TIME BUBBLE

 

 

First Appearance: The Mighty Thor (Vol. 1) #372, October 1986 (first mentioned); Avengers (Vol. 1) #296, October 1988 (first seen)

History and Functions: In an alternate future timeline, the world devourer Galactus nearly died on Earth-8810, and Tiamut the Black Celestial (aka the Dreaming Celestial, who had long ago been expelled for the cosmic Celestials' ranks for unspecified crimes) restored him, but altered his makeup, such that his hunger had become ravenous and his appetite increased geometrically. The Black Celestial's intent was that Galactus would eventually consume the entire universe, including the other Celestials. Meanwhile, Tiamut summoned an army of Deviants to construct probability machinery that would ensure that they would still exist when all else had become void; Tiamut would then become the nucleus and founder of a new reality. As Galactus grew in size, he eventually utilized a machine which generated a black hole, drawing more and more mass into itself, which in turn caused both it and him to grow in size, and his hunger increased as well. Eventually, around 20 years after the modern era, the force generated by this massive black hole began to warp time around it.

Investigating the time warp, the infinitely bureaucratic cross-dimensional temporal regulatory agency known as the Time Variance Authority (TVA) unwittingly exacerbated it, creating a 15-year bubble of time around it. This bubble eventually extended across all timelines, limiting time travel in either direction past that point. Within the Time Bubble, the black hole's massive gravitation virtually halted time, such that only beings of massive power or possessing time-manipulation abilities could function. The Council of Cross-Time Kangs (an organization of beings who had usurped the identity of various incarnations of Kang the Conqueror throughout the multiverse) learned of the existence of the Time Bubble, and recognized it as containing a weapon of some sort. Infiltrating the Council, Kang-Nebula (Ravonna, the future Terminatrix) learned of the Bubble. Along with Kang-Nebula, a trio of Kangs (including a divergent counterpart of the prime Kang) attempted to use the Avengers to penetrate the Time Bubble, and they were lost forever while the Avengers escaped.

The Fantastic Four's Reed Richards later discovered the Time Bubble and, using his Radical Dodecahedron, Reed powered their timesled Rosebud II, with which the FF (assisted by Iron Man/Tony Stark and Thor) entered the zone around the Bubble, generating hundreds of divergences in the process (or perhaps just showing hundreds of divergent timelines converging on a single point).
The aforementioned Kang trio latched onto Rosebud and were drawn into the Bubble. They were destroyed with the aid of the TVA-sent freelance peacekeeping agent Death's Head, who vanished from the Time Bubble when a blast from one of the Kangs damaged his craft's probability generator. As they headed for the nexus of the Bubble, they observed the mammoth form of Galactus and recognized his involvement.

The Fantastic Four tried to destroy the device generating the black hole via the weapons cache of the entire Shi'ar empire, aided by Gladiator (Kallark), but Tiamut revived and teleported the weapons directly into the black hole, destroying it in one fell swoop. Journeying to the Earth of that reality, Reed duped the computer of the Black Celestial into revealing his origins. Gladiator then crashed the remaining floating weapons depot into the Black Celestials' base, destroying it and apparently himself. However, the Invisible Woman (Sue Storm Richards) and the Human Torch (Johnny Storm), assaulted by Kang-Nebula, were trapped there and seemingly destroyed in the explosion, but Kang-Nebula had activated Sue's force field to save them all.

Meanwhile, thinking that Sue and Johnny had perished in the explosion, Reed vengefully taunted the Black Celestial with his plans to travel back in time and inform his brethren in the Celestials of his plans, so that they might stop him before he ever brought them to fruition. Teleporting back and forth with the space of that universe and within the time period of the bubble, Reed allowed the Tiamut to grow ever closer to them, until they led it to the point of no return from Galactus' event horizon/black hole. At the last second, Reed signaled Thor to form a magical warp to teleport them a safe distance away, while the Black Celestial was pulled into and destroyed by the black hole. For a brief instant, Galactus' raging appetite (and thus his sanity) were appeased, but this soon passed, and the consumption occurred at an even more accelerated rate from the vast influx of mass and power of the Celestial.

Learning of Sue and Johnny's survival, Reed led the group to Taa II, Galactus' worldship, where he located the Ultimate Nullifier. Kang-Nebula had been possessing Sue, and she attempted to usurp the Nullifier, but she fell for a trap set by Iron Man under Reed's direction, as Reed had suspected her involvement. Stunned by the electrical shock, Kang-Nebula was forced out of Sue and lost into the atmosphere of the Bubble. Returning to Galactus, the combined full energies of Thor, Iron Man, and the Torch's nova flame briefly restored Galactus' sanity, and he recognized the Nullifier as Reed gave it to him. Wishing to end his torment, Galactus activated the Nullifier, and a sphere of nothing consumed him and then the entire universe, effectively destroying the Time Bubble.

The Fantastic Four and their allies narrowly escaped the destruction; Thor and Iron Man fell off the timesled and back to Earth-616), while the Fantastic Four instead arrived in the divergent reality of Earth-9061, in which the Earth is ruled by a robotic Josef Stalin. All individuals who were seemingly destroyed by the Bubble eventually returned to existence.