History StableTimeLoop / ComicBooks

* The basic gist of Monarch's backstory in ''ComicBook/Armageddon2001'': [[spoiler:[[ComicBook/HawkAndDove Hawk]] witnesses [[DeadSidekick Dove die]] at Monarch's hands, [[FaceHeelTurn Hawk becomes Monarch]], Monarch travels back in time and kills Dove, rinse and repeat]].

* In ''Amazing ComicBook/SpiderMan Annual'' #20, Arno Stark, the ComicBook/IronMan of 2020, has developed a time machine that received military backing by an atomic bomb project that he is also developing. An anti-war terrorist locks up ComicBook/IronMan's wife and son in the laboratory which contains the bomb, but is killed by Arno soon afterward. To defuse the bomb, Arno uses his time machine to go back to the [[TheEighties 1980s]] to get the terrorist's retina patterns. In doing so, though, ComicBook/IronMan becomes involved in a fight with Spider-Man which results in the child becoming scarred -- giving him the motivation against ComicBook/IronMan in the first place. [[FromBadToWorse It gets worse...]] Not only did Arno not get the retina scan he needed (the scanner was destroyed in the fight), [[spoiler:he is suddenly returned to the future, only to discover that the bomb had detonated prematurely and killed his family.]]
* Creator/AlanMoore's ''ComicBook/{{Supreme}}'' has two stable time loops, one forming the main plot of the initial plot arc, and a second in a single issue as a comic parody of the trope. It's strongly implied that [[spoiler: the mysterious "Supremium" substance that both originally gave Supreme his powers and acts as his "Kryptonite" is what all time-looped matter eventually becomes.]]

* ''ComicBook/FiftyTwo'' has two of them in the ComicBook/BoosterGold plot line. One of them has [[spoiler: Booster fake his death and then travel back in time a few weeks so he can become Supernova and drive Booster to the actions which lead him into the Loop]]. The other has Booster [[spoiler: send Mister Mind back through time after forcing him back into his larval form, to the point where he was discovered by Doctor Sivana who imprisoned him until he was forced to infect Skeets, starting the loop over.]] Both were created due to the actions of [[spoiler: Rip Hunter]].\\

[[spoiler: Rip Hunter]] himself is also a stable time loop: he reveals that he's [[spoiler: Booster Gold's son, who only will come into being because Rip Hunter drafts Booster Gold into his current job as secret protector of the timeline]].

* An issue of ''ComicBook/TheAvengers'' from the Roy Thomas run revealed that back during World War 2, ComicBook/CaptainAmerica was freed from ComicBook/BaronZemo by his own future self after the team travelled back in time.
* ComicBook/MarvelZombies [[spoiler: turns out to be this in Marvel Zombies Return. The zombies were eventually defeated by a redeemed zombie Spiderman and Sandman, but the zombie sentry survives. The Watcher decides that the virus will consume itself, and sends the zombie sentry back in time to become patient 0.]]

* [[ComicBook/TheMightyThor Thor's]] grandfather, Bor, was defeated in battle against Frost Giants. He did not expect them to use magic, and therefore wasn't protected when a sorcerer cursed him and turned him into living snow. He told his son, Odin, to find a stronger sorcerer and undo the curse, but Odin stalled for years. When Thor was born, Odin noticed he had Bor's eyes, and was racked with guilt when Bor's spirit came to him and told him he'd be forgiven if he adopts a child whose father he'd kill in his next war. As it happens, Odin's next war was against Frost Giants as well, and the child whose father he killed was ComicBook/{{Loki}}. Thus was Loki adopted as an Asgardian. [[spoiler: The truth is Loki was the sorcerer who turned Bor into living snow. He returned back in time to do that, and then he appeared to Odin as Bor's spirit and told him to adopt the child. Then he went to his younger self and instructed him exactly what to do and say so to incite war between the Frost Giants and the Asgardians, so he'd be adopted as an Asgardian and become the man he's today.]]
** ''ComicBook/JourneyIntoMysteryGillen'' brings us a whole new one, once again involving Loki. [[spoiler: The reincarnated Kid Loki meets Leah as Hela's handmaiden. He proceeds to write a character based on her into the past of the Serpent. Later, Hela's hand is healed, Leah (having been Hela's literal handmaiden) disappears, and Hela makes a cryptic comment to Loki about how everyone believes he is her father. When Surtur tries to burn the Nine Realms he recruits the girl Loki wrote into the Serpent's past, as she resents Loki [[MetaFiction for not giving her any chance to grow]]. Loki rewrites the girl's story so that she becomes the Leah that he knew. Then things happen in such a way that he ends up asking Hela to send the new Leah to a place as far away from him as possible. Hela sends Leah to the distant past, and reveals to the readers that ''she'' is Leah, all grown up.]]

