inevitably intervene to bring any war to a rapid halt is not specified.

JuneA short-lived intensification of the million year-old Kree-Skrull War sees a battle being fought between the two ancient alien Empires in the outer Solar System, with each seeking to conquer Earth for themselves if possible but also to deny it to the enemy at all costs. The combined forces of all the major superhuman champions of Earth are needed to disarm the two opposing fleets and expel them from the Solar System. This unprecedented crisis naturally triggers intense renewed fears of imminent alien invasion, which persist long after it has passed.

SeptemberChinese dictator Mao Zedong suddenly dies: the death is announced as being natural, but it has actually occurred at the hands of a superhuman assassin in the employ of the disaffected Defense Minister Lin Biao. Lin rapidly seizes power in a well-planned coup, arresting and executing his chief rival Zhou Enlai and his leading supporters and imprisoning Jiang Qing, the widow of Mao, and her close associates. He also ends secret contacts between the Chinese and American governments which had aimed at improving relations between the two countries.

1972

The alien giant monster Gaigan (or Gigan) rampages in Japan before being killed by Superman.

The United States constructs a Moonbase in the crater Copernicus.

The Soviet Union constructs a Moonbase in the crater Descartes.

The ESA member states land men on the Moon.

Border disputes between China and the Soviet Union again come close to triggering all-out war.

FebruaryFirst reported sighting of Namorita, daughter of Namora and second cousin of King Namor the Sub-Mariner, in the North Atlantic Ocean.

May-August

The fourth Captain America and third Bucky, still delusionally paranoid, escape from suspended animation. They go on a renewed rampage of attacking innocent people as supposed Communist agents before being recaptured by the original Captain America.

JuneThe Watergate Scandal breaks out in the United States. It begins as five men are arrested for breaking into the Watergate Building in Washington, D.C., headquarters of the National Committee of the Democratic Party. Within days they and two other men connected to the White House of Republican President Richard M. Nixon are charged with burglary and illegal wiretapping. The White House denies any involvement.

1973

The subterranean giant monster Megaro (or Megalon) rampages in Japan before being killed by Superman.

An alien champion known as Meteor Human Zone (or Zone Fighter, the Meteor Man), visits Earth for several months, basing himself in Japan and aiding the native champions of Earth in battling various giant monsters unleashed upon the planet by the Garogain Empire.

Shang-Chi, the son of Dr. Fu Manchu, rebels against the commands of his evil father and becomes his most determined enemy.

Rachel Anne Summers is born to Scott Summers (Cyclops) and Jean Grey Summers (Marvel Woman) of the X-Men.

Secret talks are held between the governments of Egypt and Syria to discuss a proposed invasion of Israel later in the year. They are eventually abandoned when the participants find themselves with no way around the fact that the inevitable intervention of Superman will simply render the struggle futile almost the moment it begins.

JanuaryGreat Britain, Ireland, Denmark and Norway join the EEC.

MarchThe defendants in the Watergate break-in case are convicted. One of them issues a statement accusing the White House of conducting a “cover-up” to conceal its connection with the break-in. End of overt U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

AprilPresident Nixon is forced to announce a new investigation into the Watergate break-in. He accepts the resignations of Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst and three other advisors, but continues to deny any involvement on his own part.

MayA Senate Select Committee begins televised public hearings on the Watergate investigation.

July-DecemberPresident Nixon unsuccessfully struggles at length to resist releasing tape recordings subpoenaed by the Watergate investigation which are alleged to prove his involvement in instigating the break-in. When he is finally forced to do so, it becomes clear that parts of them have been erased. In the meantime the investigation has uncovered additional more or less related allegations of

misconduct, including the purchase of governmental favours with Presidential campaign contributions, “dirty tricks” in the 1972 campaign, and an extralegal intelligence unit set up in the White House.

SeptemberSocialist Chilean President Salvador Allende Gossens is overthrown and killed in a military coup. A junta led by General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte takes power and begins the systematic repression of liberal forces in the country.Captain America becomes drawn into a year-long investigation into the activities of, and struggle against, a far-right subversive organization known as the Secret Empire.

OctoberPartly as a way of venting the frustration felt by Arab countries over their inability to destroy Israel, the member states of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries or OPEC raise the price demanded for their oil exports by 70%.

DecemberThe OPEC member states raise oil prices by a further 130%.Superman receives an astounding Christmas gift from the reclusive inhabitants of the colony established long ago on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, by a branch of the ancient subspecies of humanity known as the Eternals: a fully-functional starship, incorporating both Titanian and re-created Kryptonian technology. Rather overwhelmed by the gift, Superman gives the starship the name Legacy of Krypton.

The Provisional IRA is virtually destroyed in a ruthless campaign of arrest and interrogation by telepaths waged by the British military and intelligence services.

1974

MarchSuperman invades Chile to bring an end to the military dictatorship which had seized power six months before. Superman projects Augusto Pinochet Ugarte and the rest of the ruling junta into the Phantom Zone before ordering the rest of the military to hand power back to the previous elected government and beginning the systematic destruction of military equipment in order to destroy their will and ability to resist him: he is soon obeyed. Superman next moves to dismantle the military dictatorship in Uruguay: its leaders are likewise dispatched to the Phantom Zone.

MayThe Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives initiates a formal inquiry into the possible impeachment of President Nixon.India acquires the atomic bomb.

JulyThe House Judiciary Committee passes three articles of impeachment against President Nixon.

AugustAt the climax of his struggle against the Secret Empire, Captain America discovers that President Nixon is one of its members. When he is confronted, Nixon commits suicide. An emergency cover-up is organized under the direction of Vice President Gerald R. Ford, in order to avoid having the revelation of this greatest betrayal of the American people by Nixon irrevocably destroy all their trust in their entire political system. An actor impersonates Nixon to publicly announce his resignation from the Presidency in response to the impeachment

proceedings already underway against him. Ford succeeds him as President and subsequently grants Nixon an unconditional pardon for his involvement in the illegal activities uncovered during the Watergate investigation, in order to spare the innocent actor impersonating him the risk of potentially having to serve time in prison in his stead. Out of devotion to his country, the actor will go on to live out the rest of his life as Nixon in order to preserve the secret of his treasonous involvement with the Secret Empire. A maximum-secrecy inquiry by the CIA into the activities of the Empire, and the activities Nixon might have undertaken on their behalf during his Presidency, will later uncover the possibility, never proved or disproved, that the Nixon who committed suicide might himself have been an impostor who had substituted himself for the real Nixon (after abducting, murdering and disposing of him) years before.In the wake of the suicide of Nixon (or whoever), Steve Rogers is left so uncertain about the worth of his lifelong role that he publicly announces his abandonment of the identity of Captain America in favor of the new costumed champion identity of Nomad, the “Man Without a Country”. Distressed at his actions and convinced that their country still needs a Captain America, several men independently try to assume the role in his stead.

SeptemberThe U.S. government begins working to repair relations with Captain Atom. He eventually agrees to resume his affiliation with the Air Force.

NovemberAfter one of the men who have tried to replace him as Captain America is killed by criminals he was trying to apprehend, Steve Rogers decides after much soul-searching to abandon the identity of Nomad and re-assume the identity of Captain America, considering that the identity could be a symbol of American ideals and not of the American government.

The KGB orders the creation of a team of patriotic costumed champions to be known as the Soviet Super-Soldiers[17], which will be led by their veteran superhuman operative Dr. Vladimir Orekhov, codenamed Volkh. Its other founding members include the current Red Guardian, the current Crimson Dynamo, the Red Star, Ursa Major, Mikula, Vanguard and Darkstar, the latter four being graduates of the school for superhuman mutants established two decades before by Professor Piotr Phobos.

[17] The Soviet Super-Soldiers weren’t actually introduced as a team in print for another seven years. I’ve decided for the purposes of this Timeline that all the main characters who were later revealed to be members had already been organized into a team before any of them were encountered on an individual basis by their Western counterparts in print and thus well before they were ever actually all seen together.

1975

JanuaryDick Grayson retires as Nightwing.

MarchAfter much agonized soul-searching, Superman finally refuses a desperate appeal from the corrupt and discredited South Vietnamese regime to save them from being overwhelmed by the North Vietnamese Communists.

June-AugustSuperman intervenes in Nicaragua to compel a cease-fire in the civil war between the military and the socialist Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional [Sandinista National Liberation Front]. The corrupt ruling clique led by President Anastasio Somoza Debayle is forced to resign from office and call elections

which are subsequently won by the Sandinistas. In response to this situation, opponents of the military dictatorship in neighboring El Salvador stage mass demonstrations calling for fundamental reforms. Superman demands a private meeting with the dictator Arturo Armando Molina and his leading aides: they announce their resignation from office and call free elections the following day. An attempted coup by Army hardliners several days later is swiftly crushed by Superman. The elections subsequently install a fractious centrist-leftist coalition government headed by José Napoleon Duarte in power.

AugustSpider-Man inadvertently time-travels forward fifteen years to a post-holocaust near-future of the year 1990 and meets its resident superhuman reluctant champion, the cyborg super-soldier Colonel Luther Manning, alias Deathlok the Demolisher. Spider-Man subsequently returns to his own time and soon begins circulating the alarming story of what he saw in the future amongst the New York City costumed champion community, thereby inadvertently creating a series of small changes to history resulting from their foreknowledge of the future which gradually ripple outward and combine and grow to become large changes. The combined effect of all these changes is to divert the course of history along a new channel and render the future inhabited by Deathlok a divergent timeline, existing alongside the new mainstream timeline created by the actions of Spider-Man.

OctoberDeathlok inadvertently time-travels back from the 1990 of his divergent timeline to the 1975 of the mainstream timeline, where he embarks on what will prove to be a prolonged stay.

NovemberKarate Kid of the teenage Legion of Super-Heroes time-travels back from the 30th Century to the 20th Century for an extended stay.

1976

India launches a man into orbit.

MarchThe existence of the ancient subspecies of humanity known as the Eternals and Deviants is revealed.Leaders of the Argentine military reluctantly decide against staging a coup for fear of triggering the intervention of Superman.Grand Ayatollah Ruhallah Musawi Khomeyni, the exiled leader of the Shi’ite Islamic fundamentalist opposition in Iran, dies of seemingly natural causes in Paris, France: he has actually been murdered by a superhuman assassin in the employ of SAVAK (Sazman-e Amniyyat va Ettela’at-e Keshvar [Organization of National Security and Information]), the Iranian secret police and intelligence service.

AprilThe existence of the near-omnipotent alien Celestials is revealed.

MayRichard Ryder is transformed into Nova.

JuneThe Soweto Massacre in South Africa.

JulyVietnam is unified under North Vietnamese leadership.

AugustRoy Harper retires as the Red Arrow.

SeptemberCarol Danvers makes her first public appearance as Ms. Marvel.

OctoberJessica Drew makes her first public appearance as Spider-Woman.

1976-77

December-AprilIndonesian forces invade and occupy East Timor.With hundreds of thousands of people dying in Cambodia from overwork, starvation, disease or execution as the Communist Khmer Rouge regime seek to achieve the total collectivization of the country, Superman acts on desperate appeals from refugees for him to save their people. He locates the secretive ruling clique of the Khmer Rouge, led by Saloth Sar (known by the alias Pol Pot) and publicly executes them after they refuse to order their followers to relinquish power. Spontaneous popular risings against Communist cadres in the countryside lead to retaliatory massacres, which swiftly lead in turn to Superman killing Communists in droves.Vietnamese forces invade Cambodia, proclaiming that they have come to help Superman rid the Cambodian people of their oppressors: as they have gambled, Superman judges them by far the lesser evil and allows them to fill the vacuum being created as he liquidates the Khmer Rouge, though he does not deliberately assist their takeover at any point. When the last organized Khmer Rouge forces have been killed or surrendered, Superman takes the decision to leave and allow Cambodia to effectively become a protectorate of Vietnam.Superman orders Indonesia to withdraw its forces from East Timor: he is quickly obeyed.

