Best. Crossover. Ever.

In 1963, Marvel Comics published what became the first issue in a three-part crossover event that covered three different books and three sets of authors and illustrators over the course of 24 years! It’s remarkable because each successive part of the story added another layer of complexity while respecting the material that came before it.

The first book is Fantastic Four #19, which introduced a villain who would come to play a much larger role in later Marvel plotlines, Rama-Tut. Written by big, bad Stan Lee and illustrated by bigger, badder Jack Kirby, the story is about the Fantastic Four traveling back in time to ancient Egypt to recover a radioactive plant that Reed thinks can restore the eyesight of The Thing’s blind girlfriend, Alicia.

Once they arrive, they are immediately captured by Rama-Tut, who reveals himself to be a time traveler from the year 3000. Using a ray gun that saps their willpower, he sets the four to work: Reed uses his stretch powers to become very tall and scout for the military, Johnny Storm becomes a court jester, and the Thing is forced to row on a slave ship. Sue, of course, is supposed to marry the pharaoh.

They manage to break free when the Thing reverts to human under the unusually strong solar rays of ancient Egypt. This is particularly bad science, even for a comic book, but we’ll ignore it. Once freed, the team searches everywhere for Rama-Tut, eventually discovering that the Sphinx is really his time machine. Before they can capture him, he blasts off in an escape pod, and detonates the machinery inside the Sphinx, leaving it a stone shell. The Fantastic Four return to the future, where they find that you can’t take radioactive plants from the past with you for some reason, thereby restoring the status quo.

The second book is Doctor Strange #53, written by Roger Stern and illustrated by Marshall Rogers in 1982. While writing a story about Doctor Strange projecting himself through time to find the “soul shard” of Morgana Blessing, which is bouncing through her various past lives. One of the stops just happens to be ancient Egypt, where he lands on top of the Sphinx. Noticing something unusual, he uses his magic to open a hidden door, and discovers the mechanical interior. He avoids various automatic defense systems, but in the end he’s knocked unconscious by lasers, captured by robots, and locked inside a force field. He just barely escapes by astral projecting out of his body before the field snaps on, so that he is free to roam around, but his body is still locked inside the sphinx.

While searching for the soul shard, he stumbles upon the Fantastic Four being captured by Rama-Tut, who explains that he’s from the future. The rest of the book has Doctor Strange help the Fantastic Four to escape (we find out, for instance, that he’s the one that focussed the sun’s rays to turn the Thing human so he could begin the escape process), reclaim his body, get the soul shard from Morgana’s past incarnation, all without ever altering the original story. Any time he does anything, he’s either in immaterial form, or he leaves the room just as the Fantastic Four enter it. In the end, he witnesses Rama-Tut’s escape from a different angle than the FF, and then return to the future.

I love this. The team on this book have managed to revisit the original story to pay homage to it, and successfully add a layer of complexity to the story, all without having to alter the original version of events. But it gets even better!

In 1987, Steve Englehart and his three-person art team revisit the same events in The West Coast Avengers #22. This time around, the story gets a little muddier because the creative team has to insert the Avengers into both version of the story without altering either one. Thankfully, they do a decent job of it.

The entire Avengers team is lost in time, and this particular group of the WCA has been stranded in ancient egypt, at exactly the same time as Doctor Strange and the Fantastic Four. They are led into the mechanical guts of the Sphinx just in time to see Doctor Strange captured by the robots. They fight the guards, but don’t notice in the meantime that another group of robots has made off with Strange’s body - and since he was unconscious the whole time, he never saw any of the Avengers.

They stumble onto a security monitor displaying the scene in the throne room of the Fantastic Four being captured by Rama-Tut, and have a brief discussion about the fact that this is not the Fantastic Four they know - acknowledging that the FF they know is 24 years older!

They realize that the FF must have a time machine, which can let them back into the future, so the rest of the comic consists of them running around, just barely missing a chance to catch up with them, and fighting hoards of robot guards. In the end, they narrowly miss Rama-Tut escaping, almost manage to hook up with Doctor Strange, and come really close to catching the Fantastic Four. The comic ends at this point, with the WCA still stranded in the past, though presumably the next issue explains how they escape.

You should follow the links I put on the title of each comic to another site that covers these comics in greater detail, but I just wanted to put a brief write-up here, because I absolutely love these kinds of stories. Time travel can be done really well, and really badly, but when it’s done well, it’s great because all the pieces fall into place and it all just makes sense. The fact that this story was written by three groups of people over 24 years, with no planning ahead of time just makes it even better.