Mandarin/Super Soldiers Chronology issue

[Nausiated]

Been reading up on the Mandarin recently and there is a section of his chronology that sticks out to me. It is the section here dealing with his appearances during the period of 1991 to 1999.

I have bolded the appearances that I have issue with.

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IM 259
IM 260
IM 261
IM 262
IM 263
IM 264
IM 265
IM 266
IM 267
IM 268
IM 269
M/TU3 19
IM 270
IM 271
IM 272
IM 273
IM 274
IM 275 (1 - 25:1)
IM 307 (18:1 - 18:2)-FB
IM 275 (28)
SSOLS 7
IM 307 (18:3)-FB
IM 306
IM 307
IM 308
IM 309
M/CP 169
M/CP 170
WARM 8
IM 310
FW 6
WARM 9
IM 311
FW 7
WARM 10
IM 312
GLX-MAS-FB
IM3 1
IM3 2
IM3 3
IM3 6-BTS
IM3 7-BTS
IM3 8-FB-BTS
IM3 8-BTS
IM3 9
IM3 10
-----

Breaking it all down it is as follows:

IM 259-266 - Armor Wars II: The Mandarin is recruited by Chen Hsu to wake up Fin Fang Foom as part of a plot to take over mainland China.

IM 267-269 - Mandarin reminisces about his first encounter with Iron Man (revealing he was active BTS in TOS 39)

M/TU3 19 - A flashback story that takes place in "1991", where the Mandarin commissions a new ring out of a chunk of Cosmic Cube. Fights Wolverine and Cable, because 90's.

IM 270-275: The Dragon Seed Saga - Mandarin, Chen Hsu, Fin Fang Foom, and the Dragon Lords try to take over China. The Chinese government enlists Iron Man to stop him. This battle ends when Iron Man channels his power through the Mandarin's rings to destroy the Dragon Lords. This ultimately amputates the Mandarin's hands at the wrist and scatters his rings to the four winds.

SSOLS 7: The Mandarin works with Shinobi Shaw to trick the Super Soldiers into attacking Hydra and the Warlord in order to get them out of the opium market as it was cutting into their profits. It should be noted that the Mandarin has both his hands and the the Rings of Power.

IM 307 FB/IM 306-309: The Mandarin -- still without hands or rings -- wakes up from his coma. He grows new drangon-esque hands, travels into the Valley of the Dragon and goes looking for his missing rings.

M/CP 169-170: The Mandarin finds his missing rings

WARM 8/IM 310/FW 6/WARM 9/IM 311/FW 7/WARM 10/IM 312 - Hands of the Mandarin Saga: The Mandarin attempts to use the mystical Heart of Darkness to revert the world back into a feudal society bereft of technology. He's stopped by Iron Man and Force Works. When the Heart of Darkness is banished, the Mandarin finds himself transformed into a lowly janitor with no memory of his past.

GLX-MAS-FB - SHIELD has records of a time when Squirrel Girl defeated the Mandarin in a one-on-one battle.

IM3 1-8 - Post Heroes Return, the Mandarin learns that Iron Man is still alive and begins keeping track of his activities as they are starting to interfere with current master plan.

IM3 9-10: Mandarin reveals that he is back alive and well. He explains how he freed himself from his janitorial prison. Defeated by Iron Man but escapes.
-------------------------

As stated above, I have issue with the placement of SSOLS 7 and GLX-MAS-FB because of their placements put them at odds with the rest of the Mandarin's chronology at from this period.

SSOLS 7 is easily the biggest problem. It was published in October, 1993. It was published between IM 275 (December, 1991) and IM 306 (July, 1994). This was the period in which the Mandarin (a) had his hands amputated (b) lost his power rings and (c) was in a coma. Yet in SSOLS 7 his appearance is in complete contradiction since he is awake and still has his hands and rings. Also, the Mandarin is depicted as having short air whereas all of his appearances at this time had him with long hair past his shoulders. I took a look at the most recent profile for the Mandarin that covers this period (Vol. 7 of the Hardcover A-Z handbooks) and this appearance is not mentioned. Unsurprising since its not a major event and the handbooks usually omit minor appearances like this. The Official Index for Iron Man also lists SSOLS 7 as being Mandy's next appearance after IM 275, but I suspect that's because the Chronology was sourced to list those appearances.