1977

The ESA member states construct a Moonbase in the crater Aristarchus.

The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien is published posthumously in Great Britain and the United States.

FebruaryFirst clash between the Batman (Matt Murdock) and the Harlequin, daughter of the Joker.

AprilSuperman frees the deposed military rulers of Chile and Uruguay from the Phantom Zone and allows them to go into exile in Paraguay.

JuneMordru lures the Justice Society and Justice League of America from the 20th Century to the 30th Century in order to compel them to retrieve a magical artifact for him. The JSA, the JLA and the teenage Legion of Super-Heroes join forces to defeat Mordru.

1977-78

November-FebruaryReports in the international media expose a systematic campaign of intimidation and escalating violence being waged by “off-duty” members of the Israeli Defense Forces against ethnic Arab citizens of Israel living near its borders with Palestine, clearly intended to drive them from their homes and induce them to flee over the borders, allowing the Israeli authorities to then declare them to have “emigrated” and left their lands vacant for settlement by Israeli Jews. Superman responds with the punitive destruction of vast quantities of military equipment. The Israeli authorities are forced to pay out substantial sums in compensation and to hold a commission of inquiry in the glare of the media spotlight. The official report places most of the blame on Ariel Sharon, a retired Major-General with a reputation for impulsiveness, uncontrollability and dogmatism, now serving as a junior minister for agriculture: widespread rumour, never proved, suggests that he has in fact agreed to take the fall in order to preserve the position of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who is forced not only to dismiss him from government but also to have him expelled from the governing Likud [Unity] Party. At a press conference following the expulsion, the enraged Sharon gives vent to a near-unhinged tirade against Superman, which culminates in Sharon comparing him to the Nazis: he does not have the chance to say any more, because Superman – who has been observing the conference from miles away – abruptly storms into the venue and strikes him down, knocking him unconscious and breaking his jaw in five places. Superman is seen by the stunned media to be visibly straining not to do Sharon far greater injury before he finally masters himself and leaves.

1978

A joint expedition mounted by the United States and the Soviet Union lands the first men on Mars. J’onn J’onzz has not been consulted about this undertaking and is understandably angered by the oversight, but he refrains from making any public protest.

MarchKarate Kid ends his stay in the 20th Century and time-travels home to the 30th Century.An aged and frail Lex Luthor makes one last attempt to destroy Superman, which culminates in Superman being lured into entering a subterranean bunker in Berg Aukas, Namibia, booby-trapped with a nuclear bomb, which is detonated with him standing almost on top of it: he survives with only moderate burns, which rapidly heal without trace. Luthor is subsequently revealed to be suffering from an unusual form of senile decay, which has so far left him lucid but has by now eroded his superhuman intellect down to a normal human level, robbing him of what he had long considered the core of his being and with it the will to live. With no purpose left except destroying Superman and his renowned technological creativity gone, the mundane nuclear gambit had been his last desperate throw of the dice. In a final nihilistic rant, Luthor vents a lifetime of hate against Superman before claiming that the Israelis had supplied him with the bomb and that he has more, promising to destroy a major city with the next one: the enraged Superman snaps his neck, killing him.As Superman prepares to unleash a terrible reprisal against Israel, which would inevitably leave it so completely denuded of military capability as to guarantee its rapid conquest and extirpation by its enemies, Dr. Reed Richards (Mister Fantastic) of the Fantastic Four intercepts him with the message that his analysis of the fallout from the blast reveals that the weapon was actually of Chinese manufacture: the Chinese regime has evidently still not forgiven or forgotten his defeat of their efforts to conquer Tibet almost three decades earlier. Luthor had evidently lied with his dying breath, probably out of a combination of a rudimentary sense of obligation to the Chinese and the malevolent desire to have Superman become hated throughout the world – as the destroyer of Israel and thus of the hopes of so many of the Jewish people – for actions he would in

fact only have taken in a terrible error, punishing the innocent while the guilty would have gone free.Changing course for China, Superman finds the dictator Lin Biao, the rest of the 20-member Political Bureau or Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party and the military high command gathered in the capital, Beijing, ready to order the launch of a new invasion of Tibet. He uproots the building in which they are meeting from the ground and slowly flies back to the Namib Desert carrying the building and its occupants with him. At a height of five thousand feet over the bomb crater, he drops the building. As it falls, he moves through it at speed and gathers up the low-ranking aides and guards, carrying them away to safety: the politicians and generals he leaves inside. The building impacts the ground with enough force to reduce it and those still inside it to a cloud of dust and greasy vapour.In the wake of the literal downfall of Lin Biao, the comparative moderate Deng Xiaoping is recalled from the internal exile imposed upon him after he had incurred the displeasure of the late Mao Zedong and takes charge of the formation of a new Politburo: it will be several years before this body in turn finds the courage to formally appoint members of a new military high command (and thereby publicly acknowledge that such an entity once again even exists).

JulyAt the celebrations for his tenth birthday, Franklin Richards hears his uncle Johnny Storm (the Human Torch) wonder aloud what he will be doing on his eighteenth birthday. Becoming excited about the idea, he wishes he could visit the future and find out. His subconscious mind activates a portion of his vast latent cosmic powers and projects him eight years into the future. Since he had been playfully hugging party guest Rachel Summers (already his best friend despite the five-year difference in their ages) at the time, she vanishes into the future with him as their horrified parents look on. All subsequent attempts by his father to determine what has become of the two children are unsuccessful.

The Justice League of America battle the borderline-insane and near-omnipotent cyborg Michael Korvac, who has time-traveled back from the 30th Century in a bid to change history for his own benefit. Korvac is traced and followed by the adult Legion of Super-Heroes, who ally with the JLA to oppose him.

1979

India launches a three-man crew into orbit.

February-MayCaptain America and the Batman (Matt Murdock) are pitted against a Neo-Nazi paramilitary organization known as the National Force, which is led by a figure calling himself the Grand Director and seeking to spark a race war in the United States. The Grand Director is ultimately revealed to be the former fourth Captain America, who had fallen into the clutches of Dr. Faustus and been brainwashed into becoming his puppet. When Captain America again defeats him in combat, the insane Grand Director, unable to cope with reality, activates a suicide device built into his uniform and incinerates himself.

AprilBarry Allen retires as the Flash after failing to prevent the murder of his wife Iris West-Allen by the Reverse-Flash and then inadvertently killing the Reverse-Flash while seeking to bring him to justice.A few days later Iris returns to Barry in a new body into which her time-traveling biological parents from the 25th Century have placed her life-force.Upon learning of the death of their daughter back in the 20th Century, her parents had traveled forward to the 30th Century to acquire advanced technology which allowed the transference of human life-force from one body to another. They had also obtained the body of a woman of the 30th Century who

had just died of natural causes. Traveling back to the exact moment in the 20th Century when her own body had been killed, they had succeeded in capturing her life-force and transferring it into the re-animated body of the 30th Century woman, effectively reincarnating Iris through artificial means.Wishing only to live out a quiet life together, Barry and Iris eventually decide to relocate permanently to the 30th Century, where Iris intends to take over the legal identity of the woman to whom her new body had originally belonged. They make their farewells to their families and friends in the 20th Century before leaving it, intending never to return.

MayWally West abandons the costumed champion identity of Kid Flash to become the third Flash.Former astronaut Ray Coffin becomes the first recorded individual to be empowered by the Uni-Power manifestation of the Enigma Force and transformed into Captain Universe.

SeptemberThe alien Galadorian Spaceknight Rom arrives on Earth to combat a widespread infiltration by the evil shape-shifting alien Dire Wraiths.

DecemberJennifer Walters, the cousin of Dr. Bruce Banner, dies from a rare medical condition. A blood transfusion might have saved her life, but the only possible donor who could be identified in time was her cousin, who has been trapped in the Phantom Zone for almost two decades. Walters selflessly rejects the suggestion that Superman should be asked to free Banner from the Zone in order to enable him to donate his blood, being unwilling to risk endangering the lives of countless others if the Hulk should be unleashed again merely in order to save her one life.

1979-80

September-FebruaryThe Communist revolutionary government of Afghanistan, already beset by widespread popular revolt, is convulsed by the successive depositions and executions of two leaders: Nur Mohammad Taraki is killed by the followers of Hafizullah Amin, who is in turn killed by the followers of Babrak Karmal. The Communists rapidly lose effective control of most of the countryside, but before long the tribal warlords seeking to overthrow them turn on each other. Afghanistan sinks into a quagmire of civil war: pleas for aid by the Communists to the Soviet Union are refused for fear of triggering the intervention of Superman.

1980

AugustFirst clash between Superman and Mongul, a brutal alien deposed tyrant driven from his native world and now looking for another to conquer.Captain America is offered the chance to run for the Presidency of the United States. He declines, believing that his purpose should be to represent the American dream.

SeptemberKitty Pryde joins the X-Men.

October

Shah Mohammed Reza of Iran dies: he is succeeded by his son Reza II. The country is simmering with discontent after years of tyrannical misrule. The Iranian Parliament, formerly a mere rubber-stamping body, now shakes off its subservience: it does not allow the new Shah to attempt to govern, but instead vests effective power in the former opposition leader Shahpur Bakhtiar, who becomes Prime Minister. The feared and hated SAVAK and other intelligence services are formally abolished, but most of their personnel are immediately rehired by the new services that replace them. The new regime commands little real loyalty or respect, but its opponents on both the secular left and religious right are currently too divided amongst themselves to mount an effective challenge to it.

[At this point events chronicled here begin to take place in a timeline which will subsequently be rendered a divergent timeline as a result of time travel.]

1980

October The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants assassinates Robert Kelly, a U.S. Senator with a reputation for integrity, well-liked by the public, who had campaigned for more resolute action to combat the “mutant menace”. An outpouring of grief and anger sweeps the American public, with known mutants being targeted for violence by angry mobs.

1981

Professor Piotr Phobos is killed by his former students in the Soviet Super-Soldiers after they learn that he has been planning to steal their powers through technological means and take over the Soviet Union by force. Following these events, Ursa Major, Vanguard and Darkstar sever their connections to the KGB and begin to operate independently. Although strongly tempted to do the same, their former classmate Mikula nonetheless remains so devoted to Communist ideals, and therefore effectively required by them to be sufficiently loyal to the Soviet authorities, that he does not. The deserters are subsequently able to be replaced by a new group of superhuman KGB operatives after the latter have been satisfactorily trained. The new Super-Soldiers are Perun, a powerful but idiosyncratic being claiming to be a human avatar of the Ancient Slavic god of the same name, Morningstar, Fantasia (later called Fantasma) and the android Sputnik (later called Vostok).

Greece joins the EEC.

JuneAfter finally being cured of his mental instability, Jack Monroe, the former third Bucky, becomes the second man to assume the identity of Nomad.Christopher Smith is killed in action as the Peacemaker.

AugustTed Kord retires as the Blue Beetle after becoming gradually debilitated by numerous minor injuries accumulated over the course of his career.

1982

JanuaryThe second Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell) dies of cancer.

MarchSuperman joins forces with members of the Global Guardians for the first time.First recorded clash between the forces of G.I. Joe and COBRA.

SeptemberFormation of the New Mutants.

1983

Rabid mutant-haters in the U.S. form a new political party, the Humanitarian Party, to campaign for the destruction of the “mutant menace”. Massive cash donations to it from the public soon come pouring in.

The ancient conflict between the New Gods of New Genesis and Apokolips reaches a conclusion of sorts when New Genesis is destroyed. Most of its inhabitants are aboard the orbiting city of Supertown at the time and therefore survive. Meanwhile a mass revolt by the enslaved population of Apokolips results in the overthrow of its tyrant ruler Darkseid the Destroyer, who is driven into exile. In the aftermath Supertown departs to explore the cosmos[18A].

