Who fought villains up until 15 years ago in the Marvel Universe?

[Iceburgeruk]

If as Marvel maintains, the entirety of Marvel time since Fantastic Four #1 is now 15 years before the present day then surely a big question is in current continuity who fought crime between 1963 and about 1994?

There have been several teams and super heroes created for other eras from world war 1 with freedom`s Five and to World War two with the Howling Commandoes and The Invaders up to the 1950s with the Agents of Atlas and First Line. But after the 60s the heroes stop.

Yes I know in real life the marvel heroes appeared and have been running since, but marvel time asserts that spidey, the x-men and the ff have only been active since about the mid-90s and that all references to the heroes appearing in earlier decades are to be ignored.

The First Line Heroes of Lost Generation cover some of the pre-1980 period but how much can we get from 12 issues spread over 4 decades? Imagine trying to get an idea of the overview of marvel from a random twelve issue miniseries of the fantastic four`s adventures over several decades.

Under those conditions we are left with almost four decades of inactivity. I for one would love to see the retroactively introduced heroes and villains involved in the eras and their reactions to and interactions with such issues as the civil rights movement, korean, First Gulf, Falkland and vietnam wars, AIDS epidemic, LA riots, moon landing, the cuban missile crisis, the kennedy assassinations, the watergate scandal and the fall of soviet communism.

I mean there is currently over a quarter of a century unaccounted for. What adventures and epics, Heroes and Villains are we missing out on?

 

[spideyboy_1111]

Marvel time is fluid. It's kinda like the 70 decades still happened, but in a 20-15 year interval. I refuse to believe it's only been 15 years. thats not very long.

 

[Dread]

ADAM: LEGEND OF THE BLUE MARVEL contends that there was a superhero who emerged during the JFK presidency during the height of the Civil Rights movement named Blue Marvel, who was revealed to be a black ex-soldier, college athlete, and scientist Adam Brashear. In order to prevent the powder keg of emotions on both sides of the race issue from bursting into more chaos, the President asked Adam to step down as a hero in the early 60's.

Namor was still around during the 60's, but he was basically a vagabond with amnesia during that period until "modern times" when he met the Fantastic Four and Torch dropped him back into the ocean, when he recalled that Paul "Destiny" Destine had destroyed Atlantis and wiped Namor's mind in, supposedly, 1958.

Tobias Messenger and his group of mutants would put themselves in stasis every ten years to assess their conquest plot, at least during John Bryne's X-MEN: THE HIDDEN YEARS (he also did that "MARVEL: THE LOST GENERATION" series that chronicled some of those lost heroes, the First Line).

Presumably, some gods like Hercules or Thor may have been about having occasional adventures on the mortal plane.

 

[Anubis]

John Wayne and Clint Eastwood fought all crime during that time period.

 

[fifthfiend]

ADAM: LEGEND OF THE BLUE MARVEL contends that there was a superhero who emerged during the JFK presidency during the height of the Civil Rights movement named Blue Marvel, who was revealed to be a black ex-soldier, college athlete, and scientist Adam Brashear. In order to prevent the powder keg of emotions on both sides of the race issue from bursting into more chaos, the President asked Adam to step down as a hero in the early 60's.

It's not so much as I have trouble believing that as I have trouble believing LBJ wouldn't have got into office and said **** that , Black Superman's coming back and he's gonna be heroing in goddamn Mississippi just to make the point.

 

[THANOSRULES]

The original poster...You can't look into Marvel time with such a concrete sense. Its basically paper thin and a dodged issue. Let's leave it at that becuase when you start to really think about it..it starts to stink!

THE REAL ISSUE..is the late 40s and 1950s...which IMO need more cool stories. CAPTAIN AMERICA, AGENTS OF ATLAS, THE TWELVE, even ****ing WOlverine are bridging this gap..Marvel has done more for these issues than they did in the prior 30 years..so I don't feel the need to give them crap about it. ****s coming..stay tuned.

But as for the Marvel time/real time conundrum..thats just a **** sandwich everybody has to take a bite off..including Quesada, Bendis, and Santa Clause. Unless , your suggesting we make Punisher a DEA agent and reset everything.

 

[Iceburgeruk]

The original poster...You can't look into Marvel time with such a concrete sense. Its basically paper thin and a dodged issue. Let's leave it at that becuase when you start to really think about it..it starts to stink!