* In ''ComicBook/XFactor'' it is revealed that the origins of Longshot and Shatterstar, two characters from different centuries in the [[AnotherDimension Mojoverse]], work this way. [[spoiler: During a battle, the demon lord Mephisto blasted Shatterstar into the Mojoverse's past. There he was studied by the scientist Arize, who used his genes to create [[ArtificialHuman Longshot]]. Many years later, Longshot would marry ComicBook/{{Dazzler}}, a human mutant and father a child with her -- Shatterstar himself. The time-traveling Shatterstar took his infant self, and erased Dazzler and Longshot's memories of his birth. He and his partner Rictor then took the infant a century into the future to be raised as a gladiator and play out Shatterstar's life as he remembered it]].\\

* In ''ComicBook/NextMen'', the villain Sathanas goes back in time to 1955 and gives Senator Aldus Hilltop the means to create Project Next Men, which is designed to create superhumans. [[spoiler: At one point, Hilltop has sex with Jasmine (one of the Next Men) and gains the same life-draining power that Sathanas had. He then realizes that he has become Sathanas himself.]]

* In ''ComicBook/TheTransformersMoreThanMeetsTheEye'', [[spoiler:Brainstorm]] decides it would be neat to build a time machine to save his old crush from dying in a POW camp, and sells information to the 'cons to fund his lifelong project. Later, he decides it would be even BETTER to try stopping the war from happening at all. Of course, this is impossible because if the 'cons didn't exist, he couldn't sell himself to them to fund the project, but 'impossible' has never been a word in his vocabulary. So he goes back in time, but is closely followed by the crew of the Lost Light, who think he wants to kill Optimus Prime ''because'' he funded his project through the 'cons. It starts with a huge Energon fluctuation in a mine where [[spoiler: Brainstorm]] first checks in on the past causing an evacuation during which Megatron loses his mentor, but there are other loops too, such as...

* In ''ComicBook/{{DIE}}'', it's eventually revealed that [[spoiler: [[AlternateUniverse Die]] itself is [[GeniusLoci sentient]], and has been reaching through time to ensure its own creation, which it did by manipulating Sol into creating the game it was spawned from, as well as the various famous authors who created the archetypes that Sol based the game on.]]

* In ''ComicBook/TalesFromTheBullyPulpit'', Teddy Roosevelt gets help from the "Teddy of thirty minutes from now" (a reference to the ''Film/BillAndTed'' example below). At the end of the story, the main characters remember to go back and fulfill the time loop before going off on their adventures.

* ''ComicBook/Starman'' has one that only pays off in the final issues. For much of the series, Jack Knight has admitted that he knows very little about the Starman of the Sixties of why his father returned to superheroics after his breakdown due to his guilt for his participation in the Manhattan Project. Eventually, due to magic shenanigans, he's sent back to the sixties, where he meets said Starman - [[spoiler:his own time-lost brother David, living out a year as Starman until he is due to return to his death, which was the start of Jack's own adventures]], and his father, still in the middle of his depression, who he convinces to go to a charity gala... [[spoiler:where he is due to meet his SecondLove, Jack and David's mother]], pulling him out of his funk, back to the superhero life, and closing the loop.

