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Time travel is part of the Sorcerer Supreme’s day job. It sounds interesting; it mostly isn’t. (I mean, from a certain point of view, time travel to the past is seeing stuff that already happened anyway and time travel to the future is like fast-forwarding through the good parts of the movie.) Two or three times a year, somebody invents time travel and they almost always travel to the past, which means Dr. Strange has to put on his time-travel pants, follow them back, do everything necessary to stop their stomping-on-butterflies (or whatever) from creating causality paradoxes, then remove the knowledge of time travel from their minds permanently. Really, it’s just kind of a slog.
(Every so often, somebody gets the bright idea of going back in time and murdering Strange’s parents before he was born, or Strange as a baby, or what have you. The same thing always happens: they commit their nefarious crime only to find out their targets are completely protected from their attack and don’t even notice the assault/explosion/whatever. Then they turn around, where Doc stands there, arms crossed, looking rather irritated.)
But this time around it’s different, because Colin Finn hasn’t invented time travel. He’s not even a theoretical physicist or mystic-in-training. He’s a deliveryman for a courier company. Drives one of those vans, wears a dorky uniform. Has a girlfriend who dumped him six months ago because his life was going nowhere. Plays XBox with his buddies, likes books with swords and knights in them. He’s an average dude.
Except that whenever he gets stressed or nervous he restarts the flow of time; rewinds the entire day instantly to when he got out of bed. He’s been doing it for a long time now; the universe has been stuck on July 7th over and over again. Sometimes he gets a few weeks out, sometimes a month or two, sometimes only a few days, but inevitably reality goes zzzzzzzwoooooop and he’s back in bed. He can’t control it, can’t stop it, and you’d better believe nobody notices it. He’s tried killing himself a couple of times and that just auto-rewinds everything for him. He’s really very depressed about the whole thing.
Well, except for Dr. Strange. Deja vu eventually becomes more than just deja vu, after all, when you’ve got the top job, and after a few thousand repetitions any Sorcerer Supreme worth his salt would start the day realizing he’d already started the day previously. After a few attempts to divine what’s going on fail (“By the million eyes of Ashtur, I beseech thee, reveal the-” zzzzzzzwoooooop “Oh, damn it!”) eventually Strange does what he probably should have done in the first place if he didn’t keep waking up the night after he’d only gotten three hours of not-very-satisfactory sleep: he goes outside the universe.
And that’s how he finds out that things are actually much worse than he thought. Because Finn isn’t just rewinding time. He’s using chronal energy, and that energy has to come from somewhere – and it’s coming from the past and the future. The past is steadily being eaten away as Finn rewinds, again and again and again, and the future will never be. And every time, the great rewind stores more and more chronal energy – Finn is literally becoming a timebomb, but in the far more literal sense as well as the one we’re all familiar with.
You can’t kill him – even if you could manage it, what would happen to that release of time? (Answer: a lot of things, most of it bad.) So Stephen Strange has to somehow cure the strange affliction which presents itself to him. But how do you do that? This isn’t a cute movie starring Bill Murray; it’s not about Finn, the rewind doesn’t care about him becoming a better person. This is something that was done to the guy. And Stephen has less and less time – literally – to figure out what.
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43 users responded in this post
Dude. Someone needs to give you a comic to write, post-haste.
Agreed. Something with standalone continuity, whatever Marvel’s latest equivalent of Vertigo is. Seems like a low-risk venture on their part.
This sounds like a great “from beyond the grave” scheme for Mordo to pull on Dr. Strange. Though that leads to a question of whether or not this happens to Finn more frequently as he builds up more chronal energy.
I’m pretty sure stopping Total Time Fuckery is the Exception in the Watcher’s non-interference thingy. Also I think it doesn’t fit with how time travel can work for the Marvel U. Interesting story hook though…
Have just been reading the “Why I should write Doctor Strange” archives, and why hasn’t Joe Q asked you to yet? They just let him stagnate, and you’ve got enough good material here to last until my grandkids start reading comics.
This one also works for Doctor Who as well as Doctor Strange. I may steal this for my Who RPG if you don’t mind.
Wait a second.
Time loops, with deja vu and thousands of repetitions before we even notice.
Someone who doesn’t even know how he does it (if he even realizes he is doing it).
July 7th.
Methinks you’ll have to subtitle this story “The Melancholy of Stephen Strange”…
(I hope someone gets that.)
Wait a second.