THE REAL ISSUE..is the late 40s and 1950s...which IMO need more cool stories. CAPTAIN AMERICA, AGENTS OF ATLAS, THE TWELVE, even ****ing WOlverine are bridging this gap..Marvel has done more for these issues than they did in the prior 30 years..so I don't feel the need to give them crap about it. ****s coming..stay tuned.

Really though although some progression is occuring, certain titles like the Twelve are simply going over old ground ie world war two. Don`t get me wrong WW2 is a lovely setting but its been done to death in superhero comics from stories written during the period (superman, batman, wonder woman, namor, original human torch, the shield, captain america etc etc) to retroactive stories set in the period (the invaders, all-star squadron, JSA etc). Marvel needs to spread out a bit, perhaps cover more stories in the interwar 30s or the early cold war 50s.

First World War and Nineteenth Century are kinda barren too. I mean all we get from nineteenth century is flamboyant cowboys. That isn`t representative of the nineteenth century world. Hell that isn`t even close to representing the way america really was back then.

It also removes the problem of having never met the villains and characters before because if a super-villain was a world conquereror type or mutant serial killer in the 19th century then unless they have long age as a power then they would have died before captain america even donned his shield to fight the nazis. 200 years is enough distance that anything that happens in the story no matter how apocalyptic or epic would not neccesarily affect anything in the marvel universe today.

Also whats wrong with medievel superheros or ancient history superheroes? A Viking mutant superteam? An anicent egyptian vigilante? A classical greek version of captain america? Hundreds of thousands of years of settings and plotlines are untapped there.

I`d just like to see a bit of historical superheroing.

But as for the Marvel time/real time conundrum..thats just a **** sandwich everybody has to take a bite off..including Quesada, Bendis, and Santa Clause. Unless , your suggesting we make Punisher a DEA agent and reset everything.

Well marvel has already retconned their primary heroes to detach their origins from previous eras, punisher is no longer a Nam veteran, Ben Grimm and Reed Richards no longer fought in World War Two etc etc. So they already have cut their ties to those eras so marvel is trying to maintain that the events from FF#1 to now are the last 10-20 year period so as I said they are officially endorsing the 1963 to 1989/1999 gap of continuity so I say it is fair for writers to now write stories in that gap. The Blue Marvel character is a start but perhaps another superteam in the gap and further adventures of Marvel`s Lost Generation heroes would be warranted.

 

[chris moore]

The problem with hero activity in the sliding time MU is that so many teams and heroes are tied to WWI and WWII, which are events that are just too unique. Some of the current heroes (Ben Grimm, Tony Stark, James Rhodes) who have ties to being present in wars after 1945 can just have their experiences shifted to similar size wars. Such as Tony now having been involved in Afghanistan rather than Vietnam, or Ben having flown in the Gulf war before meeting up with Reed again.

Cap is okay cos he was frozen and can be made to have awoken in any time period (a man out of time applies much better when its 70yrs frozen rather than 20 when cars are only marginally different and racial issues are much the same). Same for Wolverine and Namor. Nick Fury kind of has to be over 100 as a lot of his stuff is tied to fighting with Cap and being around at the beginning of the formation of the CIA. But we can use the infinity formula there.

Some of the daft heroes of WWII such as the "formidable hand to hand combatants" and "gifted athletes" whose sole inspiration for becoming a costumed hero is seeing Cap in action could probably be shunted into the 60's and 70's when urban problems were increased and vigilantism might be more expected. There's no way the Government of any country would form a bunch of superteams comprised of normal blokes who wear a cape and send them off to "battle Nazi conspirators and spy rings".

Of course, there could be a reasonable explanation given for the lack of costumed fighters in the 60's and 70's without moving 40's heroes around to suit the timestream - inept record keeping, the hunt for Nazi scientists fleeing any kind of government (you know, being forced to work for the US instead of being tried for crimes against humanity), rise of communism etc resulted in an involuntary abondonment of research into SuperSoldierSerum like programs. Fear of superpowered beings rising up could have scared Nixon and his immediate predecessors into prohibiting research into superpowers or human augmentation.

 

[November Rain]

meh, they'll just reshift it in another ten years or so, it doesn't make much of a difference

this is what happens when you don't want to age your characters....