* In ''ComicBook/MoreThanMeetsTheEye'', [[spoiler:Brainstorm]] decides it would be neat to build a time machine to save his old crush from dying in a POW camp, and sells information to the 'cons to fund his lifelong project. Later, he decides it would be even BETTER to try stopping the war from happening at all. Of course, this is impossible because if the 'cons didn't exist, he couldn't sell himself to them to fund the project, but 'impossible' has never been a word in his vocabulary. So he goes back in time, but is closely followed by the crew of the Lost Light, who think he wants to kill Optimus Prime ''because'' he funded his project through the 'cons. It starts with a huge Energon fluctuation in a mine where [[spoiler: Brainstorm]] first checks in on the past causing an evacuation during which Megatron loses his mentor, but there are other loops too, such as...

* In the seventh issue of the ''WesternAnimation/{{Muppet Babies|1984}}'' comic book by Star Comics/Marvel Comics, Fozzie ends up being the one to coin his catchphase of "Wocka Wocka Wocka" after circumstances result in him saying it in front of his prehistoric ancestor.

** In''Superman #657'', during ''Camelot Falls'', Superman is shown a vision of the future, and sees a superhero codenamed Sirocco (which means The Desert Wind in Persian). Later, when Superman visits Iran and befriends Sirocco's present self, he accidentally calls him by that name. The man says the name is cool and asks Supes if he can use it for his codename.

* In ComicBook/MoreThanMeetsTheEye, [[spoiler:Brainstorm]] decides it would be neat to build a time machine to save his old crush from dying in a POW camp, and sells information to the 'cons to fund his lifelong project. Later, he decides it would be even BETTER to try stopping the war from happening at all. Of course, this is impossible because if the 'cons didn't exist, he couldn't sell himself to them to fund the project, but 'impossible' has never been a word in his vocabulary. So he goes back in time, but is closely followed by the crew of the Lost Light, who think he wants to kill Optimus Prime ''because'' he funded his project through the 'cons. It starts with a huge Energon fluctuation in a mine where [[spoiler: Brainstorm]] first checks in on the past causing an evacuation during which Megatron loses his mentor, but there are other loops too, such as...

* In the seventh issue of the ''WesternAnimation/MuppetBabies1984'' comic book by Star Comics/Marvel Comics, Fozzie ends up being the one to coin his catchphase of "Wocka Wocka Wocka" after circumstances result in him saying it in front of his prehistoric ancestor.

** This also kicks off one that ended up being majorly important in ''ComicBook/GrantMorrisonsBatman''. Morrison brought in the cult of the bat god Barbatos, as well as an old plot point that Batman based his costume off an outfit that Thomas Wayne wore to a masquerade ball. It's revealed that the outfit was ritual garb for the cult, based on the purported appearance of Barbatos, who were trying to implicate him as a demon-worshipper. However, ''Return of Bruce Wayne'' reveals that Batman ''is'' Barbatos, or at least, he's the source of the original legend, by way of time traveling to various periods in history where he encountered the cult and repeatedly assuming Batman-like identities. So Batman inspired Barbatos's look, and Barbatos's look inspired Batman.

** ...an adult Rodimus time-travelling to the Hot-Spot where his own spark spawned because Optimus Prime was checking out the Hot-Spot flare up caused by the time travel, and because he was there, he helped save his own freshly forged spark from being harvested for experimentation...

** ...Chromedome stopping Whirl from killing either thug because he thinks it would cause a paradox because they in the future they will kidnap Senator Shockwave, even as he gives away where Shockwave will be by speaking in front of them...

--> [[spoiler:'''Brainstorm:''']] Kind of wish I'd been less ambitious now...