Time loops, with deja vu and thousands of repetitions before we even notice.
A powerful magical person without the power to change things, even when he knows exactly what’s wrong.
July
Don’t call it “The Melancholy of Stephen Strange” (and it would be “The Rampage”, anyway), call it “When the Sorcerer Supreme Cries”. (“Supreme” should be in red text, I think)
Fine, but you’re missing a trick not making it a cute movie starring Bill Murray. More comics need to end with Stephen Strange working for a relative decade to teach some poor schlub some really rocking jazz piano skills.
“By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth, you WILL play this Bill Evans composition!”
OK…I’m with this idea, but if Strange goes around eliminating Time-Traveler knowledge, how does this account for Doom or Reed Richards? Or Kang?
There is the theory of the moebius, a twist in the fabric of space, where time becomes a loop, where time becomes a loop, where time becomes a loop, where time becomes a loop, where time becomes a loop, where time becomes a loop, where time becomes a loop, where time becomes a loop, where time becomes a loop, where time becomes a loop, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sd2iMvYHsg
They’re all smart enough to know how temporal causality works in the MU that they only create alternate universes; basically, they’ve invented time machines that work properly. Nobody worries about them; the problems are the dorks who don’t account for the creation of alternate universes and have their time machines stuck, by design, in one timeline. That gets dangerous.
Please let it be very fluffy time-eating rainbow murder kittens that are responsible! Doctor Strange would be an excellent vehicle for getting girls into comics, right? It’s finals week at my work, and we’re swamped. There needs to be some fluffy time-eating rainbow murder kittens SOMEWHERE, damn it.
When I’m king of the world, and you’re writing Strange under Emperor’s Edict #356, please include the Time Variance Authority in some capacity. I’d think they and Strange would well know each other.
I pretty much never get tired of reading these.
I’m with Harry Connolly, isn’t there some way we can get Joe Quesada to let this happen?
I WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS!!!!!!
Wow. These last two have been great. (And I LOVE that picture!)
Not to reveal myself as a huge comics geek (but then, who am I kidding), but I thought that one couldn’t actually alter the time stream in the Marvel Universe by going back in time. I thought that if you changed something in the past, you just created an alternate timeline, but that when you went back to the future, you were still in your own timeline.
Also, I agree, someone needs to give you a comic.
MGK, I’m sure it’s been asked before, but why don’t you write up a few of your own scripts for your own characters and put out a call for an artist? Even if you didn’t want to publish the stories, you could do a long form webcomic. A few webcomic writers have gotten comics jobs (Brian Clevinger being the first to come to mind) based on the skills they’ve shown. You’ve got enough of a readership here to build up a serious following and get some notice.
Two or three times a year, somebody invents time travel
Two or three times a year????
Ok, I like the idea, but I don’t know how you do it in installments of 22 pages of comics. I mean, is one issue literally just Colin rewinding over and over again?
Julian (and others) – MGK addresses that – there are multiple kinds of time travel. The geniuses invent the kind that bifurcates (go back in time, the original universe stays the same, but a new one emerges to reflect your change). The everyday yahoos invent the bad kind, the kind that lets you fuck everything up (more or less, DC time travel I think – before the creation of “solid time). Strange deals with the everyday yahoos.
Will: I don’t think the solution will be for Strange to do that homework that he’s been ignoring.
And I would read this comic in a heartbeat. Yes, you should write Strange.
Christopher, how many more of these do you have in your pipeline? Or do you not have any in progress and just post them as they occur to you?
I really enjoyed the 50 Legion ones (still would like to know if the original full entries for the first Reasons are available anywhere. I came in late and have only seen the brief recaps) and look forward to each Dr Strange addition.
And, of course, am still waiting for you to start posting the Brother Geek reasons, like you said you would. April’s almost over, dude.
Agreed. Something with standalone continuity
“Astonishing Dr. Strange”?
I could just imagine Strange and Finn in the same room near the middle of the story:
FINN: Doctor Strange! What’s happening to me?
DR STRANGE: Finn, something has happened to you, and now your body is using up time. If it keeps going, the universe as we know it will tear itself apart in a storm of anti-reality the likes of which has never been seen before!
FINN: Oh my god. Please, tell me what I have to do to fix this!
DR STRANGE: Just sit still, son. This diagnostic spell I’m casting needs you to remain perfectly still or otherwise it’ll open a rift in spazwooooooooopFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU—
Re: Sean D. Martin
http://xkcd.com/716/ It happens a lot more then twice a year, but usually Dr. Strange doesn’t need to get involved.