 

[Iceburgeruk]

The problem with hero activity in the sliding time MU is that so many teams and heroes are tied to WWI and WWII, which are events that are just too unique. Some of the current heroes (Ben Grimm, Tony Stark, James Rhodes) who have ties to being present in wars after 1945 can just have their experiences shifted to similar size wars. Such as Tony now having been involved in Afghanistan rather than Vietnam, or Ben having flown in the Gulf war before meeting up with Reed again.

Cap is okay cos he was frozen and can be made to have awoken in any time period (a man out of time applies much better when its 70yrs frozen rather than 20 when cars are only marginally different and racial issues are much the same). Same for Wolverine and Namor. Nick Fury kind of has to be over 100 as a lot of his stuff is tied to fighting with Cap and being around at the beginning of the formation of the CIA. But we can use the infinity formula there.

Some of the daft heroes of WWII such as the "formidable hand to hand combatants" and "gifted athletes" whose sole inspiration for becoming a costumed hero is seeing Cap in action could probably be shunted into the 60's and 70's when urban problems were increased and vigilantism might be more expected. There's no way the Government of any country would form a bunch of superteams comprised of normal blokes who wear a cape and send them off to "battle Nazi conspirators and spy rings".

Of course, there could be a reasonable explanation given for the lack of costumed fighters in the 60's and 70's without moving 40's heroes around to suit the timestream - inept record keeping, the hunt for Nazi scientists fleeing any kind of government (you know, being forced to work for the US instead of being tried for crimes against humanity), rise of communism etc resulted in an involuntary abondonment of research into SuperSoldierSerum like programs. Fear of superpowered beings rising up could have scared Nixon and his immediate predecessors into prohibiting research into superpowers or human augmentation.

I agree that the shifting time scale is problematic but marvel is stubbornly sticking with it. The question is that now that the x-men, spidey, hulk, ff and avengers weren`t active in the 60s, 70s and 80s which unseen heroes fought crime? Its unlikely that super-crime was totally exclusive to the marvel era, earlier eras in the marvel universe must have had at least a substantial level of super-powered crime.

The "government-didn`t-fund-research" or "research/attention-was-focused-on-just-cold-war-threats" theories could be workable but seem rather simplistic. Most superheroes didn`t get their powers through the g-men like captain america, most found their powers by accident so lack of government research would not stop super-powers it would just stem it by a miniscule amount. Cold War tensions would also make superhuman testing more likely as super-human abilities would be as valuable as rocket technology or a-bombs, if america decided not to bother with superhumans and focus on conventional armaments then the ussr could have bred 50 hulk-style soldiers and obliterated america`s armed forces in a single sweep. Neither nation could afford to underestimate the other and so cold war tension would not be likely to lead to a cooling of research but instead would accelerate it. One need only look at nuclear proliferation of the twentieth century or the space race of the 60s/70s to see wghat i am getting at.

meh, they'll just reshift it in another ten years or so, it doesn't make much of a difference

this is what happens when you don't want to age your characters....

True and believe me i totally agree with that sentiment but the sliding time scale only affects marvel`s modern age characters. Today spidey started superheroing in about 1994, in ten years spidey will have started superheroing in 2004 his life can never be set down to a particular decade as he is a frontline marvel character in their modern age. But if marvel introduced a character called lets say for example "Captain Mexico" who fought crime in 1990 then in ten years time nothing would have changed as he would still be of the era he was retroactively added too.

Only characters in current time are effected by the sliding timescale, marvel`s plethora of ww2 and wild west characters are mostly not really affected by marvel time as they are firmly rooted to their eras. If they weren`t then marvel`s cowboy characters would be fighting in ww1 by now and the liberty legion and howling commandoes would be fighting in vietnam.

That is the beauty of having the retroactive charctaers they could set up in the now vacant 60s, 70s and 80s decades, we wouldn`t ahve to put up with origin retcons in fifty years time because a crime fighter who is now written as fighting in the 80s would not need his origin to be brought up to date as he would be a hero of that era.

Are you getting where i`m going coz i`m not sure i`m describing it quite right. Hopefully you catch the gist of what i mean.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

We can infer that legacy characters such as Ghost Rider and Iron Fist had representatives in those eras. Although, Orson Randall, the Iron Fist in those decades, was wasting away in opium dens for a lot of that time.