MarchIn a speech, U.S. President Ronald Reagan calls for the United States, the Soviet Union and other spacefaring powers to work together to defend the world from alien “evil empires”. The parties involved subsequently agree to embark upon the Global Defense Initiative or “Space War Program”, a joint project to refurbish the aging existing four nuclear missile-armed Space Stations with major upgrades and to reinforce them with the addition of a support system, which will consist of an integrated network of computer-controlled space platforms armed with both energy weapons and more nuclear missiles in Earth orbit, intended to better enable the planet to defend itself from alien invasion.

AprilThe mutant dwarf genius scientist known as the Gremlin, the son of the late Gargoyle, discovers the infiltration of human society by the alien Dire Wraiths. Becoming afraid for his life after the Wraiths in the Soviet Union learn they have been discovered by him, he flees to seek the protection of the disaffected former Soviet Super-Soldiers Ursa Major, Vanguard and Darkstar. They protect him from their former comrades whilst he works to gather evidence of the infiltration in order to prove that it was the infiltrators themselves who had framed him for treason, in order to justify their sending of the current roster of the Super-Soldiers to eliminate him. Both the former and the current members then pledge to work together to root out the alien threat to the Soviet Union.

JuneThe growing paranoia in high places about and official vigilance against supposed mutant threats leads to the accidental discovery of a genuine treasonous plot against the government of the United States by the over-mighty Roxxon Oil Company and its secret private army the Nth Command, one about to reach fruition with the launch of an attempted lightning purge of all major superhumans followed by an armed takeover of the country. The U.S. military launches a massive preemptive strike of its own which rapidly wipes Roxxon from the face of the Earth. Deathlok the Demolisher, who had been captured and reprogrammed to serve Roxxon by the Nth Command, is killed in the fighting.

AugustThe alien warrior Beta Ray Bill gains the powers of Thor.

November

NATO stages a full-scale military exercise codenamed Able Archer. Fearing that it is a front for a planned all-out nuclear strike against them, the Soviet government and military come very close to launching a pre-emptive strike against the West.Jason Todd makes his first public appearance as the second Robin.

DecemberA new team of champions for hire, Infinity, Inc., is formed by a number of the heirs of veteran costumed champions. Its founding members are Fury (Lyta Hall), the daughter of Wonder Woman; the Silver Scarab and Northwind (Hector Hall and Norda Cantrell), the son and godson of the original Hawkman and Hawkwoman; Jade and Obsidian (Jennie-Lynne Hayden and Todd Rice), the long-lost twin daughter and son of the original Green Lantern; Nuklon (Al Rothstein), the godson of the original Atom; and Brainwave Jr. (Henry King Jr.), nephew of the Star-Spangled Kid. They are later joined by the second Steel (Hank Heywood III), the grandson of the original Commander Steel; the second Hourman (Rick Tyler), the son of the original Hourman; Dr. Midnight (Dr. Beth Chapel), the protégé of the original Dr. Mid-Nite; the Claw (Yolanda Montez), the god-daughter of Wildcat; and Jesse Quick (Jesse Chambers), the daughter of Johnny Quick and Liberty Belle, in addition to new champions such as Vibe (Paco Ramone); Gypsy (Cindy Reynolds); and Mr. Bones (real name unknown).

[18A] As depicted in the published graphic novel The Hunger Dogs by Jack Kirby, his last work involving the Fourth World characters. It was an outrageous act of disrespect towards him for DC to later decide that these events had never happened and, since it was initially stated that they still had following Crisis on Infinite Earths, this was something which never had any explanation until the retroactive reality-alterations of Zero Hour and then Infinite Crisis were able to be invoked to belatedly provide one. Here greater respect is shown and these events have occurred as written. And for good measure, Darkseid never regained the throne of Apokolips and remained in exile, as it was originally intended that he should do following these events.

1984

The United States and the Soviet Union construct Marsbases on the Tharsis Planitia, less than fifty kilometres apart.

The U.S. Air Force is renamed the U.S. Aerospace Force.

FebruaryAn omnipotent extradimensional entity called the Beyonder abducts a number of costumed champions and criminals to an artificial planet called Battleworld, to fight one another in order to further his understanding of the concepts of good and evil. They eventually abandon the purposeless struggle and manage to return home.

MayBuddy Blank is transformed into OMAC, the One Man Army Corps, by the orbiting Brother Eye satellite[19A].

JuneSeismic activity beneath the Cascade Mountains reactivates the central computer of the Cybertronian spacecraft that had crash-landed there and been buried by the impact four million years previously during a battle between its Autobot crew and a Decepticon boarding party. The still badly-damaged computer is unable to distinguish friend from foe and directs its reactivated maintenance and repair machines to reconstruct Autobots and Decepticons alike. In order to increase their chances of survival on an unfamiliar world, both

are given the ability to transform into the likenesses of common items of human technology. Upon awakening the two groups almost immediately resume their ancient war on Earth.

NovemberThe Humanitarian Party fields candidates for all Congressional seats in the American general election this year. They win a sufficient number of them that the U.S. effectively moves from being a two-party to a three-party state.

[19A] Under rather different circumstances to those in print, obviously.

1985

MarchThe crusade being waged by the Spaceknight Rom against the Dire Wraiths reaches its climax when the infiltrators are collectively stripped of their shape-shifting abilities and exposed to the world. All are subsequently killed or banished to another dimension. His mission accomplished, Rom leaves Earth.

AprilThe Beyonder returns to Earth, still seeking to understand the concepts of good and evil.

JuneThe Beyonder is confronted by two cosmic beings called the Monitor, who are preparing to wage an epic war to determine the fate of the entire universe. He annihilates both of them.

July Left partially disabled after becoming caught in the crossfire of the struggle between Autobot and Decepticon, a young scientist named Josie Beller uses her technology to restore her mobility and give her formidable artificial superhuman abilities. Dubbing herself Circuit Breaker, she declares war on all sentient robots.

AugustThe Beyonder meets Circuit Breaker and decides on a whim to heal her of her injuries and to grant her wish for the destruction of all Autobots and Decepticons. He annihilates not only all those on Earth but all those elsewhere in the universe as well and further erases all memory of them from the minds of all other beings in the universe, including Josie Beller herself[20A].

DecemberThe Beyonder is killed by the Molecule Man.

[20A] This was a horrible wrench to have to write, but it’s the only way I can think of to explain how the origin of Circuit Breaker could take place in the Transformers (Vol. 1) comic and the Beyonder could then meet her in the Secret Wars II comic, only for both her and the Autobots and Decepticons to never be seen or referred to again. As I see it, the events I describe here must have happened off-panel during Secret Wars II #5 and after Transformers (Vol. 1) #9. All events involving Circuit Breaker and the Autobots and Decepticons from Transformers (Vol. 1) #10 onwards must presumably take place in a parallel universe where the events I describe here never happened.

1986

April

The Chernobyl “Accident”. Nuclear technician Mikhail Arkadin is transformed by radiation exposure into the radioactive being Pozhar. Another victim of the disaster, Aleksandr Pokryshkin, suffers severe radiation damage to most of his body: he is subsequently rebuilt as the cyborg Svyatogor. Both are directed to join the Soviet Super-Soldiers. However, soon afterwards the KGB decides to split off some of its members into a second team. Volkh, Mikula, Morningstar and Svyatogor become known as the Bogatyri [Valiant Champions], while the Red Guardian, the Crimson Dynamo, the Red Star, Perun, Pozhar, Fantasia and Sputnik continue to operate as the Soviet Super-Soldiers.The Justice Society of America formally disbands for the second time.

JulyFranklin Richards and Rachel Summers materialize in this time period after travelling eight years into their own future from 1978. They are reunited with their parents, who are overwhelmed with joy at seeing them alive, but they are confused and distressed to find everyone they had known now eight years older and the world a changed place. When Franklin hesitantly suggests trying to use his powers again to send them both back to the time period they had come from, so that it will be almost as though they had never left, his father, fearing that the children will become lost in time forever, earnestly begs him never to try it and Franklin agrees. These traumatic experiences cause Franklin to develop a subconscious fear of his own powers, preventing him from developing them to his full potential and creating a mental block that will prevent him from using them for time travel at all.The white minority government of South Africa announces a nationwide state of emergency and embarks on a savage campaign to crush all opposition from the black majority.

AugustSuperman intervenes in South Africa, disarming the Police and Army and confining them to barracks before destroying vast quantities of military equipment as a punishment for the brutality of the attempted suppression of black protest by the white regime. President P. W. Botha and other leading hard-liners in the government are exiled to the Phantom Zone and the more moderate remnant are compelled to immediately release Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners, prior to holding talks to discuss the speedy dismantling of the Apartheid system.

The Soviet military creates the Rocket Red Brigade, a force of evolutionarily-accelerated soldiers utilizing state-of-the-art powered battle armor.

Distinguished mathematician and computer scientist Marvin Minsky is found guilty of being an agent of the AIM and sentenced to life imprisonment. During a subsequent unsuccessful appeal against his conviction his lawyers complain of inflammatory press coverage of his original trial, in particular such headlines as “MARVIN MINSKY – MALEVOLENT MINION OF MODOK”. Propaganda from the Humanitarian Party portrays the case as proof that all superhumans, not just mutants, pose a threat to humanity and that the traditional political parties in the U.S. are incompetent to deal with it.

Portugal and Spain join the EEC.

1987

AprilGalactus removes the barrier that had confined the Silver Surfer to Earth.

Superman learns of the systematic enslavement of superhuman mutants in the Indian Ocean island nation of Genosha. He descends on the country in wrath.

The paramilitary enforcers known as the Magistrates, who include mutant collaborators, engage him in battle and one of them, who possesses the ability to neutralize the superhuman powers of others, attempts to render Superman powerless: his ability is so hopelessly inadequate to the task that he is instantly killed by the strain. The remaining Magistrates are killed in short order. The Genoshan regular military then attempts to kill Superman with conventional weaponry: he kills thousands of them in reprisal. Before long, the government capitulates. Its leaders are publicly executed, as is the scientist known as the Genegineer, who had almost single-handedly pioneered the technology used to brainwash mutants into passive acquiescence in their enslavement.Superman soon finds himself facing a situation he has never encountered before: he is effectively a one-man army of occupation in a conquered country whose normal human population, most of whom have staunchly supported the enslavement of mutants, are almost uniformly hostile to him, yet he cannot simply leave without condemning the mutant population to renewed slavery. His dilemma is unexpectedly resolved when the Polish government offers the mutants sanctuary, declaring that it wishes to repay the moral debt it incurred when Superman played the chief part in liberating Poland from the Nazis over four decades ago. The Polish Air Force airlifts the mutants to Poland en masse. Superman systematically destroys all remaining military equipment on the island and then leaves. The Genoshan economy, deprived of the slaves who had kept its labour costs to a minimum, is left in ruins.

The EEC is renamed the European Community.

1988

JuneRobin (Jason Todd) is brutally murdered by the Harlequin.

SeptemberThe Burmese military, led by General Saw Maung, seizes power in Burma in a bid to suppress popular demands for political reform which have grown under the socialist government. When thousands of unarmed protesters are killed by troops, Superman intervenes, publicly executing Saw Maung and his leading subordinates. The military as a whole hastily hands power back to the previous government. Former Prime Minister U Nu is recalled to office to oversee the transition to democracy.