At any rate, the way the Mandarin appears in SSOLS is an impossibility where it is currently sitting given what was going on in the Iron Man titles before and after the fact. I think the issue stems from the fact that Super Soldiers was a Marvel UK title and it's a case of (pardon the pun) one hand not knowing what the other was doing. Marvel UK had to be careful that they weren't using characters that were actively being used by their US parent or had plans on being used. My assumption here is that after the end of the Dragon Seed Saga nobody really had any future plans for the Mandarin so Marvel UK used it. When the Hands of the Mandarin storyline was written a year after the SSOL appearance Len Kaminski either didn't know or cared that Marvel UK used the character.

Anyway, the Mandarin's appearance here just doesn't work unless you want to believe that this is some kind of impostor or a robot or some other such thing. It's all because of those hands. If you shift his appearance forward it can't fit because when he does get his hands back they're reptilian and they don't become normal again until IM3 1.

I then took a look at the characters that were also involved in this story. You have the UK original characters the Super Soldiers, you've got Hydra, you got SHIELD and Nick Fury, and you also have Shinobi Shaw.

Wasn't about to do a deep dive into Fury and Hydra here, but these appearances are so generic they could easily be moved around during the 1991-1993 period without disrupting too much.

When you take a look at Shinobi you get some tidbits about what was going on: Shinobi mentions the "points game" he has going with the Gamesmaster, which places this as happening during the period where he was with the Upstarts and they were doing their thing. Now the Gamesmaster, Shinobi, and the Upstarts all made their appearances in the tail end of 1991. Shinobi in X-Factor #67 (July, 1991) and the Grandmaster and the Upstarts appeared in UXM 283 (December 1991). The thing I note is that while the Upstarts and their game was first *see* in UXM 283, they were already well established, suggesting that they had been working on this scheme for a period of time before hand. As such, I think it's entirely possible to push this appearance of the Mandarin back to sometime prior to the Dragon Seed Saga. This would also put it somewhere in the ballpark of Shinobi Shaw's appearances in UXM 281-283.

However, for this to work one would have to assume that Super Soldiers takes place during an earlier time period than when it was published. The series only ran for 8 issues from April to November 1993. The title characters surprisingly have very little interactions with other characters, even in the Marvel UK envelope of characters. US Agent guest stars in about 4 issues, the last of which guest stars Captain America and issue #8 had a cameo appearance by the Punisher. Then the series got cancelled.

Anyway, like Fury, I haven't done a deep dive into the US Agent and Cap chronologies, but these appearances are so fast and loose I think it would be fairly easy to shift their appearances backwards so it would coincide where I'm suggesting to move Shinobi and Mandarin's chronologies. Cap's appearance is a two page cameo, it'd be quite easy to move that. The only indicators for US Agent's appearances is that the first issue he's a member of the Avengers West Coast alongside Spider-Woman. That's been true as early as AWC2 74 (September, 1991) so I'm quite sure you could roll back his appearances to that period of time without much trouble.

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This brings up the next appearance I have issue with: GLX-MAS-FB

Current the chronology places this between IM 312 when the Mandarin was turned into a janitor and forgot his past and IM3 1 when he's back to normal and scheming again.

GLX-MAS-FB isn't even really a proper flashback. It's just a single image on display on a SHIELD computer screen showing a past battle between Squirrel Girl and the Mandarin. The entire story is a running gag about how Squirrel Girl can somehow go up against insanely powerful foes and defeat them due to some kind of inanity. The appearance is a throw away joke. The story was published in February, 2006, years after both IM 312 and IM3 1.

At any rate, the GLX-MAS-FB appearance shows the Mandarin back to normal, with human hands, and with his power rings.

So here's the issue: In IM3 9-10, the Mandarin reveals that he somehow freed himself from his janitor prison and began plotting another attempt to take over the world. His return coincides with Iron Man's return after Onslaught/Heroes Reborn/Heroes Return. In fact, all of the stories during those first 10 issues of IM3 implicitly state that the Mandarin was laying low while he was building up weapons and resources for his latest world domination scheme. He kept his return a secret the entire time. So to me, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that he would have exposed himself to fight someone as f-ing useless as Squirrel Girl and allowing SHIELD to get a record of it in between that time. It just doesn't make any narrative sense. Particularly since everyone seems to be surprised the Mandarin's back when he reveals himself in IM3 9-10.

It makes more sense that this Squirrel Girl story happens after IM3 10.

