Timewalker (Valiant Comics)

Timewalker is Ivar Anni-Padda, an immortal adventurer who travels through different eras of history using timearcs. He is the oldest of three immortal brothers. His brother Aram is Armstrong of Archer & Armstrong and his brother Gilad is the Eternal Warrior.

History[]

Temporal Swashbuckler[]

Ivar Anni-Padda, the immortal timewalker, wandered through the centuries fighting the good fight while he tried to return to his ancient Egyptian lover lost in another time, Queen Nefertiti.

Child Of Time[]

In 3266 BC in a village in Anatolia, Ivar Anni-Padda laid on the arms of his father, Vandal, the tribal leader, with his brother, Gilad Anni-Padda, while Triahna, their mother, delivered their brother. Worried for his mother’s well-being, Ivar asked his father why she cried, but Imalka, the tribe’s medicine woman, hushed him and told Vandal that Triahna’s third son would be the hardest birth because the child was very big and refused to come out.

When Ivar asked his father if Triahna was going to die, Vandal told him that, sooner or later, everyone died. As Triahna’s cries intensified, Ivar asked Vandal why he could not help his mother, but his father told him that his mother’s woes were between her and his son. To appease Ivar, Vandal took a coin that hung from his neck and made it disappear, then, when Ivar asked him where it went, he pulled it out of his ear and told him that, like his fear, it was inside his head. As Vandal placed the coin around Ivar’s neck, he told him to wear it to remember where his fear laid, when then Imalka emerged from the tent and told Vandal to follow her.

While Vandal stood over Triahna’s corpse and the midwives gave him his son, whom they told him was very strong and very loud, Ivar lunged at his mother and begged her not to leave him. When his father pulled him back and told him to let his mother go and that all his life he would have to let things go, Ivar refused to accept his mother’s premature demise and ran off to grieve. Though Vandal wanted to follow his son, an elder suggested that he let him go be with himself.

Upset with his father, whom he felt lied to him about the validity of his qualms, Ivar wept for a long time over his mother’s death, until a brightly glowing butterfly in the sky caught his attention. Intrigued, Ivar watched as the glow grew in size and he knew it was something more than it looked, then, as the roar of alien engines assaulted the stillness of the ancient desert, Ivar had his first glimpse of destiny when the butterfly disgorged a ship from another world and time that trampled him. Amazed that he was still alive, Ivar hid and saw as Jahk'rt, an immortal from the far future, led a caravan of Spider Aliens, a race of blood-thirsty extraterrestrial arachnoids, to the ship. As he heard as Jahk’rt told Kor-Lak, the aliens’ leader, that no time had passed for the crew of the ship they sent through a timearc 20 years earlier, Ivar recalled that his mother was dead and got scared.

While the aliens dragged their brethren’s corpses from the vessel, Ivar heard Kor-Lak chastise Jahk’rt for the destruction of the ship and the demise of its crew. When Jahk’rt coldly remarked that all that mattered was that the ship came through and Kor-Lak told her that he did not understand why they trusted her, Ivar noted that, except for her, the aliens were not human. As Jahk’rt reminded Kor–Lak that his chairman wanted him to trust her, he dismissed his wishes and ordered the soldiers to burn the ship. Using her staff, Jahk’rt destroyed the ship and warned Kor–Lak never to forget her abilities and the future technology at her command, but, despite her caution, he reminded her that she survived to use her knowledge at their discretion.

As Ivar rushed to the village to alert his father, he was horrified to discover that the aliens had raided it and slaughtered everyone. While Ivar did not see his father’s body or his brother’s, he found his mother’s and asked her if the raiders had killed Vandal as well, when then Niktor, the Spider Soldier in charge of the raid, grabbed him by the neck and said that they had been sent to find him. Though Ivar struggled, Niktor took the around his neck and then took him with him.

As the alien caravan rolled through the Anatolian wasteland toward a rendezvous with time, Ivar had no chance to mourn. Inside Jahk’rt’s carriage, Jahk’rt told Ivar that she knew his father and that she had to know if he shared his unique genetics, then she ordered Niktor to break his legs. Since Vandal taught his sons never to cry, Ivar fainted. As time passed and the aliens broke him, Ivar continued to heal.