 

[November Rain]

the only problem with sliding timescales is that the writers always try and keep their characters edgy by having parallels to real world events.

it's fine to have a sliding timeframe if no one cares or you stop making references to real world events so there's no need for a shift and the universe can exist within its own timeschedule.


still i would rather have the original characters bound in their original timeframes and have them killed or, retired or replaced. comics don't deal with death very much and popularity undermines the threat level of most villains who have a poor batting average against heroes.

 

[Iceburgeruk]

We can infer that legacy characters such as Ghost Rider and Iron Fist had representatives in those eras. Although, Orson Randall, the Iron Fist in those decades, was wasting away in opium dens for a lot of that time.

See it opens up possibbilities. Who if anyone in current continuity was ghost rider for the later part of the twentith century? Were there other darkhawks or other legacy based heroes? Who ran organised crime before Kingpin, the maggia and the mandarin hit the scene? Did an unknown mutant team fight alongside Martin Luther King Jr for both civil and mutant rights in the 60s? Who was the greatest mind of the cold war age? Were they a super hero? Or a super-villain?

It is important to note though that certain characters will be of previous eras but will be dragged along with marvel time being retconned as well. The Ancient One and Orson Randall are officially noted as being predeccessors or mentors to the current marvel characters, as such Orson Randall could not be a permenant 70s/80s hero as he has to be the previous iron fist to the modern iron fist. In 50 years he would thereby have to have fought crime in the 2030s or 2040s. The 70s and 80s would thereby be filled with the adventures of as yet unnamed iron fists and sorceror supremes who would not be limited by having to be the mentors/predecessors to the current generation of heroes.

If you get what i mean.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Nah, Orson could probably stick around. He kept himself youthful with his chi. There was never any upper limit mentioned on how long he could do that, so for all we know, he could've lived forever. As it stands, we already know he was the Iron Fist from before World War I (not a typo) right up to when he died in Danny's arms early in the current Immortal Iron Fist series.

There are always plot contrivances to keep people around. Nick Fury drank the Infinity Formula at some point, which keeps him young. The Black Widow's been active since World War II and is kept young by the Russian version of the Super-Soldier Serum, etc.

 

[Iceburgeruk]

the only problem with sliding timescales is that the writers always try and keep their characters edgy by having parallels to real world events.

it's fine to have a sliding timeframe if no one cares or you stop making references to real world events so there's no need for a shift and the universe can exist within its own timeschedule.


still i would rather have the original characters bound in their original timeframes and have them killed or, retired or replaced. comics don't deal with death very much and popularity undermines the threat level of most villains who have a poor batting average against heroes.

Thats why in my opinion adding in historical heroes to fill in the gap is the lesser of two evils. It would be nice if marvel would just let the heroes age in real-time but they aren`t likely to do that because they don`t want their cash cows to be finite.

Retrocactive-Marvel-Time-Vacuum-Filling-Historical-Characters (RMTVFHCs for short. LOL) are a good solution as we know they are going to die because they aren`t in the modern age. Their mortality is guarnateed and so drama is present where in the modern marvel continuity it is not as we know wolverine and spidey will never die.

Real world events are referenced more directly and more interestingly as the characters are set within a specific timeframe. For example an early 90s retroactive superhero might have to deal with their wife`s death after she contracts HIV from a blood transfusion. An anti-hero operating in the late70s and early 80s might be faced with the atrocities of the khmer rouge. It means relevant interaction with real events can be attempted as the characters don`t have to keep up with marvel time.

 

[Iceburgeruk]

Nah, Orson could probably stick around. He kept himself youthful with his chi. There was never any upper limit mentioned on how long he could do that, so for all we know, he could've lived forever. As it stands, we already know he was the Iron Fist from before World War I (not a typo) right up to when he died in Danny's arms early in the current Immortal Iron Fist series.

There are always plot contrivances to keep people around. Nick Fury drank the Infinity Formula at some point, which keeps him young. The Black Widow's been active since World War II and is kept young by the Russian version of the Super-Soldier Serum, etc.

True but don`t be surprised if in twenty years he started being iron fist in the 50s and if a previous iron fist operated up until then. And then 50 years after that Orson will have been fighting crime from now until the modern marvel age.

Direct Predeccessors/mentors are prob to be avoided as they will eventually have to be dragged along with the hero so as to still facilitate his backstory. I expect a random iron fist will fill the blank gaps in the early twentieth century that will appear as Orson is dragged forward and then eventually another iron fist will be dropped in to continuity in the 50s and so on.

