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Kang the Conqueror is literally many things at different times: A bored citizen of the 31st century, a pharaoh in Ancient Egypt, a turn-of-the-last-century industrialist, a young superhero team leader, and a megalomaniacal supervillain. All of these diverse personas are one man, Nathaniel Richards. In each phase of his life, he’s tripped on his own feet when his goals have come close.

Kang’s great conquests are always off-panel, either in the distant future, the far past, or far parts of the galaxy. In the 616 universe, the main overall storyline of Marvel Comics, he’s failed again and again, whether as a hero or a villain. Sometimes, he’s even both at the same time and literally fails in both roles at his own hand.

10 Kang Is Obsessed With Proving His Nature As A Conqueror

The ever-prepared time-traveling madman Kang the Conqueror takes some real risks he doesn’t need to in order to prove himself a warrior as well as a ruler. He drops sophisticated weapons to fight woolly mammoths with his hands and a spear. He often makes his schemes needlessly complicated.

Essentially, it’s why he hates his future self Immortus so much, he’ll eventually rule over the dead realm of Limbo, work for the Time-Keepers, and no longer seek to conquer everything. The character started as a bored teenager living in the leisure of an advanced era and, to a degree, he never grows out of it.

9 Kang’s Hubris Is Often His Downfall

Pure old-fashioned hubris can still bring a villain down even in the post-modern sophisticated adult superhero stories of today. It may be a fairly simple mustache-twirling villain attribute but Kang the Conqueror does still often open up clear cracks in his own armor because he simply can’t imagine his own failure.

Despite holding all the cards of time travel which would allow him to see all the myriad possibilities ahead, Nathaniel Richards continues to fail, at least partially, because he’s convinced he can’t lose. The superpower-less teen boys, the Teen Brigade, once trick and defeat him by fueling his ego. The total blind faith or lack of imagination around his shortcomings is sometimes his undoing.

8 Victor Timely Benefited Marvel’s 20th Century Science Heroes

It’s really rare that a supervillain accidentally causes the creation of his own enemies but Kang the Conqueror’s twisty time-travel life story actually sees this happen over and over. During Summer 1992, Marvel published a storyline in interconnected annuals titled “Citizen Kang” revealing Nathaniel Richards has yet another identity up his sleeve in early-20th century businessman Victor Timely.

After his first appearance as Kang, he went to 1901 Wisconsin and founded a company with scraps of various futures’ technologies which boosted the robotic capabilities of Marvel’s Golden Age of Superhero Comics characters. Inadvertently, he helped create the circumstances that later birthed heroes like Iron Man, the original android Human Torch, and the Vision who defeat him many times over.

7 Kang Has Plans For Centuries Backward

Pinning down a first appearance for a character who makes time travel his deal can be tricky, but the first of the firsts is in Fantastic Four #19 by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers, and Stan Goldberg. At this point in his life, Nathaniel Richards goes by Rama-Tut since he’s usurped the throne of Ancient Egypt with simple gadgets from the 31st century but without much of a plan.

The Fantastic Four easily defeat him. Worse, later a semantic technicality defeats him: the cosmically powerful Grandmaster temporally awards him “power supreme over the Avengers” and almost kills them with a stroke of his hand but Kang doesn’t stop to realize the Black Knight, who tagged along, wasn’t yet a member of the team.

6 Kang Creates Divergent Universes

In several Avengers storylines of the 1980s, it becomes clear that Nathaniel Richards’ infinite kingdom grew a little out of control. In all his adventures so far, Kang created alternate selves with each use of his time machine without realizing it. Complicated, to say the least.

This situation led to the creation of the Council of Time (or Council of Kangs), three Kang variants who took it upon themselves to kill the legion of alternate timeline Kangs proliferating in his wake. In typical Kang the Conqueror fashion, these three alternate Kangs eventually double-cross each other. Little did they know how frustrated they’d be by the Council of Cross-Time Kangs, a later development.

5 Kang’s Lack Of Love

Even villains can be conflicted by matters of the heart. By The Avengers #23, Nathaniel Richards has conquered nearly everything in the Milky Way galaxy in the 41st century; everything, that is, but the heart of Ravonna, the only one he loves.

Then the love of his life jumps in the way of a shot meant for him and falls into a coma in his arms just as she confesses that she loves him back after all. Later she’s revived but, at the conclusion of the “Citizen Kang” storyline, Kang reverses their positions by sacrificing himself to Thor‘s hammer aimed at Ravonna and becomes comatose himself. Kang is a lover as well as a conqueror but refuses to admit it.

4 Iron Lad Is Kang’s Inner Idealist

When a small group of superpowered boys appear in New York City after the Avengers disbanded in the “Avengers Disassembled” storyline, their mysterious leader calls himself Iron Lad. The end of the first issue of The Young Avengers reveals this group was brought together by the second-youngest version of Nathaniel Richards readers have seen so far.

Kang approaches his teenage self in an attempt to jump-start his evil ways at a younger age but it backfires. Young Nathaniel steals time-travel technology and escaped to the 21st early century, devoted to not becoming the villain. Among Kang’s worst moments, he accidentally makes a new foe out of his own younger self.

3 The Council Of Cross-Time Kangs

Once Nathaniel Richards traveled back in time and became Rama-Tut, he started a chain reaction that he could never have predicted. The branching timelines and chronal trips crisscrossing each other proliferated until he made a multiversal mess of alternate versions of himself called the Council of Cross-Time Kangs, a sprawling organization made up both of his alternate selves and beings who had killed alternate Kangs and appropriated their technology.

In the cases of the Council of Time and the Council of Cross-Time Kangs, Kang the Conqueror is very literally the ultimate enemy of Kang the Conqueror. An army of Kangs facing an army of Kangs, potentially behind the scenes across all time forever and ever.

2 Immortus Is Kang’s Future

We all fear the future, at least, a little bit. Many fear becoming their parents or becoming their own worst enemy but Kang the Conqueror has seen his future self and he makes it crystal clear he does not like what he sees.

Kang sees Immortus as a boring and ignominious end, unbefitting of a conqueror. Immortus had already been established as a far, far future version of Nathaniel Richards but, in the Avengers Forever miniseries written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by Carlos Pacheco, his middle-aged self is actively afraid of becoming Immortus.

1 Kang Hates Himself

In 2021, to capitalize on the upcoming addition of Kang the Conqueror to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as performed by Jonathan Majors, Marvel Comics published a miniseries starring Kang for the first time. It depicts an adult Nathaniel Richards attempting to make himself into the best possible version of himself by intervening in his own teenage development.

This is, essentially, the second time he tries this as the plot that leads to the birth of Iron Lad is remarkably similar. He seemingly fails once again and his own obstinate teen self grows and confronts him throughout the timestream over the five-issue series.