It is notable that this is not the first instance of this occurring in the Mojoverse, as a human stuntwoman from Earth, "Ricochet" Rita Wayword, is turned into the [[MagicKnight warrior-sorceress]] [[Characters/XMenVillains Spiral]] in the Mojoverse's future and then sent back into the past to serve an earlier version of [[Characters/XMenVillains Mojo]] and ultimately facilitate her own transformation into Spiral. Unlike many other dimensions in the Franchise/MarvelUniverse, the Mojoverse does not spawn alternate timelines easily (because it's a "pocket dimension" that's directly tied to the main Marvel Universe; most alternative timelines have their own attached Mojoverse), making such stable time loops possible there.

* In ComicBook/TheNewUniverse, it is revealed that the Old Man is an older Ken Connell, who was thrown back in time and, thanks to the power of the Star Brand, lived for centuries before accidentally initiating the White Event and giving his younger self the Brand.

* In ''Comicbook/{{The Avengers|MarkWaid}}'', [[Comicbook/TheFalcon Sam Wilson]] shouted "AvengersAssemble" while teaming up with a group of Avengers from different eras, including the original 1960s team. Comicbook/TheVision took great pleasure in pointing out the implications of this.

* In ''Amazing Comicbook/SpiderMan Annual'' #20, Arno Stark, the Comicbook/IronMan of 2020, has developed a time machine that received military backing by an atomic bomb project that he is also developing. An anti-war terrorist locks up Comicbook/IronMan's wife and son in the laboratory which contains the bomb, but is killed by Arno soon afterward. To defuse the bomb, Arno uses his time machine to go back to the [[TheEighties 1980s]] to get the terrorist's retina patterns. In doing so, though, Comicbook/IronMan becomes involved in a fight with Spider-Man which results in the child becoming scarred -- giving him the motivation against Comicbook/IronMan in the first place. [[FromBadToWorse It gets worse...]] Not only did Arno not get the retina scan he needed (the scanner was destroyed in the fight), [[spoiler:he is suddenly returned to the future, only to discover that the bomb had detonated prematurely and killed his family.]]
* Creator/AlanMoore's ''Comicbook/{{Supreme}}'' has two stable time loops, one forming the main plot of the initial plot arc, and a second in a single issue as a comic parody of the trope. It's strongly implied that [[spoiler: the mysterious "Supremium" substance that both originally gave Supreme his powers and acts as his "Kryptonite" is what all time-looped matter eventually becomes.]]

* ''ComicBook/FiftyTwo'' has two of them in the Comicbook/BoosterGold plot line. One of them has [[spoiler: Booster fake his death and then travel back in time a few weeks so he can become Supernova and drive Booster to the actions which lead him into the Loop]]. The other has Booster [[spoiler: send Mister Mind back through time after forcing him back into his larval form, to the point where he was discovered by Doctor Sivana who imprisoned him until he was forced to infect Skeets, starting the loop over.]] Both were created due to the actions of [[spoiler: Rip Hunter]].\\

* In Comicbook/TheNewUniverse, it is revealed that the Old Man is an older Ken Connell, who was thrown back in time and, thanks to the power of the Star Brand, lived for centuries before accidentally initiating the White Event and giving his younger self the Brand.
* From ''Comicbook/TheSimpsons'' comics:

