#zeppelin is an inauspicious name to have if you don't want to crash and burn

[thebibliomancer]

50 More Days of Comics! 35/50: TIMEWALKER #6 (1995)

Harbinger Wars Part 1 of 3

Ah, Valiant Comics! A Valiant effort to offer something different to Marvel and DC!

Of course, this is in 1995 so Jim Shooter has already been kicked out of his own company. And also after the disastrous Deathmate crossover that followed that ousting.

As near as I can tell, Timewalker is like Quantum Leap but with time travel. Ivar the Timewalker is immortal and can sense time arcs that connect different time periods. But he has no control over which time periods the time arcs time go to so time after time he has to walk through time hoping that in time he finds the time arc that will take him back in time to ancient Egypt and the woman he loves.

Judging by the futuristic tanks on the cover, he’s goofed up again.

He finds himself smack dab in the literal middle of East Las Angeles 2062 AD between the Harbinger forces and the resistance at the dawn of the Harbinger War. Part 1 of the war, in fact.

Both sides shoot at him, each thinking he’s with the other, but a geomancer named Lucinda tells the resistance soldiers to stand down, recognizing Ivar.

And in one of the best time travel tropes, while she knows him, he doesn’t know her yet. But he pretends he knows her because that’s just simpler and his linear timeline gives him a headache.

Toyo Harada’s Harbinger forces are basically taking over the world and very few people actually want to get involved enough to stand up to him so there are few and far between ‘free zones.’

The New York free zone is thanks to Aric Dacia and the XO Manowar armor. Which Harada is actually after.

So we see Aric sending the armor into deep space where no one will find it just before Harada shows up pissed off.

They fight and Aric dies but not before fatally shanking Harada. And he would have gotten away with it too except Aric’s young wife walks in on the bloodbath and Harada transfers his mind into her body. Because he can do that.

Harada: “I’ve beaten you, Aric! And I’ve cheated death in the process!! My bones had grown weary... old... With my mind in your wife’s body, I’m young again!”

This is actually vaguely familiar. I think the cliff notes of the Harada Wars were covered in the Rai #0 book which I have for some reason in a non-box. I should really do a Number Days of Comics: Random Comics I Got When I Was a Kid Edition.

Its mostly Spider-Man and mostly falling apart but there’s some other stuff in there too.

Anyway, without so much as an establishing scene, Ivar Timewalker has ditched the resistance group to head to a temple of Ladakh in Tibet to recruit Faith Herbert aka Zeppelin.

Since she was one of the original renegades that fought Harada before the turn of the century, Ivar figures the resistance will listen to her when she tells them to stop fighting and end the war.

Ivar has seen the destruction that the Harbinger Wars wreck and he wants to try to avoid it.

The resistance is generally demoralized right now because they’ve heard that Harada got a new, younger body so any hopes that he’d just eventually die of old age were dashed.

But Zeppelin is here to give a rousing speech!

Zeppelin: “When I was a teenager, I attended Harada’s Foundation school. Then I found out he was just trying to breed an army of Harbingers. My friends and I went renegade. He killed some of them before we were in our twenties. Others were brainwashed and made to do... despicable things. Twenty years ago, I lost one of my best friends. I gave up fighting after that. But the war went on. That’s why I’m here today. We must end it. Now. By taking the battle to Harada!”

Ivar is not pleased. That wasn’t the direction he wanted the resistance to be roused in!

He chastises her on the plane ride to the Final Battle for escalating the slaughter.

Zeppelin: “I know that I’ll have to live with my decision for the rest of my life.”

Ivar Timewalker: “Well, if things go the way I think they will, that’s not going to be a hell of a long time.”

I’m not entirely sure what Ivar’s game plan was anyway. He wanted the resistance to stand down annnnnnd just accept Harada’s iron-fisted and body swapping fueled IMMORTAL rule??

But he argues that actually the Harbinger Wars will be worse than any conflict and carnage in the history of Earth and will result in the end of humanity.

Zeppelin: "Don’t preach to me about something you can’t possibly know! You saw a possible future! Now get off my back!”

When they get at Final Battle, a powered person named Blast gets fastball specialed to the top of Harada’s Tower and promptly explodes himself in an attempt to kill Harada.

It does not work.

And a pissed off Harada flies down to confront the resistance and Zeppelin personally as the issue ends on a pretty cool two-page spread.

Also Ivar gets shot in the shoulder while he’s yelling at everyone to stop fighting.

Not bad. I feel like I’m missing a ton of context here but people look like people and a time traveler trying to stop a war even if it means accepting a dictator to save humanity is... Something. Something new. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a time travel plot go quite like that.

Also, psychic Toyo Harada and his school of gifted youngsters feels like its probably at least taking on the idea of the X-Men darkly.

To this end, he established the Harbinger Foundation to recruit others with paranormal abilities, whom Harada refers to as "harbingers of the next step in human evolution". 

YUP THATS X-MEN ALRIGHT

Also, while wikipeding that I also learned that Zeppelin only has the power of self-levitation. So the person with only flying is going to try to beat up the super psychic guy.

Hats off to Faith Herbert Zeppelin. Whatever else she is, she’s no coward.