----------------

With that said, I would recommend the two appearances in question to be moved as follows:

IM 259
IM 260
IM 261
IM 262
IM 263
IM 264
IM 265
IM 266
IM 267
IM 268
IM 269
M/TU3 19
SSOLS 7
IM 270
IM 271
IM 272
IM 273
IM 274
IM 275 (1 - 25:1)
IM 307 (18:1 - 18:2)-FB
IM 275 (28)
IM 307 (18:3)-FB
IM 306
IM 307
IM 308
IM 309
M/CP 169
M/CP 170
WARM 8
IM 310
FW 6
WARM 9
IM 311
FW 7
WARM 10
IM 312
IM3 1
IM3 2
IM3 3
IM3 6-BTS
IM3 7-BTS
IM3 8-FB-BTS
IM3 8-BTS
IM3 9
IM3 10
GLX-MAS-FB

--------

So to reiterate why I think these moves should happen are as follows:

SSOLS 7: Pushing the appearance back to prior to the Dragon Seed Saga fits the character at the time: The Mandarin has his hands and his rings. There is still the issue about the length of his hair, but I think that is such a minor thing. Perhaps the guy is wearing a wig. Not impossible when you consider Invincible Iron Man Annual #1 when its revealed that the Mandarin's whole backstory is made up to hide the fact that he's actually of mixed race. The guy is so desperate to prove that he's OG Chinese I wouldn't be surprised if he put on a wig to make himself look more "traditional", but I digress.

GLX-MAS-FB: It's a joke appearance that was published years after the fact. It's current position diminishes the "big reveal" between the Mandarin's previous defeat and his return. Doesn't make sense based on the narrative of the stories between it.

Extra Footwork Needed: If the entire run of SSOLS needs to be pushed back to reflect these changes, then appearances by US Agent, Captain America, Nick Fury, and the Punisher will need to be re-examined. There is also an appearance by members of the X-Men but those are in a flashback from "a few years ago" based on the narrative and wouldn't necessarily be affected by this change.

Thoughts?

[michel]

I'm OK for moving GLX-MAS-FB.

For SSOLS 7, as you noticed, more characters are involved, so I would need a more complete analysis.

[Captain Good]

Extra Footwork Needed: If the entire run of SSOLS needs to be pushed back to reflect these changes, then appearances by US Agent, Captain America, Nick Fury, and the Punisher will need to be re-examined. There is also an appearance by members of the X-Men but those are in a flashback from "a few years ago" based on the narrative and wouldn't necessarily be affected by this change.

For SSOLS 7, as you noticed, more characters are involved, so I would need a more complete analysis.

SSOLS 5 has a London teenager comment on the Super NES (released in the UK in April 1992) and SSOLS 6 has a couple of explicit references to 1993. Can these be dismissed as topical if trying to make the events of this series contemporary with 1991 publications?

[michel]

I guess so, the Mandarin's hands and rings seem more important.

[Captain Good]

Thanks, just wanted to make sure it would be usable before I started on the Extra Footwork

[Captain Good]

My attempt to bring other characters' chronologies in line with Nausiated's proposed move for SSOLS 7 for the Mandarin, above.

Supersoldiers #1–5 have Joseph Hauer waking from cryo-stasis or whatever and rampaging from England to Thailand and back to find out the truth about what happened to him and his comrades, with U.S.Agent in pursuit. I've tried to place this as early as possible based on U.S.Agent and Spider-Woman's membership in the Avengers West Coast.

GYRICH, HENRY PETER
NOM 4
SSOLS 1 move to here
SSOLS 2 move to here
SSOLS 3-FB move to here
NOM2 1-FB
...
XFOR 20
SSOLS 1 move from here
SSOLS 2 move from here
SSOLS 3-FB move from here
XU 2

SPIDER-WOMAN II/JULIA CORNWALL CARPENTER
AWC 74
SSOLS 1 move to here
WM2 2
...
AWC 95
SSOLS 1 move from here
USA 1

USAGENT/CAPT. JOHN WALKER/"JACK DANIELS"
AWC 74
SSOLS 1 move to here
SSOLS 2 move to here
SSOLS 3-FB move to here
SSOLS 3 move to here
SSOLS 4 move to here
SSOLS 5 move to here
A 332-BTS
...
AWC 95
SSOLS 1 move from here
SSOLS 2 move from here
SSOLS 3-FB move from here
SSOLS 3 move from here
SSOLS 4 move from here
SSOLS 5 move from here
WM2 24

CAPTAIN AMERICA/STEVE ROGERS
CA 386
SSOLS 5 move to here
WOSM 75
...
CA 418
SSOLS 5 move from here
A 360

Supersoldiers #6–7 seem to take place some months later. The team are now funded by the British government and have a huge underground base in central London. I have tried to place this as late as possible before IM270 because of the issue regarding X-Factor, see below.