 

[spideyboy_1111]

my problem with marvel fixing and detaching timelines is more then just the events, but the costumes too. Some people just SCREAM 70's and there original costumes really only work in those eras. (iron fist, luke cage, dazzler, etc....)

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I'm not sure how SHIELD works now, but they were initially set up in the '60s by the UN. Tony Stark outfitted them with their technology and Nick Fury was literally the first director of SHIELD ever, but those elements could be retconned away and SHIELD could've existed as a competent superhuman crimefighting agency as well as an international intelligence-gathering outfit for the past few decades before the current crop of superheroes started showing up and causing problems for them.

 

[chris moore]

Very true - SHIELD has had superhuman units before (such as Wendall Vaughn when he first got the bands), so it could be easily retconned that at any time between WW2 and 15-20 years (cos I dont think they'll ever get more than 20 years older than they were when they started) before whatever the publication date is, superhuman activity was via SHIELD units brought in to help with growing (insert problem of the decade here). Makes them clandestine so we never have to know the details

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I think SHIELD's creation should stay married to the '60s, myself. Let the FBI have the Agents of Atlas and the CIA have Nick Fury and Wolverine from the end of WWII through the '50s.

 

[Iceburgeruk]

I'm not sure how SHIELD works now, but they were initially set up in the '60s by the UN. Tony Stark outfitted them with their technology and Nick Fury was literally the first director of SHIELD ever, but those elements could be retconned away and SHIELD could've existed as a competent superhuman crimefighting agency as well as an international intelligence-gathering outfit for the past few decades before the current crop of superheroes started showing up and causing problems for them.

Either that or introduce the idea that shield was simply the culmination of the international intelligence community post-cold war, it makes perfect sense in many ways during the cold war superhuman monitoring would have been conducted by communist agencies and western agencies. With the fall of the soviet union and the thaw of relations the main western and eastern groups prob formed up to create shield.

It would be dull for the super-human activities to have been monitored by the FBI or semething so perhaps the North Atlantic Treaty Organistation Para-Human Investigation Authority (NATOPHIA) with subsidiaries of the North American Super-Human Authority (NASHA) and the Ministry Of Para-Human Study (MOPHS).

Or whatever. lol.

 

[ZeroCorpse]

Things that would help the timeline concerns in the 616 Universe:

1. Stop tying characters to real-world wars and major events. Instead of saying a character was in `Nam or the Gulf War, make up a war that echoes the sentiment and ideals of the war you're aiming for. If the war didn't happen in the real world, then there's no specific date to attach to it.

2. Stop saying the date in the books. Any time a character makes reference to "2008" or "1999", they're putting themselves in a particular era, and that sort of thing will just have to be ignored or retconned later. Marvel time should never be mentioned out loud; Only inferred by the look and style.

3. Stop tying the books to a real-world President or celebrity for a quick buck. Yes, the Obama issue of Spider-Man sold a crapload, but now it establishes that what's happening is happening in 2009, with President Obama. In 15 years, when Peter Parker is supposed to be 15 years older and isn't, you'll still have this story of a late-20's Peter Parker/Spider-Man interacting with the newly-elected Obama, and that sets his age in stone. I know Marvel is all about "the Marvel Universe is just like OUR world" but really, it's not, and it's stupid to stick these known figures in there when they establish an exact year by their appearance. it would be better if the President and most famous people were fictional (Lila Cheney, Allison Blair, Norman Osborn, Senator Kelly, etc.) and thus aged the same way as Marvel Superheroes.

4. Stop referencing major real-world events. Tying the Marvel Superheroes to 9/11 was a bad decision, because it establishes that Spider-Man was in his late 20s on September 11, 2001. Instead of a specific real-world event, they should have written a fictional event that echoed the real-world one. It's especially a bad decision to use 9/11 because, in a world with superheroes, it's doubtful 9/11 would have happened in exactly the same way.

In short:
President Kennedy, Bush, Clinton, Obama = Bad for Marvel timeline
Anonymous or fictional President = Good for Marvel timeline

9/11, Pearl Harbor = Bad.
Stamford incident, Secret Invasion = Good.

The War in Viet Nam, Gulf War = Bad.
Secret Invasion, Latvian-Wakandan War = Good.

Stephen Colbert, 1970s KISS = Bad.
Lila Cheney, Alison Blair = Good.

