Is Kang Related to the Fantastic Four's Reed Richards?

Today, we look at how Kang's background was retconned to create a connection to Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four.

In Abandoned an' Forsaked, we examine comic book stories and ideas that were not only abandoned, but also had the stories/plots specifically "overturned" by a later writer (as if they were a legal precedent).

This is an interesting one, as I'll probably have to do a follow-up one to this piece based on later writers who decided to go a whole OTHER direction, but for now, let's just examine the basic set-up of how it was revealed that Kang was related to Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four.

Recently, I wrote about how Jack Kirby and Stan Lee used the shared continuity of the Marvel Universe beautifully in their introduction of Kang the Conqueror in 1964. First, in Fantastic Four Annual #2 (by Kirby, Lee and Chic Stone), we see that Doom survived his seeming death in Fantastic Four #23 by being rescued by the time-traveling villain, Rama-Tut, who the Fantastic Four had fought in Fantastic Four #19. The two men have a trippy talk about how they're related to each other, or are they THE SAME PERSON!?!?

In the end, Rama-Tut sends Doom back to Earth and is inspired himself to go into the future and get into some Doom-style trouble, which leads to the Avengers #8 later that same month, where Rama-Tut returns to the 20th Century as Kang the Conqueror.

So that was just the established deal for many years. Kang and Doom are maybe sort of related (OR THE SAME PERSON?!?), until this was changed in a seemingly completely unrelated Fantastic Four storyline in 1984. In Fantastic Four #272 (by John Byrne), the Fantastic Four head to an alternate reality's Earth, where Reed Richards is looking for his long-lost father, after Reed discovered a version of Doom's time machine in his father's old laboratory. They discovered that this Earth was different because science developed during the period that was the "Dark Ages" in our reality, so things got much more advanced. This, though, just meant that this world was able to go to a nuclear holocaust a lot sooner than our world. It was then rebuilt by a mysterious visitor from another reality, known as the Warlord. He was the leader of their new society and Reed Richards logically assumed that his father was this "Warlord."

Meanwhile, though, the Fantastic Four ran afoul of this mysterious warrior woman named Cassandra. She returns home and changed her outfit and puts on much more demure clothing and goes to visit her husband and son. Her husband? Nathaniel Richards!!

In the following issue, the Fantastic Four figure out that the Warlord means bad news for Earth, and so they set out to stop the Warlord, even if it is Reed's dad. There is an epic battle and in the aftermath, the Warlord is discovered to have been killed due to Wyatt Wingfoot sabotaging an anti-matter cannon that the Warlord was going to use on the Fantastic Four.

And then we learn that the Warlord wasn't Nathaniel at all, but Cassandra, who was playing both sides of the field, convincing people that she was really Nathaniel while convincing him that she was just a demure wife and mother, catering to his every need while she used his technology to dominate the world. The Fantastic Four figure that Nathaniel will want to come back to their Earth, but he decides to remain and take care of his son and fix this world...

And then, out of nowhere, we fast forward and see that Nathaniel succeeded in making his world a paradise, but far into the future, one of his descendants got bored of it all and decided to travel back in time to become Rama-Tut. Yep, Kang is from Nathaniel Richards' alternate Earth!

As the page notes, this was Byrne doing a solid for his friend and colleague, Roger Stern, who was about to do an excellent Avengers story involving Kang and so in Avengers #269 the following year (by Stern, John Buscema and Tom Palmer), Kang repeats the story of how he came from Nathaniel Richards' reality...

This, by the way, was a specific sort of "crossover" that Byrne and Stern were big fans of, where Marvel writers would introduce concepts without spelling it out, so that careful readers who collected multiple Marvel comic books would understand what was going on before the characters in the comics would even know. So Stern, for instance, is careful not to actually say that Kang's ancestor was Nathaniel Richards, so you would only know it was Richards if you had read the earlier Fantastic Four story. Interesting approach to things.

Stern, though, goes further and even retcons Kang's meeting with Doom, now saying he obviously recognized Doom and he was just giving him fake info to make Doom trust him as an ally, so the whole "We might be the same person!" was just nonsense.

There was one last piece of the puzzle (well, of THIS puzzle, you know these things are never that simple), and so in What If...? #39 by Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier, Roy Thomas, Gavin Curtis and Ian Akin, we learn that Kang's name actually literally IS Nathaniel Richards, named after his ancestor! This was the first time that this was revealed, but it is interesting how quickly it was adopted by people. It's funny how "facts" about characters can sometimes take on an air of "meant to be" around them, when, as we see, it's often stuff introduced decades after the fact.