NovemberThe Humanitarian Party gains control of both Houses of Congress in the American general election. Its leader, James Martin, is elected President.An attempted invasion of Earth by the combined forces of the Dominion of Elia, the Khundish Empire, the Badoon Empire, the Thanagarian Empire, and sundry other interstellar powers is thrown back while still out in space by the combined strength of the major costumed champions and the spacefaring nations of Earth, with logistical support provided by the multinational military forces of UNIT. The increased preparedness resulting from the work carried out under the still-incomplete Global Defense Initiative (or “Space War Program”) is the chief reason for this success. Before the invaders can regroup and renew their attack, they are intimidated into withdrawing by a joint ultimatum from the more powerful Kree and Shi’ar Empires, which have both had prior involvement with Earth and are not prepared to tolerate any threat to their interests there. Major Vance Astrovik, the young commander of Space Station Jefferson, is subsequently acclaimed the leading hero of the conflict, among the ranks of the conventional military personnel who fought in it, for his inspired defense of his command against the alien forces attacking it. He is decorated and honoured by his superiors and subsequently rewarded with the command of the American Marsbase. They little suspect that he is actually a mutant.

1989

JanuaryJames Martin is inaugurated as U.S. President. His Vice President is Cameron Hodge, who is secretly the leader of a fanatically mutant-hating subversive organization known as The Right.

President Martin introduces a sweeping program of legislation known as the Mutant Control Act, designed to strip American mutants of their civil rights, which sails through the Humanitarian-controlled Congress with ease but is subsequently struck down as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. military is ordered to begin secretly building and stockpiling new mutant-hunting Sentinel robots.

The rest of the world is left stunned by the dramatic demonstration of the extent to which American society has descended into the politics of hate. The other member-states of NATO feel themselves compelled to effectively suspend the membership of the United States, since they are no longer willing to accept American military and political leadership of an organization founded to safeguard freedom when the United States is systematically attempting to deprive many of its own citizens of basic human rights. Most of the existing momentum towards reform in the Eastern Bloc is soon lost, as renewed fears that the U.S. poses a real threat to them grow apace. The “Space War Program” grinds to a halt as East-West cooperation breaks down.

The Right begin a systematic secret infiltration and takeover of the U.S. military and intelligence services.

FebruaryThe Harlequin falls to her death from a rooftop during a final struggle with the Batman (Matt Murdock).

MarchMatt Murdock retires as the Batman and is succeeded by his protégé Dwayne Taylor. As before, this replacement is kept secret from the public in order to foster the impression that the Batman does not age.

Franklin Richards, now aged thirteen, enrolls in the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters.

1990

The first fully democratic elections are held in South Africa. Nelson Mandela is elected President.

The Soviet Union rejects proposals for the phased withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern and Central Europe.

NovemberTim Drake makes his first public appearance as the third Robin.

An alien being known as the Master of the Sun transforms astronaut Peter Crichton into the Star Lord.

1991

AugustA coup by Communist hardliners deposes Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev from power and forces him into internal exile. He is replaced by Gennady Yanayev.

1992

JanuaryThe Kree-Shi’ar War.

NovemberIn the U.S. general election, the Humanitarian Party retains control of both Houses of Congress. James Martin is re-elected President.Much of Metropolis [New York City] is devastated by the rampaging monster Doomsday before Superman arrives to battle the creature. Superman finally succeeds in killing Doomsday but is himself severely injured in the process, coming very close to death. While he is still weak, he is shot dead with a kryptonite bullet by an assassin in the employ of The Right, which has seized its chance to rid itself of the greatest threat to its long-term plans. The carnage caused by Doomsday is capitalized on by the Humanitarian Party to further strengthen the public perception that all superhumans, not just mutants, are an inherent threat to humanity. Government propaganda swiftly begins to portray the late Superman as having himself been little more than a monster, negating much of the sorrow still felt by some sections of the public at his death.

1993

JanuaryJames Martin is re-inaugurated for his second term as U.S. President.

China invades and occupies Tibet.

The European Community is renamed the European Union or EU.

MayThe Batman (Dwayne Taylor) wages an epic struggle against the brutal criminal mastermind Bane, which reaches a crescendo when Bane organizes a mass breakout of criminally insane inmates from Arkham Asylum, forcing the Batman to exhaust himself pursuing and recapturing them all as they rampage through Gotham City [New York City]. Meanwhile Bane ambushes and captures his aide Silhouette. Finally Bane confronts the Batman and demands that he remove his body armor and face him in unarmed combat, threatening to kill Silhouette if the Batman refuses. Forced to accept the challenge, in his current weakened condition the Batman is no match for Bane, and he is soon defeated. Meanwhile, unnoticed, Silhouette manages to free herself from her bonds and make her way over to the discarded armor. As the triumphant Bane is about to kill the vanquished Batman, Silhouette retrieves a machine pistol concealed within the armor and uses it to shoot Bane dead.The rampage of the Arkham inmates is soon capitalized upon by the U.S. government to whip up more public hostility to all superhumans.

The Mutant Control Act is again passed by Congress after a series of Constitutional amendments.

The Humanitarian-controlled U.S. government and the Right-controlled military order the mass arrest, internment without trial and compulsory sterilization of all superhumans in the United States. To crush any who attempt to resist, the secretly-stockpiled Sentinel robots are now activated. The Sentinels quickly conclude that they can only carry out their programming at maximum efficiency if

they take over the direction of the roundup effort themselves, which in turn requires taking control of the entire United States. Widespread but disorganized efforts by elements of the U.S. military to oppose the Sentinel takeover are mercilessly crushed.

1993-95

Most superhuman champions and criminals and most other superhumans in the United States are either killed or interned in brutal conditions in concentration camps.

1994

AprilThe actor who has impersonated disgraced former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon for the last twenty years dies. He is subsequently buried under his name, taking the secret to his grave.

Rachel Summers, now aged thirteen, enrolls in the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters.

1995

The headquarters of the X-Men at the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters is destroyed by the U.S. military. Rachel Summers is the only survivor of those who were present at the time. She is imprisoned and subjected to torture and brainwashing which turns her into the first Hound, a mutant with psionic powers mentally reprogramd to use them to hunt down fellow mutants at the command of human handlers. Many more mutants will subsequently also be subjected to this process.

1995-98

The Sentinels, the U.S. military and the Hounds hunt down and kill or capture virtually all superhumans in the United States. They invade and occupy Canada, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean islands in order to extend the purge there. The fall of Canada drives the European member states of NATO to form an alliance with the Bucharest Pact against the Sentinel threat.

Rachel Summers is forced to track down and either kill or capture many mutants, among them people she had known and even loved, including Franklin Richards.

1998

Rachel Summers manages to rebel against her mental programming and refuse to continue to function as a Hound. When all efforts to reprogram her again fail, she is interned in a concentration camp and reunited with the few surviving members of the X-Men, including Franklin Richards.

The last of the X-Men break out of their concentration camp. As her friends give their lives to distract the Sentinels, Kate Pryde draws upon the psionic powers of Rachel Summers to enable her to exchange her consciousness with that of her younger counterpart Kitty Pryde eighteen years in the past. Kate warns the X-Men of that time period of the imminent assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, enabling them to prevent it from occurring and thereby changing history. As a result a new timeline is created which exists

alongside the old one. The consciousness of Kate then exchanges places with the consciousness of Kitty again and returns to her own time period. She awakes to find that the world she knows still exists and fears that her efforts and the sacrifice of her friends have all been in vain.Kate, Franklin and Rachel make their way to a Sentinel manufacturing facility where the prototype of a new and virtually invincible model of Sentinel, the Nimrod, has just been completed. Infiltrating the facility in disguise, they set out to destroy it by sabotaging its machinery and precipitating a series of cataclysmic explosions. With only moments left before the facility will be destroyed, Kate speaks a code-word that triggers a post-hypnotic command she had previously given the unsuspecting Franklin. He finds himself compelled to focus his cosmic powers on attempting to project himself and Rachel back through time physically, overriding his mental block against doing so, in order to try again to change history. Franklin and Rachel vanish from this time period and timeline, unaware that the prototype Nimrod is activating itself and has observed their departure. The Nimrod kills Kate and then decides that it should attempt to follow Franklin and Rachel back through time and eliminate them. It likewise vanishes from this time period and timeline, moments before the facility is destroyed.

The Sentinels attempt to invade South America, Asia and Europe. An all-out nuclear strike by China, the Soviet Union, France and Great Britain devastates North America, wiping out the Sentinels along with almost all human, animal and plant life on the entire continent. Since the Sentinels have no emotions, they have no desire to destroy their destroyers in the name of vengeance and the American nuclear arsenal is not fired in retaliation. However, the entire Northern Hemisphere is rapidly blanketed by radioactive fallout and plunged into nuclear winter. Almost the only living things left in North America are horrifyingly warped and powerful superhuman mutates created by radiation bombardment, most of whom are soon driven insane by their terrible experiences in the days and months that follow. Meanwhile, huge swathes of the populations of Asia and Europe rapidly die from radiation poisoning or from starvation as crops fail, and civilization rapidly begins to collapse.

Subsequent events in this timeline are mercifully unchronicled.

[At this point events chronicled here begin to take place in the timeline created by Kate Pryde when she projected her consciousness back in time to try to change history.]

1980

October The consciousness of Kitty Pryde is exchanged with that of her older counterpart Kate Pryde from eighteen years in the future. Kate warns the X-Men of the imminent assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, enabling them to prevent it from occurring and thereby changing history. The consciousness of Kate then exchanges places with the consciousness of Kitty again and returns to her own time. Kitty awakes with no memory of what has occurred.

1981

Professor Piotr Phobos is killed by his former students in the Soviet Super-Soldiers after they learn that he has been planning to steal their powers through technological means and take over the Soviet Union by force. Following these events, Ursa Major, Vanguard and Darkstar sever their connections to the KGB and begin to operate independently. Although strongly tempted to do the same,

their former classmate Mikula nonetheless remains so devoted to Communist ideals, and therefore effectively required by them to be sufficiently loyal to the Soviet authorities, that he does not. The deserters are subsequently able to be replaced by a new group of superhuman KGB operatives after the latter have been satisfactorily trained. The new Super-Soldiers are Perun, a powerful but idiosyncratic being claiming to be a human avatar of the Ancient Slavic god of the same name, Morningstar, Fantasia (later called Fantasma) and the android Sputnik (later called Vostok).

Greece joins the EEC.

JuneAfter finally being cured of his mental instability, Jack Monroe, the former third Bucky, becomes the second man to assume the identity of Nomad.Christopher Smith is killed in action as the Peacemaker.

AugustTed Kord retires as the Blue Beetle after becoming gradually debilitated by numerous minor injuries accumulated over the course of his career.

1982

JanuaryThe second Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell) dies of cancer.

MarchSuperman joins forces with members of the Global Guardians for the first time.First recorded clash between the forces of G.I. Joe and COBRA.

SeptemberFormation of the New Mutants.

1983

The ancient conflict between the New Gods of New Genesis and Apokolips reaches a conclusion of sorts when New Genesis is destroyed. Most of its inhabitants are aboard the orbiting city of Supertown at the time and therefore survive. Meanwhile a mass revolt by the enslaved population of Apokolips results in the overthrow of its tyrant ruler Darkseid the Destroyer, who is driven into exile. In the aftermath Supertown departs to explore the cosmos[18B].

MarchIn a speech, U.S. President Ronald Reagan calls for the United States, the Soviet Union and other spacefaring powers to work together to defend the world from alien “evil empires”. The parties involved subsequently agree to embark upon the Global Defense Initiative or “Space War Program”, a joint project to refurbish the aging existing four nuclear missile-armed Space Stations with major upgrades and to reinforce them with the addition of a support system, which will consist of an integrated network of computer-controlled space platforms armed with both energy weapons and more nuclear missiles in Earth orbit, intended to better enable the planet to defend itself from alien invasion.