Senator Joe McCarthy = Bad.
Senator Robert Kelly = Good.

At Times Square ball-drop: "Happy 2009!" = Bad.
At Times Square ball-drop: "Happy New Year!" = Good

It's pretty simple to disassociate fictional characters from a specific time... But Marvel doesn't seem to put any effort into it.

 

[Iceburgeruk]

Things that would help the timeline concerns in the 616 Universe:

1. Stop tying characters to real-world wars and major events. Instead of saying a character was in `Nam or the Gulf War, make up a war that echoes the sentiment and ideals of the war you're aiming for. If the war didn't happen in the real world, then there's no specific date to attach to it.

2. Stop saying the date in the books. Any time a character makes reference to "2008" or "1999", they're putting themselves in a particular era, and that sort of thing will just have to be ignored or retconned later. Marvel time should never be mentioned out loud; Only inferred by the look and style.

3. Stop tying the books to a real-world President or celebrity for a quick buck. Yes, the Obama issue of Spider-Man sold a crapload, but now it establishes that what's happening is happening in 2009, with President Obama. In 15 years, when Peter Parker is supposed to be 15 years older and isn't, you'll still have this story of a late-20's Peter Parker/Spider-Man interacting with the newly-elected Obama, and that sets his age in stone. I know Marvel is all about "the Marvel Universe is just like OUR world" but really, it's not, and it's stupid to stick these known figures in there when they establish an exact year by their appearance. it would be better if the President and most famous people were fictional (Lila Cheney, Allison Blair, Norman Osborn, Senator Kelly, etc.) and thus aged the same way as Marvel Superheroes.

4. Stop referencing major real-world events. Tying the Marvel Superheroes to 9/11 was a bad decision, because it establishes that Spider-Man was in his late 20s on September 11, 2001. Instead of a specific real-world event, they should have written a fictional event that echoed the real-world one. It's especially a bad decision to use 9/11 because, in a world with superheroes, it's doubtful 9/11 would have happened in exactly the same way.

In short:
President Kennedy, Bush, Clinton, Obama = Bad for Marvel timeline
Anonymous or fictional President = Good for Marvel timeline

9/11, Pearl Harbor = Bad.
Stamford incident, Secret Invasion = Good.

The War in Viet Nam, Gulf War = Bad.
Secret Invasion, Latvian-Wakandan War = Good.

Stephen Colbert, 1970s KISS = Bad.
Lila Cheney, Alison Blair = Good.

Senator Joe McCarthy = Bad.
Senator Robert Kelly = Good.

At Times Square ball-drop: "Happy 2009!" = Bad.
At Times Square ball-drop: "Happy New Year!" = Good

It's pretty simple to disassociate fictional characters from a specific time... But Marvel doesn't seem to put any effort into it.

That seems great for future events. And seems a winning formula to avoid future annoyance (marvel will ignore your wise advice though as the spidey and obama comic illustrates)

But there`s no reason to do that for historical events. If marvel came up with a world war one superteam now then there is no point in using a stand in war for the great war. When you are doing retroactive characters there is no need for beating around the bush.

I know though that you didn`t so much mean that so I`ll simply leave that and say I agree with you on the point that from now on marvel shouldn`t refer to real world stuff but they are fools so they will.

 

[Harlekin]

I don't see why we need to care. I'm a continuity geek, but I don't bother with the sliding timescale.

 

[Iceburgeruk]

I don't see why we need to care. I'm a continuity geek, but I don't bother with the sliding timescale.

I personally see it that if marvel insist that the 60s/70s and 80s stories didn`t happen the way i read them and instead occured in the last 15 years then i want my 60s/70s and 80s eras back even if in retroactive form.

If I can`t have spidey gabbin` with Kennedy then I want retroactive 60s superhero gabbin` with kennedy in his place.

I actually would love that idea.

They should look up all the notorious panels which are now out of continuity because they feature marvel characters in 60s/70s/80s settings or talking to 60s/70s/80s presidents/personalities and swap the marvel characters for retroactive historical superheroes. So instead of the FF meeting the beatles you have some 60s retroactive superhero team. Instead of the avengers meeting Reagen you have retroactive 80s superheroes. So those moments sorta still happened but with retroactive heroes.

I know that might disrupt the old issues but these days marvel disavows all knowledge of any marvel characters meeting ex-presidents or the beatles so we might as well take what we can get.