MGK, just out of curiosity, when you write this teaser of a story, do you have all the plot points and revelations already planned? (here: what exactly is done to Finn and how Strange is going to stop it)
“OK…I’m with this idea, but if Strange goes around eliminating Time-Traveler knowledge, how does this account for Doom or Reed Richards? Or Kang?”
I would imagine they were SUPPOSED to invent time travel so it’s all good.
PS shouldn’t this be ‘Why I should write Dr Voodoo?”
I imagine Finn to be this sort of Chronal Energy storage device. Ie. someone deliberately made him into a Chronal Energy thing.
Why? My favorite theory is some otherdimensional creature/ villain is waiting for Finn to ripen for Noms.
Fifth: You’d be surprised how bad a diet food Chronal Energy is. You think you’re full when you leave the table, but then 20 minutes later you’re hungry again.
Subject to further revision, but yes.
YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH
YOU SHUT YOUR DIRTY WHORE MOUTH
He couldn’t just pop the guy out side of time?
This is why yours is one of the few blogs I try to keep track of. Aside from the sheer awesomeness of 90% of your posts (i.e. putting a clip of ‘Dare’ inside an anti-AXE-Marketers post), there’s your response to “Shouldn’t this be ‘Why I should write Dr Voodoo?'” As soon as I read that statement, I was thinking in terms approximating your eventual response, but your response made me laugh out loud indeed!
Craig Oxbrow:
I think Stephen may need a consult on this one.
Sean D. Martin:
Sure, its easy. Its just a jump to the left…
Hmmm. . .interesting idea. Time travel in the Marvel universe has been shown to be extremely malleable, and I think no less than Reed Richards proved that the past is largely immutable: we are who we are(proven in that issue of Marvel Two-In-One where the Thing fought the Thing because Ben went back in time with a formula that would reverse his change, but it’d only work with his original doughy-looking self). At best it creates a parallel timeline wherein the events of the alteration skew off into their own tangent. Also, there have been a number of takes on the future of the Marvel Universe (Days of Future Past clearly doesn’t take place in the same future as Deathlok, or Killraven, Arno Stark’s 2020, Spider-Man 2099 or the future of Death’s Head’s 8162). So the past and the future become a tangled web of potentials and might-have-beens.
Ah ha ha, though. I say these things not to detract from your premise, but rather offer the notion that maybe, just maybe, that someone or something that did this to poor Colin has figured that out. It’s a clever. . .whatever or whoever it is, and realizes that the only way to truly, irrevocably alter the weave of time is to strike at the one point in time in which the Marvel Universe is truly vulnerable: now. The Infinite Present(because in comics it’s more or less always Now) is the key with which this entity (or entities) will control/destroy/mold reality to its own agenda.
Just my $0.02 and assorted pocket lint.
Just finished the entire blog-thread, in regards to Strange. This has got so many thoughts swirling in my head I don’t know where to begin.
So I won’t.
I’ll leave my comments to the most recent entry. I hate time travel stories. Hate ’em. I have an automatic distaste for any character whose origin begins with “Time lost, from the year…” These kinds of characters simply raise questions and cause problems.
It’s nice to know the dear Doctor agrees with me.
Keep up the good work!
If DC wasn’t bogarting that damned cosmic egg, I’d say that it would be the perfect answer to the puzzle. Then again, it could still *be* the perfect answer…
[…] book commentary is MightyGodKing.com. From his many reasons why he should write DOCTOR STRANGE (here’s his latest – enjoy!), to some choice hilarity involving Photoshop and Archie […]
[…] Previously, we discussed how time travel works, or doesn’t work. Most time travel in comics follows the “create an alternate parallel universe in which you are then trapped” motif. There are reasons for this. If you are creating a time travel machine, you don’t want it killing you, and traveling to the past is the sort of thing which makes it effortlessly simple for you to accidentally not exist all of a sudden: you accidentally convince an Irishman in 1843 that he should travel to London to find work rather than emigrate to America, and then all of a sudden you don’t exist because your parents met at a Ted Kennedy rally which never happened because that Irishman emigrating led to there being Kennedys (or at least that specific branch of Kennedys) in the first place. Sure, there might be someone present who’s kind of occupying your general space, but it’s not you, because you’ve ceased to exist. This is why smart people time travel in a way that generally keeps them detached from the effects of causality. […]