AprilThe mutant dwarf genius scientist known as the Gremlin, the son of the late Gargoyle, discovers the infiltration of human society by the alien Dire Wraiths. Becoming afraid for his life after the Wraiths in the Soviet Union learn they have been discovered by him, he flees to seek the protection of the disaffected former Soviet Super-Soldiers Ursa Major, Vanguard and Darkstar. They protect him

from their former comrades whilst he works to gather evidence of the infiltration in order to prove that it was the infiltrators themselves who had framed him for treason, in order to justify their sending of the current roster of the Super-Soldiers to eliminate him. Both the former and the current members then pledge to work together to root out the alien threat to the Soviet Union.

JulyCaptain America learns of a treasonous plot against the government of the United States by the over-mighty Roxxon Oil Company and its secret private army the Nth Command, one about to reach fruition with the launch of an attempted lightning purge of all major superhumans followed by an armed takeover of the country. A key element in the plan is to be Deathlok the Demolisher, who has been captured and reprogrammed to serve Roxxon by the Nth Command. Deathlok is freed from the control of Roxxon and aids Cap in sabotaging much of the plan, before leaving the 1983 of the mainstream timeline to time-travel home to the 1991 of his divergent timeline. Captain America accompanies Deathlok there and sees for himself the post-holocaust miseries of its surviving inhabitants, which he learns were largely caused when the attempted takeover of the United States by Roxxon met with considerable initial success in that timeline only to later spiral out of control and trigger the Third World War. After helping Deathlok and his allies defeat the genocidal plans of the mad cyborg Hellinger, Cap time-travels home and finishes the task of thwarting the Roxxon plan completely in this timeline.

AugustThe alien warrior Beta Ray Bill gains the powers of Thor.

NovemberNATO stages a full-scale military exercise codenamed Able Archer. Fearing that it is a front for a planned all-out nuclear strike against them, the Soviet government and military come very close to launching a pre-emptive strike against the West.Jason Todd makes his first public appearance as the second Robin.

DecemberInfinity, Inc., a new team of champions for hire, is formed by a number of the heirs of veteran costumed champions. Its founding members are Fury (Lyta Hall), the daughter of Wonder Woman; the Silver Scarab and Northwind (Hector Hall and Norda Cantrell), the son and godson of the original Hawkman and Hawkwoman; Jade and Obsidian (Jennie-Lynne Hayden and Todd Rice), the long-lost and long-separated twin daughter and son of the original Green Lantern; Nuklon (Al Rothstein), the godson of the original Atom and also the godson of the second Firebrand; and Brainwave Jr. (Henry King Jr.), nephew of the Star-Spangled Kid. They are later joined by the second Steel (Hank Heywood III), the grandson of the original Commander Steel; the second Hourman (Rick Tyler), the son of the original Hourman; Dr. Midnight (Dr. Beth Chapel), the protégé of the original Dr. Mid-Nite; the Claw (Yolanda Montez), the goddaughter of Wildcat; and Jesse Quick (Jesse Chambers), the daughter of Johnny Quick and Liberty Belle, in addition to new costumed champions such as Vibe (Paco Ramone); Gypsy (Cindy Reynolds); and Mr. Bones (real name unknown).

[18B] As depicted in the published graphic novel The Hunger Dogs by Jack Kirby, his last work involving the Fourth World characters. It was an outrageous act of disrespect towards him for DC to later decide that these events had never happened and, since it was initially stated that they still had following Crisis on Infinite Earths, this was something which never had any explanation until the retroactive reality-alterations of Zero Hour and then Infinite Crisis were able to be invoked to belatedly provide one. Here greater respect is shown and these events occurred as written. And for good measure, Darkseid never regained the

throne of Apokolips and remained in exile, as it was originally intended that he should do following these events.

1984

The United States and the Soviet Union construct Marsbases on the Tharsis Planitia, less than fifty kilometres apart.

The U.S. Air Force is renamed the U.S. Aerospace Force.

FebruaryAn omnipotent extradimensional entity called the Beyonder abducts a number of costumed champions and criminals to an artificial planet called Battleworld, to fight one another in order to further his understanding of the concepts of good and evil. They eventually abandon the purposeless struggle and manage to return home.

MayBuddy Blank is transformed into OMAC, the One Man Army Corps, by the orbiting Brother Eye satellite[19B].Franklin Richards and Rachel Summers materialize in this timeline and time period after travelling across timelines and fourteen years into their own past. His post-hypnotic compulsion to use his cosmic powers to project himself and Rachel back through time had not been able to overcome his mental block against using them for time travel at all fully enough to enable Franklin to project them the full eighteen years into their own past he had been instructed to. They learn that the actions of Kate Pryde had after all succeeded in changing history, creating the timeline in which they now find themselves. They are once again reunited with their parents, who have not seen them since they vanished in 1978 and are dumbfounded and horrified to learn of the terrible experiences they have undergone during the twelve years they lived in the nightmare future which the actions of Kate Pryde have now rendered a divergent future.

JuneSeismic activity beneath the Cascade Mountains reactivates the central computer of the Cybertronian spacecraft that had crash-landed there and been buried by the impact four million years previously during a battle between its Autobot crew and a Decepticon boarding party. The still badly-damaged computer is unable to distinguish friend from foe and directs its reactivated maintenance and repair machines to reconstruct Autobots and Decepticons alike. In order to increase their chances of survival on an unfamiliar world, both are given the ability to transform into the likenesses of common items of human technology. Upon awakening the two groups almost immediately resume their ancient war on Earth.

DecemberThe prototype Nimrod Sentinel materializes in this timeline and time period.

[19B] Under rather different circumstances to those in print, obviously.

1985

MarchThe crusade being waged by the Spaceknight Rom against the Dire Wraiths reaches its climax when the infiltrators are collectively stripped of their shape-shifting abilities and exposed to the world. All are subsequently killed or banished to another dimension. His mission accomplished, Rom leaves Earth.

AprilThe Beyonder returns to Earth, still seeking to understand the concepts of good and evil.

JuneThe Beyonder is confronted by two cosmic beings called the Monitor, who are preparing to wage an epic war to determine the fate of the entire universe. He annihilates both of them.

July Left partially disabled after becoming caught in the crossfire of the struggle between Autobot and Decepticon, a young scientist named Josie Beller uses her technology to restore her mobility and give her formidable artificial superhuman abilities. Dubbing herself Circuit Breaker, she declares war on all sentient robots.

AugustThe Beyonder meets Circuit Breaker and decides on a whim to heal her of her injuries and to grant her wish for the destruction of all Autobots and Decepticons. He annihilates not only all those on Earth but all those elsewhere in the universe as well and further erases all memory of them from the minds of all other beings in the universe, including Josie Beller herself[20B].

NovemberTime traveler Michael Jon Carter makes his first public appearance as the vainglorious costumed champion Booster Gold.

DecemberThe Beyonder is killed by the Molecule Man.

[20B] This was a horrible wrench to have to write, but it’s the only way I can think of to explain how the origin of Circuit Breaker could take place in the Transformers (Vol. 1) comic and the Beyonder could then meet her in the Secret Wars II comic, only for both her and the Autobots and Decepticons to never be seen or referred to again. As I see it, the events I describe here must have happened off-panel during Secret Wars II #5 and after Transformers (Vol. 1) #9. All events involving Circuit Breaker and the Autobots and Decepticons from Transformers (Vol. 1) #10 onwards must presumably take place in a parallel universe where the events I describe here never happened.

1986

AprilThe Chernobyl “Accident”. Nuclear technician Mikhail Arkadin is transformed by radiation exposure into the radioactive being Pozhar. Another victim of the disaster, Aleksandr Pokryshkin, suffers severe radiation damage to most of his body: he is subsequently rebuilt as the cyborg Svyatogor. Both are directed to join the Soviet Super-Soldiers. However, soon afterwards the KGB decides to split off some of its members into a second team. Volkh, Mikula, Morningstar and Svyatogor become known as the Bogatyri [Valiant Champions], while the Red Guardian, the Crimson Dynamo, the Red Star, Perun, Pozhar, Fantasia and Sputnik continue to operate as the Soviet Super-Soldiers.The Justice Society of America formally disbands for the second time.

JulyThe white minority government of South Africa announces a nationwide state of emergency and embarks on a savage campaign to crush all opposition from the black majority.

August

Superman intervenes in South Africa, disarming the Police and Army and confining them to barracks before destroying vast quantities of military equipment as a punishment for the brutality of the attempted suppression of black protest by the white regime. President P. W. Botha and other leading hard-liners in the government are exiled to the Phantom Zone and the more moderate remnant are compelled to immediately release Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners, prior to holding talks to discuss the speedy dismantling of the Apartheid system.

The Soviet military creates the Rocket Red Brigade, a force of evolutionarily-accelerated soldiers utilizing powered battle armor.

Distinguished mathematician and computer scientist Marvin Minsky is found guilty of being an agent of the AIM and sentenced to life imprisonment. During a subsequent unsuccessful appeal against his conviction his lawyers complain of inflammatory press coverage of his original trial, in particular such headlines as “MARVIN MINSKY – MALEVOLENT MINION OF MODOK”.

Portugal and Spain join the EEC.

1987

AprilGalactus removes the barrier that had confined the Silver Surfer to Earth.

Superman learns of the systematic enslavement of superhuman mutants in the Indian Ocean island nation of Genosha. He descends on the country in wrath. The paramilitary enforcers known as the Magistrates, who include mutant collaborators, engage him in battle and one of them, who possesses the ability to neutralize the superhuman powers of others, attempts to render Superman powerless: his ability is so hopelessly inadequate to the task that he is instantly killed by the strain. The remaining Magistrates are killed in short order. The Genoshan regular military then attempts to kill Superman with conventional weaponry: he kills thousands of them in reprisal. Before long, the government capitulates. Its leaders are publicly executed, as is the scientist known as the Genegineer, who had almost single-handedly pioneered the technology used to brainwash mutants into passive acquiescence in their enslavement.Superman soon finds himself facing a situation he has never encountered before: he is effectively a one-man army of occupation in a conquered country whose normal human population, most of whom have staunchly supported the enslavement of mutants, are almost uniformly hostile to him, yet he cannot simply leave without condemning the mutant population to renewed slavery. His dilemma is unexpectedly resolved when the Polish government offers the mutants sanctuary, declaring that it wishes to repay the moral debt it incurred when Superman played the chief part in liberating Poland from the Nazis over four decades ago. The Polish Air Force airlifts the mutants to Poland en masse. Superman systematically destroys all remaining military equipment on the island and then leaves. The Genoshan economy, deprived of the slaves who had kept its labour costs to a minimum, is left in ruins.

The Global Guardians successfully counter a series of political machinations by their enemy Dr. Klaus Cornelius aimed at bringing about the withdrawal of their UN sponsorship.

The EEC is renamed the European Community.

1988

JuneRobin (Jason Todd) is brutally murdered by the Harlequin.

SeptemberThe Burmese military, led by General Saw Maung, seizes power in Burma in a bid to suppress popular demands for political reform which have grown under the socialist government. When thousands of unarmed protesters are killed by troops, Superman intervenes, publicly executing Saw Maung and his leading subordinates. The military as a whole hastily hands power back to the previous government. Former Prime Minister U Nu is recalled to office to oversee the transition to democracy.

NovemberAn attempted invasion of Earth by the combined forces of the Dominion of Elia, the Khundish Empire, the Badoon Empire, the Thanagarian Empire, and sundry other interstellar powers is thrown back while still out in space by the combined strength of the major costumed champions and the spacefaring nations of Earth, with logistical support provided by the multinational military forces of UNIT. The increased preparedness resulting from the work carried out under the still-incomplete Global Defense Initiative (or “Space War Program”) is the chief reason for this success. Before the invaders can regroup and renew their attack, they are intimidated into withdrawing by a joint ultimatum from the more powerful Kree and Shi’ar Empires, which have both had prior involvement with Earth and are not prepared to tolerate any threat to their interests there. Major Vance Astrovik, the young commander of Space Station Jefferson, is subsequently acclaimed the leading hero of the conflict, among the ranks of the conventional military personnel who fought in it, for his inspired defense of his command against the alien forces attacking it. He is decorated and honoured by his superiors and subsequently rewarded with the command of the American Marsbase.