* Comicbook/SheHulk once dealt with a rather complicated one for her law firm. The case: A billionaire named Charles Czarkowski shot an unarmed man (dubbed "John Doe") in the back, in broad daylight, in front of a dozen eye-witnesses, ''and'' it was caught on film. Czarkowski claimed that before the shooting he received a message from the future warning that John Doe was destined to shoot him, and Czarkowski shot him in self-defense. Fearing for his life when a time-robot attacked the courtroom, Czarkowski traveled through time, used a DNA scrambler to alter his appearance, and tried to send a message back in time to warn his past self. But when he saw his altered face in the mirror he realized that ''he'' was John Doe all along. The message he sent to warn himself accidentally implicated his future self in the murder of his past self. Then the [[TimePolice Time Variance Authority]] showed up and forced Czarkowski to go back in time again and get shot to maintain the time loop. On the plus side, the TVA had to drop the attempted murder charge against him.
* An issue of ''Comicbook/TheAvengers'' from the Roy Thomas run revealed that back during World War 2, Comicbook/CaptainAmerica was freed from Comicbook/BaronZemo by his own future self after the team travelled back in time.
* Comicbook/MarvelZombies [[spoiler: turns out to be this in Marvel Zombies Return. The zombies were eventually defeated by a redeemed zombie Spiderman and Sandman, but the zombie sentry survives. The Watcher decides that the virus will consume itself, and sends the zombie sentry back in time to become patient 0.]]
* Robo finds himself in one of these in ''Comicbook/AtomicRobo and the Shadow from Beyond Time'', where three future versions of Robo instruct him to learn the ''hell'' out of hyperdimensional mathematics so he can return to that point in time-space to defeat the EldritchAbomination they're fighting. It's not a ''true'' Stable Time Loop, of course, because Robo is very insistent that [[ArbitrarySkepticism there's no such thing as time travel]].
* When ''Comicbook/SonicTheComic'' did an adaptation of ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehogCD'' (a game where time travel is one of the main mechanics), it pulled off a loop so neat that, in the last part of the story, they could reprint an unedited page from an earlier issue and have it make perfect sense and not seem like laziness on the part of the writer or artist. (The first time the page appeared, the audience perspective is that of present Sonic; the second time, we're following future Sonic, [[ItMakesSenseInContext who's been shrunk]].)

* [[Comicbook/TheMightyThor Thor's]] grandfather, Bor, was defeated in battle against Frost Giants. He did not expect them to use magic, and therefore wasn't protected when a sorcerer cursed him and turned him into living snow. He told his son, Odin, to find a stronger sorcerer and undo the curse, but Odin stalled for years. When Thor was born, Odin noticed he had Bor's eyes, and was racked with guilt when Bor's spirit came to him and told him he'd be forgiven if he adopts a child whose father he'd kill in his next war. As it happens, Odin's next war was against Frost Giants as well, and the child whose father he killed was Comicbook/{{Loki}}. Thus was Loki adopted as an Asgardian. [[spoiler: The truth is Loki was the sorcerer who turned Bor into living snow. He returned back in time to do that, and then he appeared to Odin as Bor's spirit and told him to adopt the child. Then he went to his younger self and instructed him exactly what to do and say so to incite war between the Frost Giants and the Asgardians, so he'd be adopted as an Asgardian and become the man he's today.]]

* In a ''Comicbook/{{Thunderbolts}}'' storyline, the team was sent back in time, encountering the original group, back when they were still villains posing as heroes. Fixer's past self learns of his future, decides he's a total loser, and tries to change things. Fixer tries to stop him, inadvertently killing him. This, along with the present T-Bolt's base being in the past too long, results in the unraveling of time. In order to fix things, Fixer has his appearance and DNA altered so he looks just like his young self, and stays in the past. The past Thunderbolts' memories are erased (including Fixer's), and the present Thunderbolts return home. Songbird points out at one point that Fixer is now fated to go round and round in time, forever more.
** Despite all this, Fixer managed to reappear in the crossover event [[ComicBook/AvengersStandoff Avengers Standoff!]], raising ''many'' questions as to how he escaped the time loop. However, in the new ''Comicbook/{{Thunderbolts}}'' ongoing, it turned out that his escape [[spoiler:[[AWizardDidIt was pulled by childlike]] RealityWarper Kobik. In addition, Fixer didn't even remember the loop until Kobik restored his memories.]]

* A number of Creator/AlanMoore's "Time Twisters" strips for ''Comicbook/TwoThousandAD'' were stable time loops. For instance "Chrono-Cops", in which the two TimePolice officers interact with themselves on a number of occasions, but it all fits together in the end. And "Ring Road", in which a young woman in 1935 attacks an old woman who stops to give her a lift and steals her car. She finds herself inexplicably driving forward in time, through the 20th century, the post-apocalyptic era, and then through a fog bank to prehistory and eventually back to the 1930s. Just as things start looking familiar again, she sees a young woman, and stops to give her a lift...