FURY, COL. NICHOLAS "NICK" JOSEPH
P:POV 4
SSOLS 6 move to here
SSOLS 7 move to here
IG 1
...
C 4-BTS
SSOLS 6 move from here
SSOLS 7 move from here
CA 420

SHAW, SHINOBI
{XF 67}
SSOLS 7 move to here
UX 281
...
UX301
SSOLS 7 move from here
NW 43

Supersoldiers #8 shows them as an experienced team with many missions behind them when they are privatised due to cost (in a classic Tory government move). This could take place months or even years after #7 so I haven't bothered to try and move the Punisher's appearance.

In #6 Hauer describes his team's relationship with the government thus: "they fund us as an autonomous superhero response unit, rather like the American group X-Factor." This is a reference to the new X-Factor in X-Factor #71. Moving SSOLS 6 forward a couple of years also means moving XF 71 forward slightly from where the MCP currently has it, to before Infinity Gauntlet. At first I thought this would be so disruptive it would make the whole thing impossible, but as far as I can tell the only characters it would affect are as follows:

CYCLOPS II/SCOTT SUMMERS/"SLYM DAYSPRING"
XF 70
DAMCON3 4
XF 71 move to here
IG 3 (11:1 - 11:2)
IG 3 (11:3 - 12:2)-OP ~ SS3 54-OP
IG 3 (12:3 - 40)
IG 4 (1 - 3)
DSSS 33
IG 4 (4 - 40)
IG 6-BTS
XF 71 move from here
SAVW 19

LOCKJAW
XF 67
A 334
A 336
A 337
A 338
XF 71 move to here
SS3 60
XF 71 move from here
XF 72

QUICKSILVER/PIETRO MAXIMOFF
A 334
XF 71 move to here
IG 2-BTS
IG 6-BTS
XF 71 move from here
XF 72

[michel]

SSOLS 1-5: I would leave NOM2 1-FB just after NOM 1-4 for Gyrich, but otherwise I'm OK.

GYRICH, HENRY PETER
NOM 2 1-FB
SSOLS 1 move to here
SSOLS 2 move to here
SSOLS 3-FB move to here
XFOR 5
...

SSOLS 6-7: OK for your placement, but while checking it I noticed there seems to be a problem with M/TU3 19. The Mandarin has it between IM 269 and 270. Wolverine has M/TU3 19 before DAMCON3 4 and Iron Man has DAMCON3 4 before IM 258. But Chen Hsu is first introduced in IM 260! I'll be glad if someone could look at this.

XF 71: you need to move XF 71-73, but it seems possible, there's a footnote placing XF 71 just before X2 1 but we don't move it that far earlier, and I didn't see a reference to IG or the snap.

Nice teamwork Nausiated and Captain Good, thank you to the both of you!

[dimadick]

Extra Footwork Needed: If the entire run of SSOLS needs to be pushed back to reflect these changes, then appearances by US Agent, Captain America, Nick Fury, and the Punisher will need to be re-examined. There is also an appearance by members of the X-Men but those are in a flashback from "a few years ago" based on the narrative and wouldn't necessarily be affected by this change.
Thoughts?

There are several gaps in the Super Soldiers' appearances:

*In issue #1, Joseph Hauer wakes up after having spend quite some time in suspended animation. Hauer has lost part of his own memories, so he heads back to the borders between Cambodia and Thailand in search for answers. Issues #1-5 are one continuous storyline, and conclude with the Soldiers teaming up with Captain America and the USAgent for an attack on the headquarters of the Empire Chermical Enterprises (ECE).

*Issues #6-7 are a different storyline. The Super Soldiers have been re-hired by the British government, which loans them to SHIELD for a single mission in the Savage Land. The Soldiers are unaware that they are actually pawns in the schemes of the Mandarin and Shinobi Shaw.

*Issue 8, begins a new storyline. The Super Soldiers return from an uneventful mission, and learn that the British government has cut off their funding. The government sells their services to Mercy Corporation, and the remaining members of the team are relocated to Alaska in preparation for further missions.

*Issues #9 and 10 were supposed to involve the "Red Mist" crossover storyline, but were never published.