1989

FebruaryThe Harlequin falls to her death from a rooftop during a final struggle with the Batman (Matt Murdock).

MarchMatt Murdock retires as the Batman and is succeeded in the role by his protégé Dwayne Taylor. As before, this replacement is kept secret from the public in order to foster the impression that the Batman does not age.

NovemberDismantling of the Berlin Wall.

1990

The first fully democratic elections are held in South Africa. Nelson Mandela is elected President.

The Soviet Union agrees to the phased withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern and Central Europe.

OctoberThe German Democratic Republic is dissolved and its territory absorbed by the Federal Republic of Germany: the division of Germany into East and West comes to an end.

NovemberTim Drake makes his first public appearance as the third Robin.

An alien being known as the Master of the Sun transforms astronaut Peter Crichton into the Star Lord.

1991

Wally West is unexpectedly reunited with his uncle Barry Allen and his beloved aunt Iris West-Allen, who have time-traveled back to the 20th Century from the 30th Century to introduce their family to him 12 years after he last saw them but 52 years after they last saw him. He is introduced first to their children Don Allen and Dawn Allen Ognats (formerly known as the Tornado Twins), then to their daughter-in-law Carmen Johnson Allen and their son-in-law Jeven Ognats, then finally to their grandson Bart Allen and their granddaughter Jenni Ognats (XS of the adult Legion of Super-Heroes). After a joyful several weeks of getting to know the extended family from the future that he had never known he had, Wally is asked by Barry and Iris to take the 14 year-old Bart on as his sidekick and student and train him up to eventually replace him as the Flash when he retires. Having no obvious candidate of his own for this role, he agrees. The rest of the Allen clan then bid him farewell and return to the 30th Century, while Bart remains in the 20th Century to become the new Kid Flash and begin his training.

JuneThe disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia begins with the secession of the component republics of Slovenia and Croatia, against the wishes of the ethnic Serb minority in Croatia. The Serb-dominated Yugoslav People’s Army attempts to suppress their bid for independence by force.Superman intervenes to rapidly disarm all sides in the conflict, forcing the Yugoslav central government to tacitly recognize the independence of Slovenia and Croatia. International recognition follows.

AugustThe decades-long grip of the Communist Party on power in the Soviet Union is finally broken after crowds and rank-and-file troops take to the streets to resist an attempted coup by Communist hardliners to depose reformist Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in favour of the more conservative Gennady Yanayev. The coup fails and the manifest complicity in it of many senior Communists leads to the Party rapidly being not only removed from power but actually outlawed. A key moment in the crisis comes when the hard-line Communist Bogatyri lend their support to the coup while the Soviet Super-Soldiers work to resist it, aided by a mysterious individual dressed in a stylized skeleton costume. The two teams are drawn into battle with each other and the Super-Soldiers prevail through the force of their greater numbers, subduing the Bogatyri and placing them in restraints until the crisis is finally resolved.

DecemberThe republic of Macedonia secedes from Yugoslavia, without any real effort at obstruction from the central government. International recognition soon follows.

1991-92

December-JanuaryThe Soviet Union is dissolved and replaced by fifteen separate sovereign states, of which the most prominent is the Russian Federation. Space Station Lenin is renamed Space Station Tsiolkovsky.The Soviet Super-Soldiers are renamed the Winter Guard while the Bogatyri are disbanded.

Historians will later conclude that the enormous strain placed on the inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union by the cost of its participation in the “Space War Program” was a key factor in bringing about its collapse. A few will even speculate that Ronald Reagan had drawn the Soviets into committing themselves to the program with the deliberate intention of bringing about such an outcome.

1992

JanuaryThe Kree-Shi’ar War.

February-AprilThe ethnic Bosniaks (commonly referred to as Muslims) and ethnic Croats of the Yugoslav component republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina vote to secede, a decision opposed by the ethnic Serbs of the republic. Inter-ethnic violence breaks out, but it is quickly suppressed by the intervention of Superman. Leaders of the ethnic Serbs declare their intention to secede from Bosnia-Herzegovina: Superman elects to compel the newly-formed government of the republic to begin negotiations with them. Leaders of the ethnic Croats issue a similar declaration: the negotiations are expanded to include them. When six months pass with no agreement over the division of territory between the three groups, Superman compels them to accept a plan devised by UN mediators. Bosnia-Herzegovina is subsequently partitioned into three states: the ethnic Serb state promptly begins negotiations that will soon result in union with Serbia, while the ethnic Croat state begins similar negotiations that culminate in its absorption by Croatia. The barely-viable ethnic Bosniak state is left heavily dependent on international aid.

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ceases to exist after the last remaining component republics, Serbia and Montenegro, agree to dissolve it.

Poland and Finland reach new agreements with Russia in which the three countries simply pledge to settle disputes between them peacefully.

NovemberMuch of Metropolis [New York City] is devastated by the rampaging monster Doomsday before Superman arrives to battle the creature. Superman finally succeeds in killing Doomsday but is himself severely injured in the process, coming very close to death. However, his regenerative abilities soon heal the damage without trace.

Birth of an unnamed daughter to Buddy Blank and his unnamed wife.

1993

Superman frees P. W. Botha and other former leaders of the Apartheid regime in South Africa from the Phantom Zone after President Nelson Mandela grants them a pardon for their crimes.

The European Community is renamed the European Union or EU.

MayThe Batman (Dwayne Taylor) wages an epic struggle against the brutal criminal mastermind Bane, which reaches a crescendo when Bane organizes a mass breakout of criminally insane inmates from Arkham Asylum, forcing the Batman to exhaust himself pursuing and recapturing them all as they rampage through Gotham City [New York City]. Meanwhile Bane ambushes and captures his aide Silhouette. Finally Bane confronts the Batman and demands that he remove his body armor and face him in unarmed combat, threatening to kill Silhouette if the

Batman refuses. Forced to accept the challenge, in his current weakened condition the Batman is no match for Bane, and he is soon defeated. Meanwhile, unnoticed, Silhouette manages to free herself from her bonds and make her way over to the discarded armor. As the triumphant Bane is about to kill the vanquished Batman, Silhouette retrieves a machine pistol concealed within the armor and uses it to shoot Bane dead.

1994

AprilThe actor who has impersonated disgraced former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon for the last twenty years dies. He is subsequently buried under his name, taking the secret to his grave.

AugustThe now-adult Tim Drake, considering himself to have graduated from his role as the second Robin, adopts the adult costumed vigilante identity of the second Nightwing.

1995

The ethnic Albanian majority population of the Serbian province of Kosovo rise in rebellion when their demands for autonomy are refused: the Serbian army moves to suppress them and receives the staunch support of the ethnic Serb minority in the province. Superman intervenes to force a halt to the conflict and compel all sides to accept UN mediation.

Sweden, Finland, Poland and Austria join the EU.

1998

After all attempts at a negotiated settlement between the Serbian government and the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo come to nothing, UN mediators separate a part of the province populated mainly by Serbs from the rest. Most of Kosovo is then awarded independence while the remnant is retained by Serbia, which stubbornly refuses to formally recognize its loss of sovereignty. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who had previously been President of Yugoslavia and failed to prevent its disintegration, is finished politically after presiding over this last and most bitter failure of the cause of Serb hegemony: within months he is forced from power and driven into exile in Russia.

1999

AprilWally West retires as the third Flash.

MayBart Allen abandons the costumed champion identity of the second Kid Flash to become the fourth Flash.

DecemberHalf-maddened by his exponentially-increasing hunger for life-energy, Galactus attempts to consume Chandilar, the Throneworld of the Shi’ar Empire. He is repelled by the combined efforts of the Shi’ar Imperial Guard[20], the leading superhuman champions of Earth and other worlds and the Silver Surfer. Galactus is finally defeated once and for all when Reed Richards manages to turn his own technology against him. His containment armour is destroyed and

the immense energies comprising him erupt outward uncontrollably, irrevocably dispersing his physical form and transforming him into a star: this becomes a second Sun for the Chandilar System[21]. A reign of terror that has lasted for billions of years at last comes to an end.

[20] Doesn’t using them here conflict with my rule that no homage/ripoff clone characters can exist here? Well, that rule means that the original members of the Imperial Guard who were based on members of the Legion of Super-Heroes can’t exist here, but the later additions who weren’t and the team/organization as a whole can and do.

[21] As simple as that? No creation of and subsequent rampage by Abraxas as the direct consequences? No restoration of Galactus as the necessary price of destroying Abraxas? Galactus just stays dead and that’s that!? Yes! I’ve always despised the rationale that Galactus has a mysterious cosmic purpose that justifies him committing mass murder on an unimaginable scale to sustain his own existence, so that heroes can never try to destroy him for good in the cause of justice for his countless victims. This is just an excuse for Marvel to never have to kill off a cash cow – even if their fans might dearly love to read such a story – and I’m having none of it here. Galactus is a cosmic parasite and selfishness incarnate, pure and simple, and can therefore be destroyed without any harm being done to the Universe. I also liked the idea in the Earth X Trilogy that the star that was once Galactus might one day empower the Sword in the Star.

PART 2: THE 21st-31st CENTURIES

2003

Twenty years after the overthrow of its tyrant ruler Darkseid the Destroyer, the planet Apokolips is engulfed by a cataclysm unleashed when rival factions struggling to fill the power vacuum left by his absence turn horrifyingly powerful weapons of mass destruction upon each other. Apokolips is torn from its orbit and hurled through interdimensional barriers from its native Fourth World Dimension into the Earth Dimension, on a trajectory that will bring it into this quadrant of the Galaxy the best part of a thousand years from now. All life on the planet perishes during the cataclysm or in fairly short order following it. Returning to Apokolips too late to try to end the conflict which went on to trigger the cataclysm by reconquering the planet himself, the emotionally-exhausted Darkseid eventually chooses to place himself in suspended animation amidst the ruins, awaiting a time when he can try once more to conquer the Universe. He will sleep for nearly a thousand years before finally being awakened[1].

[21] This is a fairly obvious set-up for the Great Darkness Saga.

2004

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Cyprus and Malta join the EU.

2005

The extradimensional alien mechanoid freelance peacekeeping agent (or extradimensional alien robot bounty hunter) known as Death’s Head is displaced under unrevealed circumstances into a divergent timeline[22]. He will spend the next three years there before returning to this timeline and travelling into the distant future.

[22] The intended implication here is that this refers to a divergent timeline where the Beyonder never erased the Transformers from reality.

2007

Captain America is assassinated by agents of the Red Skull. Prompted by grief at his death, a military intelligence agent stationed at the secret facility where the long-forgotten Isaiah Bradley is held in suspended animation revives and frees him in a bid to provide the world with a new Captain America. Bradley is initially disorientated and traumatized at finding himself in a world six decades removed from the one he knew and wanders about in a confused state. He is tracked down and captured by SHIELD. Initially incredulous at his claims about his origins, SHIELD nonetheless investigates and finally uncovers the grim truth about Operation Rebirth. They subsequently use their advanced technology to familiarize Bradley with the present day by uploading a capsule history of the last sixty years directly into his brain. Although understandably bitter at his own brutal treatment by his country, Bradley eventually decides to honour the memory of Steve Rogers – and reclaim something of the place in history he was unjustly denied – by indeed becoming the “new” Captain America.

Romania and Bulgaria join the EU.

2010

The present day.

[2012

Great Disaster Divergent Timeline: The Earth is ravaged by the Great Disaster, a catastrophe whose precise nature is unclear but which very nearly results in the end of everything. Henceforth, time will be reckoned as A.D. standing not for Anno Domini but for After Disaster. Great earthquakes, pandemic viruses and much else result in a sterile, poisoned Earth and would have completely destroyed the planet if not for the power of Superman. Later myths will state that Superman saved the world from total destruction, but that the effort cost him his own life. His legend will live on in this world as the legend of the Great One.

