Warning! Spoilers ahead for Timeless #1
Marvel Comics is closing out the year by having Kang the Conqueror reveal the future heading into 2022, but it seems as though Marvel's Timeless event is just their version of DC's Future State. Revealing what lies ahead with events that may or may not happen, Marvel's Distinguished Competition similarly began 2021 by teasing the future. Now, it looks as though Marvel is following suit (albeit in a much more condensed format).
In Timeless #1 from Jed MacKay, Kev Walker, Greg Land, Jay Leisten, Mark Bagley, and Andrew Hennessy, Kang the Conqueror recruits a new companion to join him in his travels through time, a scholar dedicated to the study of supervillains whom the conqueror is trying to convince that Doctor Doom is inferior to Kang himself. While they were spending time in the past, the threat of a parallel "pirate timeline" motivates Kang to take action to preserve the primary Marvel timeline. As such, Kang pulls back the curtain on what may be coming to the Marvel Universe in 2022.
In the new issue, Kang has a variety of monitors showing various points in the future in his observation station held outside the confines of time. As such, Kang reveals several events that may soon come to pass such as the Winter Soldier potentially killing Captain America, Thanos wielding Thor's hammer, the upcoming Reckoning War, and many more points of interest. However, this new one-shot feels very similar to DC's Future State event which largely took place between January and February of 2021. During the event, the majority of its titles took place at various points in the future, showcasing what could be coming for Gotham City, the Teen Titans, the Suicide Squad, Superman's son as the new Man of Steel, and many other events that came to pass this last year when the DC titles went back to the present in March.
While Future State was of course much larger in scope involving multiple titles and issues over the span of two months, Timeless #1 does convey the same kind of teases for the future of the Marvel Universe. Furthermore, Kang also notes that some of the events being seen should not be happening or are deviating in ways he hadn't foreseen or manipulated them to go. In a similar fashion, not every event featured in Future State came to pass in 2021 the exact same way, as they were simply possible futures the DC Universe could have been headed towards.
Likewise, while fans will likely see many of the teased Marvel events playing out in 2022, they might not see all of them in the same way. Regardless, it certainly looks like Marvel took a page out of DC's playbook with Timeless, even if it's only a one-shot as opposed to the two-month publishing initiative that was Future State. Having a time-traveler like Kang the Conqueror who can view everything all at once certainly speeds things along by comparison.