For the next century, Ivar silently listened and watched his captors while he waited for his opportunity to escape. One day, Jahk’rt and Kor–Lak entered Ivar’s cage and she urged him to let her teach him how to use the Tachyon Compass, a device that could guide him through time and take him away from there. Tired of pleading with Ivar, whom he considered a moronic lump of flesh, Kor–Lak warned Jahk’rt that if he would not obey he would slaughter him for his table and then left the room. Aware of the fate that awaited them, Jahk’rt told Ivar that it was time she made it clear who she was and what he was to become.

Quietly, Ivar listened as Jahk’rt told him that, in the far future, she was Earth’s greatest bio-manipulator and engineered herself to be all but immortal, and how when the tribunal sentenced her to cryogenic suspension and she escaped through time, her untested ship crashed in the 43rd Century, an era infested by Spider Aliens who her weapons and technology impressed. Jahk’rt told Ivar that when she was unable to kill the aliens she agreed to work for them in exchange for safety in the hope that she would find the way back to her time.

When Jahk’rt told him that he was her way home, Ivar spoke for the first time in a century to express surprise. When Jahk’rt realized that Ivar was smarter than he appeared, she took him outside the carriage and told him that the compass guided the caravan toward a specific place where a timearc was due to appear. As Jahk’rt revealed that she was lucky the compass survived the crash since she lacked the skills to rebuild it, fifty aliens who entered a timearc 150 years earlier emerged from the phenomenon torn to pieces, a fate that she told Ivar she would share if she tried to travel through time without a vessel. When Jahk’rt told him that the son of Vandal could go through a timearc without harm and bring her a time ship, Ivar realized that, if she was telling the truth, he could walk through time.

Sometime later, the bars of Ivar’s cage malfunctioned and he escaped, and, for the time in his adult life, he ran free through the jungle. After Ivar eluded the guards, he saw them run after a girl, and through he did not understand why nor cared, he rescued her. After Ivar dispatched her pursuers, he took the girl under a tree and asked her name, but she told him that she lost it long ago and asked him to hold her in his arms. Soon the inevitable happened, and Ivar and the girl made love. Unbeknownst to Ivar, Jahk’rt and Kor-Lak devised his escape to watch him and the girl mate as part of an experiment, and, once they did as expected, the soldiers took them to their cells.

That night in the prison carriage, Jahk’rt told Ivar that Kor-Lak lost faith in time travel out of fear she would succeed and become very powerful. As Jahk’rt lamented that a timearc was due soon, she told Ivar that the aliens were going to slaughter him and take the girl to the pens. As Jahk’rt placed the compass on a pedestal outside Ivar’s cell, she ordered Niktor to take Ivar away and then she left. As Niktor dragged the girl from her cage, Ivar pulled a soldier against the energy bars of his cell and shorted them out, then he snapped Niktor’s neck and retrieved his father’s coin. While Ivar picked up Niktor’s sword, he told the girl to take the compass.

As Ivar and the girl exited the carriage, a timearc appeared in the sky and they made their way toward it through a barrage of alien soldiers. Though Ivar warned the girl that going through the timearc might kill her, she said that she did not care and they jumped inside. Within the timearc, Ivar held the girl against his chest with both arms as the winds of time blasted them without mercy until they deposited them without ceremony in another time and place in a cold country with an unfamiliar sky.

That night, Ivar buried the girl, who died in transit, and lamented that he never knew her name. As Iva made his way through a dense forest, he wondered if he had traveled through time to the past or the future, or fallen into an alien trap. Shortly, Ivar found shelter in a cavern, and as he lied on the cold ground, he pondered that, whatever time he was in, it had to be friendlier than the one he left. Suddenly, the earth beneath Ivar trembled as a metal monster with smoke that steamed from its nostrils, a fire that belched from its bowels, and a single yellow eye that flared at him hurdled toward him. As a giant steam locomotive bore down the train tracks at him, Ivar shouted that he had found the future and that it was trying to kill him.