Some humans attempt to take refuge in subterranean bunkers while waiting for the lethal radiation levels on the surface to gradually decrease, but they almost all perish before long from various causes nonetheless. The humans remaining on the surface soon become savage and primitive like animals. Some animals in the region of New York City, on the other hand, are exposed to an experimental mutagenic chemical created during the time of the catastrophe with the goal of heightening consciousness and increasing intelligence. All later animals descended from those in that area which were exposed to the chemical will possess an intelligence increased to the point of sentience and will go on to inherit the Earth. Humans find themselves reduced to the level of animals while animals will begin to rule the world in ways repeating many of the patterns of ancient human history.]

2012

Superman barely manages to prevent the occurrence of a potentially catastrophic event whose precise nature is unclear but which it was feared could have resulted in the end of everything. The realization of their close brush with

catastrophe begins to have a powerful motivating effect upon world statesmen in their ongoing efforts to bring about lasting peace and justice in the world.

2015

Following many years of exhaustive discussions and painstaking negotiations, the United Nations is finally restructured into a federal world government. The well-respected UN Intelligence Taskforce or UNIT is renamed the UN Militia or UNM and embarks upon a programme of expansion that will remake it into a full-fledged UN standing military. Like any conventional national standing military, this consists of three distinct services: the UNM Army or UNMA, the UNM Navy or UNMN and the UNM Aerospace Force or UNMAF. The latter is charged with responsibility for the UN space program.

An international colony is founded on Mars under UN sponsorship, with long-term plans which include the eventual terraforming of the planet to resemble Earth. After much soul-searching, J’onn J’onzz has given his consent to these plans, preferring the thought of eventually seeing his homeworld become verdant and inhabited once again to the thought of it forever remaining a dead wasteland as a monument to his own vanished people.

First recorded mercenary activities of Arno Stark as Iron Man.

[2017

Great Disaster Divergent Timeline: Birth of a son to the unnamed daughter and son-in-law of Buddy Blank.]

2017

Birth of a son to the unnamed daughter and son-in-law of Buddy Blank.

2020

Death’s Head returns to this time period from the distant future[23]. He subsequently pays a return visit to his native dimension and while there battles and kills his estranged creator Ty Retjuka Lupex.

[23] I’m deliberately being ambiguous here as to precisely which future time period he visited, since I want to duck the issue of whether or not it was the 8162 time period, the era of Dragon’s Claws. This was first depicted as a part of (deep breath!) the Doctor Who Magazine Comic Strip Sub-Universe of the Doctor Who Universe. When Death’s Head later visited it as well in the pages of Dragon’s Claws and his own title before embarking on a series of jumps through time that ended with him becoming stranded in the 2020 time period, that seems to have established the 8162 time period as also being a part of the same timeline as the 2020 time period and therefore a part of (deep breath!) the Marvel UK Sub-Universe of the Marvel Universe – in the minds of Marvel UK writers and editors anyway. But Doctor Who Magazine and its copyright in its Comic Strip were later sold to the publisher Panini while Marvel UK still retained copyright in Dragon’s Claws and Death’s Head, so now two different publishers have the right to revisit the 8162 time period whenever they wish and (potentially) to publish stories that will totally contradict each other. Complicating matters even further, BBC Books has now got into the act, with the permission of Panini, by visiting the 8162 time period themselves in the Doctor Who Original Novels they publish. All of this makes having anything to do with any version of the 8162 time period a nightmare of complexity which I want to avoid. Also, here the so-called Death’s Head II (the Minion Construct created by the AIM) never existed to kill and

replace the real Death’s Head, for the simple reason that I personally hated that development and I refuse to mirror any of it here.

2029

Orphaned under unrevealed circumstances, the 12 year-old grandson of Buddy Blank is adopted by General Horatio Tomorrow of the UNMAF as Thomas “Tommy” Tomorrow.

[2034

Great Disaster Divergent Timeline: Orphaned under unrevealed circumstances, the 17 year-old grandson of Buddy Blank becomes Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth, whose recorded adventures begin around this time.]

2038

A century after he began his career as a costumed champion, Superman dismantles the Fortress of Solitude and leaves Earth to explore the Galaxy.

2039

At the age of 22, Tommy Tomorrow graduates with honours from the UNM Aerospace Force Academy and the UNMAF Astronaut Training Program. Commissioned in the UNMAF (which by this time has come to be nicknamed “the Planeteers”) as a Captain, he is chosen to be one of the pilots for the first UN manned expedition to Neptune.

2046

First recorded adventure of Tommy Tomorrow as a newly-promoted Colonel in the UNMAF (or “the Planeteers”), accompanied by his aide Captain Brent Wood.

2058

Rick Starr makes his first public appearance as the Space Ranger, accompanied by his alien sidekick Cryll.

2063

Thomas Tomorrow is promoted to General and becomes the head of the UNMAF (or “the Planeteers”).

2065

“Ace” Arn makes his first public appearance as Ultra the Multi-Alien.

2070

First recorded case of bounty hunter “Manhunter” Starker and his robot sidekick Arky.

2079

First recorded case of private investigator “Star” Hawkins and his robot secretary Ilda.

2083

General Thomas Tomorrow retires as head of the UNMAF (which by this point has generally ceased to be known by its old nickname of “the Planeteers”).

2085

The UNM Aerospace Force is disbanded and its resources and personnel transferred to the control of the UNM Navy.

2092

Final recorded case of “Star” Hawkins and Ilda.

2095

On the 150th anniversary of its founding, the United Nations is renamed the United Planets in order to reflect the fact that its jurisdiction is now spread across the entire Solar System.The UN Militia or UNM is renamed the UP Militia or UPM. The UNM Army or UNMA is renamed the UPM Army or UPMA while the UNM Navy or UNMN is renamed the UPM Navy or UPMN.

2100

The first human colony in another planetary system is established.

2150

First recorded adventure of space explorer Chris KL-99 and his alien sidekicks Halk and Jero.

2160

First recorded adventure of Homer Gint, Rick Purvis and Karel Sorenson as the “Star Rovers”.

2259

The Space Museum opens in Metropolis.

2262

Criminal scientist Artur Zarrko embarks upon a life of attempted conquest as the time-travelling Tomorrow Man.

2459

The Space Museum celebrates its bicentenary.

2462

Michael Jon Carter steals a selection of equipment from the Space Museum and time-travels back to 1986 to become the vainglorious costumed champion Booster Gold[24].

[24] Among the items he steals are a Legion Flight Ring and a Brainiac 5 Force Field Belt presented to Superman at some point after the Adult Legion first meet him in 1961 (from his viewpoint) or 2991 (from theirs) [see below]. This is much the same as the original idea for how these items came to be in the 20th Century, which was that they’d been given to Superboy by the Teenage Legion. That was retroactively made impossible by the removal of Superboy from continuity after Crisis on Infinite Earths, making the time-loop story in Booster Gold (Vol. 1) ##8-9 necessary. Here that story is unnecessary, so it duly never occurred.

2463

The criminal scientist Eobard Thawne (alias Professor Adrian Zoom) discovers a time capsule containing a costume once worn by the second Flash (Barry Allen). He experiments with the costume and devises a means of giving himself superhuman powers like those possessed by the Flash. He time-travels back to the 20th Century to become the costumed criminal known as the Reverse-Flash.

26th Century

The Galaxy is ravaged by the Dalek Wars of the 26th Century. The Wars claim the lives of half of the populations of the United Planets and its allies, the Rigellian and Draconian Empires, before the genocidal Dalek Empire is finally smashed.

The Rigellians and Draconians join the UP.

28th Century

The Galaxy is ravaged by the Great Wars of the 28th Century. Although this era produces many technological advances, including anti-matter fusion power, nega-shielding, gamma-energy blasters, warping mists and the Atomic Axe, the devastation of the Wars causes many of these discoveries to be lost for more than 200 years.

2950

First recorded adventure of the Knights of the Galaxy.

2954

Barry Allen and his wife Iris West-Allen relocate permanently from the 20th Century to the 30th Century to live a quiet life following his retirement from his role as the second Flash.

2959

Teenagers Rokk Krinn, Imra Ardeen and Garth Ranzz save industrialist and philanthropist R. J. Brande from being assassinated.Inspired by his young rescuers, Brande founds the Legion of Super-Heroes or LSH. Krinn, Ardeen and Ranzz become its charter members as Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad.

The LSH recruit Triplicate Girl (Luornu Durgo).

The LSH recruit Phantom Girl (Tinya Wazzo).

2960

The LSH time-travel back to 1945 and recruit Captain Marvel Jr. (Freddy Freeman) and Miss Marvel (Mary Batson).

The LSH recruit Chameleon Boy (Reep Daggle), Invisible Kid (Lyle Norg) and Colossal Boy (Gim Allon).

The LSH time-travel back to 1960 and recruit Supergirl (Kara Zor-El/Linda Lee Danvers)[25].

The LSH recruit Star Boy (Thom Kallor).

The LSH recruit Kid Quantum (James Cullen).

[25] In this Timeline Red Kryptonite doesn’t exist, so Supergirl can’t be temporarily aged into an adult by it and thereby temporarily become too old to join during her first tryout for membership. This makes it unnecessary for her to have a second one.

2961

The LSH recruit Brainiac 5 (Querl Dox).

The LSH recruit Sun Boy (Dirk Morgna) and Shrinking Violet (Salu Digby).

The LSH recruit Bouncing Boy (Chuck Taine).

2962

The LSH recruit Ultra Boy (Jo Nah).

The LSH make contact with the Phantom Zone and discover Mon-El (Lar Gand) still trapped there a thousand years after he was exiled there.

The LSH recruit Matter-Eater Lad (Tenzil Kem).

Apparent death of Lightning Lad.

The LSH rescue Mon-El from the Phantom Zone and recruit him.

The population of the planet Trom are massacred by the space pirate Kivun Roxxas (“the Butcher”). Teenager Jan Arrah is the only survivor.

A group of teenagers who had applied to join the LSH and been rejected secretly form the Legion of Substitute Heroes.

Jan Arrah joins the LSH as Element Lad.

2963

The LSH recruit Lightning Lass (Ayla Ranzz), the twin sister of Lightning Lad.

Lightning Lad is revived from apparent death.

The LSH learns of the existence of the Legion of Substitute Heroes.

The LSH recruit Dream Girl (Nura Nal).Lightning Lass changes her name to Light Lass.

2964

First clash between the LSH and the Time Trapper.

First meeting between the LSH and the Heroes of Lallor – Beast Boy (Ilshu Nor), Duplicate Boy (Ord Quelu), Evolvo Lad (Sev Tcheru), Gas Girl (Tal Nahii) and Life Lass (Somi Gan).

The teenage Legion of Super-Heroes battle the adult Legion of Super-Villains, who have time-travelled back from 2994 to destroy them in order to change history for their own benefit.

Mordru makes his first attempt to conquer Earth. He is defeated and imprisoned in a dormant state by the LSH.

2965

First clash between the LSH and Glorith.

First clash between the LSH and Computo.Triplicate Girl changes her name to Duo Damsel.

2966

The LSH recruit Karate Kid (Val Armorr), Nemesis Kid (Hart Druiter), Princess Projectra and Ferro Lad (Andrew Nolan). Nemesis Kid is subsequently exposed as a traitor working to betray the United Planets to the Khundish Empire. He becomes a fugitive from justice.

First clash between the LSH and Dr. Zaxton Regulus.

First clash between the LSH and Universo.

Formation of the Fatal Five. Its founding members are the Emerald Empress, the Persuader, Mano, Tharok and Validus.Ferro Lad sacrifices his life to save the Solar System from the Sun-Eater.

2967

The LSH battle and defeat a renegade Controller.

