TIME-TWISTERS/TIME-KEEPERS
Members: Ast, Van, and Zanth
First Appearance: The Mighty Thor (Vol. 1) #243, January 1976 (Time-Twisters); The Mighty Thor (Vol. 1) #282, April 1979 (Time-Keepers)
Powers: The Time-Keepers (above) or the Time-Twisters (below) are the last living creatures to be born before the end of time (the common endpoint for all surviving timelines in the multiverse) prior to the heat death of the universe.
The infinitely bureaucratic Time Variance Authority accumulated vast amounts of temporal energy through their work, storing it as a "pension plan" for their retiring employees to draw upon. At the end of time, the last surviving director of the TVA known as He Who Remains used the pent up temporal energy to create three hyper-evolving lifeforms to survive into the next universe and pass on the knowledge of the current one. He miscalculated, however, and created the vicious Time-Twisters who rampaged through the timestream. Thor and Jane Foster travelled to the end of time prior to the Time-Twisters creation and convinced He Who Remains to abort their creation. He agreed, and after Thor departed He went on to create the more benevolent Time-Keepers.
The act represents the last divergence in the timestream of the universe: In one alternate reality, the Time-Twisters were aborted and the Time-Keepers came to prominence (Earth-794282), while in the other (Earth-761243), the Time-Twisters emerged as planned. The Twisters and Keepers are therefore locked in a struggle for control of time itself, both trios attempting to manipulate the timestream to ensure one "final future" or the other gains prominence at the end of time, and determine which trio will pass on to the next universe. By manipulating the flow of events in all the alternate realities and possibilities leading up to the end of time, they influence which of the two final outcomes of the universe is more likely.
Both the Keepers and the Twisters are embodiments of massive amounts of temporal energy, giving them god-like powers over time. They can travel through eras at will, transporting to any point in time, space, and variant dimensions. They can "freeze" time relative to themselves, in order to passively observe a particular moment in time, and allow other beings to exist in that frozen moment with them. By shifting partially out of synch with a specific time zone, they become virtually undetectable by all manner of senses or contact. The Keepers and Twisters can manipulate the flow of time on a given person or object, causing them to unnaturally age into dust or revert to an earlier stage in their lives. They have also demonstrated a variety of other skills such as cross-dimensional telepathic observation and communication, projection of energy as destructive blasts or protective fields, levitation, etc.
1 comment:
The Time-Keepers are the ones who selected Immortus for tutoring in the ways of time. The Time-Keepers' mandate to Immortus was to control the development of the timelines to ensure they would rise at the end of time instead of the Time-Twisters. Immortus’s role as the time custodian was entirely focused on their single, self-interested goal.
Because of the position they occupy in the cosmic hierarchy, they’re the ones who authorized the Watchers (Uatu, particularly) to have those extra-dimensional portals installed to view alternate realities/parallel timelines/Earths (What If? realities).
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