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Marvel’s sliding timescale means events move in the timeline – but Al Ewing’s Ultimates run explained it from an in-universe perspective.
There’s actually an in-universe reason for Marvel‘s sliding timescale in comics. In 2019, comic book writer Jonathan Hickman relaunched the X-Men franchise. As part of that, he revealed an official timeline of events in the main X-Men continuity, and many readers were somewhat taken aback. According to House of X #2, the mutant genocide on Genosha happened just three years before Hickman’s relaunch. That’s pretty remarkable, given that covers roughly 18 years’ worth of comics.
In truth, Hickman was simply making clear a concept that lies at the heart of Marvel’s success; their sliding timescale. Marvel’s timeline has always been pulled in two different directions by competing forces; on the one hand there’s the desire to present « the World outside your Window, » and on the other there’s a fear of changing a character’s core concept too dramatically – including their age. This has naturally caused problems when real-world individuals, events, and even slang has slipped into a comic; as an example, at one point during Hickman’s « three years » Cyclops was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. Going by Marvel’s sliding timescale, that probably happened no later than mid-2021. Readers tend to overlook this problem, suspending their disbelief – but, amusingly, one Marvel writer decided to explain it from an in-universe perspective.
Al Ewing is one of Marvel’s most creative writers, and his Ultimates run explored the very nature of the Marvel universe. In Ultimates #5 from Ewing and Kenneth Rockafort, Galactus gave a group of heroes a vision of the true nature of space-time. « The present moment — the ‘now — hurtles from past to future along a stream of events, » Galactus explained. « And events have weight. Sometimes, the weight is vast — sometimes, so light as to be undetectable. But some events — those with a peculiar, unique gravity — are caught by the present. Dragged in its wake, like planets about a sun. Always just a handful of years behind…«
In other words, the past is not fixed – it is fluid. Certain events – those involved with superheroes – are dragged forward by the present moment, meaning they are effectively unrooted in their specific point in space-time. What’s more, notice that Galactus doesn’t suggest these events are drawn at the same momentum; this explains the fact time seems to pass differently for specific characters, with the Fantastic Four’s Franklin Richards growing up at a very different rate to the X-Men’s Kitty Pryde. It’s simply that moments involving these individuals possess a different temporal gravity, disrupting the relationship between them.
It’s a fascinating way of explaining Marvel’s sliding timescale, rooting it in the comic book universe’s temporal mechanics. Because the heroes largely exist inside time, they are naturally unaware of its true nature; it takes a cosmic being like Galactus to point it out to them, and it leaves the heroes he’s shown it to reeling. Captain Marvel in particular was shocked, because she understood the implications for her own personal history, and wondered how much of her life was fixed and how much was fluid. The memories seem to have faded with the passage of time, perhaps indicating the human mind cannot retain this kind of knowledge. But for readers, Al Ewing’s Ultimates run finally provided an in-universe explanation for one of the Marvel Universe’s strangest, most contradictory features.
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