The LSH become outlaws when they defy an order by the President of Earth to disband. They subsequently expose the President as a disguised Universo and bring his rule to an end.The LSH recruit Rond Vidar, the son of Universo, as an honorary member.

After decades of intermittent conflict, peace negotiations begin between the United Planets and the Dominion of Elia.

The LSH recruit Shadow Lass (Tasmia Mallor).

The LSH repel an invasion of the United Planets by the Dark Circle.

2968

Mordru escapes from his imprisonment by the LSH and goes on a rampage before being recaptured.

Benno Tarik (“the Mute”) founds the Legion of Super-Villains or LSV. Its charter members are the returning Nemesis Kid, Lightning Lord (Mekt Ranzz), Ron-Karr, Radiation Roy (Roy Travich) and Spider Girl (Sussa Paka).First clash between the LSH and LSV.The LSH recruit Chemical King (Condo Arlik) and Timber Wolf (Brin Londo).

First meeting between the LSH and the Tornado Twins (Don and Dawn Allen).

First meeting between the LSH and the Wanderers – Celebrand, Dartalg, Elvo, Immorto, Ornitho, Psyche and Quantum Queen.

2969

Mon-El seemingly dies from lead poisoning. His remote relative Eltro Gand sacrifices his life to revive him.

2970

Captain Marvel Jr. and Miss Marvel relocate permanently to the 30th Century and change their names to Captain Marvel II and Ms. Marvel II.Captain Marvel II and Ms. Marvel II marry.

Supergirl relocates permanently to the 30th Century and changes her name to Superwoman.Superwoman and Brainiac 5 marry.

Mordru escapes from his imprisonment again.

2973

Bouncing Man and Duo Damsel marry. J’onn J’onzz is a guest at the ceremony.

2974

The LSH recruit Wildfire (Drake Burroughs).

Death of Invisible Man.

2975

The LSV recruit Chameleon Chief (Jall Tannuz) and Sun Emperor (Nigal Douglous).

2976

The LSH recruit Tyroc (Troy Stewart).

First clash between the LSH and Pulsar Stargrave.

Karate Kid time-travels back to the 20th Century for an extended stay.

2977

The LSH recruit Dawnstar.

Death of Chemical King.

Mordru lures the Justice Society and Justice League of America from 1977 to 2977 in order to compel them to retrieve a magical artifact for him. The JSA, JLA and LSH join forces to defeat Mordru[26].

[26] In this Timeline Captain Atom (Allen Adam) and Thor largely replace Superman as the chief powerhouses of the JLA, so he plays no part in these events and doesn’t meet the Legion at this time.

2978

Lightning Man and Saturn Woman marry.

The Earthwar. The Khundish Empire and the Dark Circle ally to invade Earth, unaware that they are being manipulated by Mordru. Karate Kid returns to the 30th Century in time to help the LSH expose and defeat Mordru, ending the conflict.

The United Planets concludes a peace treaty with the Dominion of Elia.

2980

The LSH recruit Blok.

2981

The LSH finally succeed in capturing and imprisoning the Time Trapper, who is revealed to be another renegade Controller.

Ultra Man and Phantom Woman marry.

2982

Darkseid is finally awakened amidst the ruins of Apokolips nearly a thousand years after placing himself into suspended animation there.

Creation of a polymer shield around the Earth.

The LSH recruit Invisible Kid II (Jacques Foccart).

The Great Darkness Saga.The LSH recruit the White Witch (Mysa Nal).

2983

[Divergent Legion Timeline: Shadow Woman has a close brush with death[27].]

Death of Shadow Woman.

Karate Man and Princess Projectra marry.

[27] This divergent timeline is one which closely parallels the published mainstream timeline, whereas the mainstream timeline closely parallels the published divergent timeline of the Adult Legion stories.

2984

The LSV recruit Cosmic King (Laevar Bolto).

[Divergent Legion Timeline: Birth of Graym Ranzz to Garth Ranzz and Imra Ardeen Ranzz. His twin brother Garridan is stolen from the womb by Darkseid through teleportation, transformed into a monstrous state and sent back through time to a point many years before the divergent timeline and the mainstream timeline diverged from each other to become Validus, in fulfilment of a curse laid upon the LSH by Darkseid.]

Birth of Graym Ranzz to Garth Ranzz and Imra Ardeen Ranzz. His twin brother Garridan is stolen from the womb by Darkseid through teleportation, transformed into a monstrous state and sent back through time to a point many years before the mainstream timeline and the divergent timeline diverged from each other to become Validus, in fulfilment of a curse laid upon the LSH by Darkseid. The Garridan of the mainstream timeline emerges in the single past that the two timelines share at the exact same point in spacetime as his counterpart from the divergent timeline, causing the two different versions of Garridan from the two different timelines to merge into a single version of Garridan who goes on to become a single version of Validus. Many years later the two timelines will go on to diverge from each other and the single Validus who will have existed until that point will then be diverged back into two beings once again[28].

[28] At this point you may be asking why I’m subjecting your protesting brains and my own to this mind-bending convolutedness. Well, it’s because it seems to me that, if you think about it, we really do need some explanation of what actually did happen when who knows how many other unseen alternate versions of Darkseid, besides the ones from the published mainstream timeline and the published divergent timeline of the Adult Legion stories, all tried to send who knows how many other unseen alternate versions of Garridan back into a single shared past. If two Garridans can merge to form a single Garridan who becomes a single Validus, I see no reason why half a dozen couldn’t do the same. As their various other timelines also go on to diverge from each another, those various other versions of Validus will likewise then diverge from each other and from the more familiar versions once again. Sure, it’s a very complicated explanation, but I think that has to be an improvement upon none at all.

2985

The LSH recruit Polar Man (Brek Bannin), Night Woman (Lydda Jath), Chlorophyll Man (Ral Benem), Fire Man (Staq Mavlen), Stone Man (Dag Wentim), Color Man (Ulu Vakk), Tellus (Ganglios), Quislet (unpronounceable) and Magnetic Man (Pol Krinn).

2986

Cosmic Man and Night Woman marry.

2988

A party of Controllers arrives in United Planets space to take the still-imprisoned Time Trapper into their custody. They depart taking him with them and he is never seen in the UP again.

2989

The Wanderers disband.The LSH recruit Quantum Queen.

The LSV recruit Saturn Queen (Eve Aries).

2990

The LSH recruit Nightwind (Berta Skye Haris).

2991

The LSH recruit Reflecto (Stig Ah), Crystal Man (Bobb Kohan), Karate Man II (Myg) and Power Boy (Jediah Rikane).

Death of Reflecto.

The LSH and LSV time-travel back to 1961 and become involved in a battle between Superman and Lex Luthor, both of whom they encounter for the first time[29].

The LSH and LSV time-travel back to 1961 again and become involved in a battle between Captain Marvel and Dr. Thaddeus Sivana, both of whom they also encounter for the first time.

[29] This is a modified version of the events of the first Adult Legion story from 1961. Only now, with many years of heroism and villainy in their own right under their belts, do the two Legions have the self-confidence or arrogance to try to meet historical figures as legendary and intimidating as Superman and Lex Luthor.

2994

The LSV time-travel back to 2964 and attempt to destroy the younger selves of the LSH in order to change history for their own benefit.

2995

Deaths of Quantum Queen and Power Man.

The LSH and LSV time-travel back to 1965 and become involved in a battle between Superman and the team of Lex Luthor and Brainiac[30].

The LSH recruit Computo II (Danielle Foccart) and Dragonmage (Xao Jin).

[30] This is a modified version of the events of the sixth Adult Legion story from 1965.

2996

The LSV recruit Echo (Myke-4 Astor) and Beauty Blaze.

Superman time-travels forward from 1966 and aids the LSH in a battle against the LSV.The LSH recruit the namesake descendants of Lex Luthor and Mr. Mxyzptlk[31].

[31] This is a modified version of the events of the seventh Adult Legion story from 1966.

2998

Mordru time-travels back to 1968 and attempts to kill Superman in order to change history for his own benefit. Brainiac 5 traces and follows Mordru and dupes Lex Luthor into helping Superman defeat him[32].

[32] This is a modified version of the events of the ninth and last Adult Legion story from 1968.

3000

First clash between the LSH and Kang the Conqueror[33].

[33] In this Timeline this is the native time period of “the man who would be Kang”, who here draws much inspiration from the career of the Time Trapper. For his first escapade he time-travels back to Ancient Egypt to become Pharaoh Rama-Tut. After being put to flight by the time-travelling Fantastic Four he tries to return to 3000 A.D. but overshoots his destination and instead arrives in a possible future of the year 4000 A.D., where he finds a barbaric post-holocaust Earth and soon makes himself its master as Kang the Conqueror. He carves out an interstellar empire in that era and then begins repeatedly attempting to defeat both the JLA in the 20th and 21st Centuries and the LSH in the 30th and 31st Centuries. This is a very ambitious undertaking, of course, but since when has Kang ever lacked self-confidence…?

3006

The LSH recruit Supergirl II (Alura Dox), XS (Jenni Ognats)[34] and Kinetix (Zoe Saugin)[35].Following the induction ceremony for the new Legionnaires, at which their families are invited guests, Bart Allen announces his wish to be a costumed champion like his cousin XS. He asks his grandfather Barry Allen (formerly the second Flash) to help him to go back in time to the 20th Century and there train under the third Flash (Wallace West) to eventually succeed him as the fourth Flash. The Allen clan subsequently time-travel back to 1991 with him for a visit of several weeks that ends with him achieving his goals.

[34] I know the published version of her is from a timeline with minimal resemblance to the ones this Timeline is based on, but since nothing fundamental about her origin seems to be incompatible with incorporating her I’ve decided to do that. Why doesn’t she join the Legion until such a late date? Well, prior to Zero Hour her cousin Bart Allen was stated to have been born in 2992. Since the timeline that date belonged to was a secondary influence on this one, using it here seems appropriate. Then a later Flash Secret Files (though

admittedly one published after Zero Hour which gave a different year for his birth) established that she was born two years before he was. That would suggest she should be born in 2990 in this Timeline. Assuming this version of her joins her version of the Legion at the same age the published one did hers (around sixteen), that works out as this year. Barry Allen and Iris West Allen took up residence in the 30th Century when he retired as the second Flash under circumstances which bear minimal resemblance to the published ones. That was in 2954, when Barry was 48 years old. With no Crisis on Infinite Earths to result in his death and with access to 30th Century geriatric medicine, Barry lived to see his grandchildren born (Jenni when he was 84 and Bart when he was 86) and was able to play the role of doting grandpa during their early childhoods. He was even still alive at the age of 100 to see Jenni join the Legion. Don Allen and his wife Carmen Johnson [not Meloni Thawne] and Dawn Allen Ognats and her husband Jeven Ognats are all still alive as well and have played a full part in raising their respective children.

[35] Once again, since nothing fundamental about her origin seems to be incompatible with incorporating a version of her into this Timeline, I’ve decided to do that. Like the published version of her, this one joins the Legion in the same timeframe as XS.

3007

The Khundish Empire launches an all-out war of conquest against the United Planets. The LSH are mobilized as UP Militia auxiliaries.

3008

The LSH recruit Charlie-27, Martinex T’Naga and Yondu Udonta[36].

[36] I should probably give them codenames, but I can’t think of any.

3014

First clash between the LSH and Michael Korvac, a renegade human turned into a borderline-insane cyborg by Khundish technology.

3015

The LSH recruit Starhawk (Stakar/Aleta Ogord).

The LSH rescue teenager Nikki Gold from her damaged and drifting spacecraft. Developing a crush on Charlie-27, she begins hanging around the LSH and drifts into the role of team mascot.

3018

Michael Korvac time-travels back to 1978 in a bid to change history for his own benefit. The LSH trace and follow Korvac and join forces with the Justice League of America to oppose him.