Avengers #56

Death Be Not Proud!

by Roy Thomas and John Buscema

Release: September 1968
Format: Comic Book
Genre: Superhero
Audience: YA and Up
Content: Definite Time Travel
Original Language: English

Using Doc Doom’s time platform, the tag-3743 } Wasp sends Cap and the other three 1968 Avengers back to observe Bycky Barnes’s death at the hands of Baron Zemo.

— Michael Main

That’s just what’s begun to torure me! How can I be sure he’s dead? I saw only a single searing blast! If I somehow survived it. . . couldn’t he have, too?

DEBUT

“Death Be Not Proud!,” in The Avengers 56 (Marvel Comics, September 1968).

VARIANTS

1 English variant

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

Circa AD 1940 to 1949
Circa AD 1960 to 1969: starting time at Dooms castle

Timeline Models

Branching Timelines: We don’t know whether all of the Marvel Earths are branching timelines, but Earth-689 appears to have been intentionally created, as we’ll find out in [urlx=work-928)Avengers Annual #2[/urlx].

Time Travel Methods

Time Tethers: Doom’s platform

Themes

Cannot Return to Time Where You Already Exist: Cap does exist twice in the 1940s, but he starts out by saying, “Reed Richards was right! He said we’d be intangible . . . invisible . . . to those of this era! Otherwise, we’d invite disaster . . . by existing in two places at the same time!
Robots or Androids: Zemo’s “hulking humanoid”

Fictional Tags

Ant Man · Giant Man · Goliath
Avengers (Marvel Comics Team)
Black Panther (Marvel Comics)
Bucky Barnes: in a flashback
Captain America
Dr. Doom’s Time Platform
Earth-689 (Marvel Comics): briefly in the final panel, although we don’t know this until [urlx=work-928)Avengers Annual #2[/urlx]
Hawkeye (Marvel Comics)
Marvel’s Numbered Earth Realities: Earth-689 in the final panel
Parallel Universes or Dimensions: Earth-689 in the final panel
Wasp (Marvel Comics)
Zemo (Marvel Comics): in a flashback

Groupings

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY (SPOILERS!)

From Doom’s castle, 1968 ⋙ to England, near the end of World War II. Note: Cap, Black Panther, Goliath, and Hawkeye.
From an unknown time ⋙ to Doom’s Earth-689 castle, 1968. Note: They don’t realize that they’re in a parallel universe until the happenings of Avengers Annual #2.

INDEXER NOTES (SPOILERS!)

Credits—The <a href='https%3A%2F%2Fwww.comics.org%2Fissue%2F22166%2F'>GDC</a> states that for the cover, “Nick Caputo notes inks might be a combination of Klein (Avengers head shots) and Giacoia (Cap and Bucky figures).”