* By his own account, Comicbook/{{Thanos}} has no memory of how he survived his apparent death at the end of ''ComicBook/{{Captain Marvel|MarvelComics}}'' #33, or how he still had the strength to even go on after such a crushing defeat. ''Thanos Annual'' #1 reveals that after his defeat, Thanos was taken to Mephisto's realm and nearly killed. At the last second, a future avatar of himself (created during the events of ''Comicbook/TheInfinityGauntlet'') intervened and saved him. The avatar then showed Thanos glimpses of his future exploits, subconsciously instilling in him the drive to recompose himself and get back in the game.

* After ''Comicbook/{{Savage}}'' became a {{prequel}} to ''Comicbook/{{ABC Warriors}}'', it turned out that the first iterations of the titular robots were developed with the Thousand-Year Stare, a form of {{mental time travel}} in which the practitioners/victims looked forward in time and based their designs on the Warriors' ultimate forms from far in the future.

* During the 1940s, Comicbook/GreenArrow and his KidSidekick Speedy were part of a team of Golden Age heroes called the Comicbook/SevenSoldiersOfVictory. As time progressed and ComicBookTime made the two heroes too young to have been around during the 40s, a retcon established that this had occurred on Earth-2. Following the merger of all of DC's alternate worlds into a single continuity during ''Comicbook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths'', this aspect of Green Arrow's history had to be excised entirely, as Comic Book Time again made it impossible for Green Arrow and Speedy to have been active in the 40s. ''Comicbook/DCInfiniteFrontier'' finally reintroduced this aspect by revealing that Green Arrow and Speedy had been sent back in time during a fight with the Clock King, and subsequently became founding members of the Seven Soldiers while stuck in the Golden Age. Amusingly, this retroactively made Green Arrow a LegacyCharacter inspired by ''himself''.

* In ''Comicbook/{{Avengers 2016}}'', [[Comicbook/TheFalcon Sam Wilson]] shouted "AvengersAssemble" while teaming up with a group of Avengers from different eras, including the original 1960s team. Comicbook/TheVision took great pleasure in pointing out the implications of this.

* By his own account, Comicbook/{{Thanos}} has no memory of how he survived his apparent death at the end of ''[[Comicbook/CaptainMarVell Captain Marvel]]'' #33, or how he still had the strength to even go on after such a crushing defeat. ''Thanos Annual'' #1 reveals that after his defeat, Thanos was taken to Mephisto's realm and nearly killed. At the last second, a future avatar of himself (created during the events of ''Comicbook/TheInfinityGauntlet'') intervened and saved him. The avatar then showed Thanos glimpses of his future exploits, subconsciously instilling in him the drive to recompose himself and get back in the game.

** ''ComicBook/JourneyIntoMystery'' brings us a whole new one, once again involving Loki. [[spoiler: The reincarnated Kid Loki meets Leah as Hela's handmaiden. He proceeds to write a character based on her into the past of the Serpent. Later, Hela's hand is healed, Leah (having been Hela's literal handmaiden) disappears, and Hela makes a cryptic comment to Loki about how everyone believes he is her father. When Surtur tries to burn the Nine Realms he recruits the girl Loki wrote into the Serpent's past, as she resents Loki [[MetaFiction for not giving her any chance to grow]]. Loki rewrites the girl's story so that she becomes the Leah that he knew. Then things happen in such a way that he ends up asking Hela to send the new Leah to a place as far away from him as possible. Hela sends Leah to the distant past, and reveals to the readers that ''she'' is Leah, all grown up.]]

** The original ComicBook/{{Legion Of Super-Heroes}} seems to be an example of this--they were inspired by ComicBook/{{Superboy}}, and they make him a member and have him fight alongside them, arguably shaping him into the hero who inspired them. Also, a Bronze Age story showed Brainiac 5 was already a Legionnaire before Superboy. Thing is, Brainiac joined together with Supergirl. So the Legion went back in time to get Superboy joining them because Supergirl told them they were meant to befriend him.