Hey, remember back in 1983 when
this happened?
Panel from "Worlds at War!" in Journey into Mystery v.1 #50 (January 1959), pencils and inks by Jack Davis; recolored version published in Curse of the Weird #4 (March 1994), new colors by Ashley Posella
Naw, me either.
But I
do remember
this happening in 1985:


Panels from Watchmen #12 (October 1987), script by Alan Moore; pencils, inks, and letters by Dave Gibbons; colors by John Higgins
When did he do it, you might ask?
Be that as it
may, here's what else happened in 1983, while
you were all drinking your new-fangled "juice boxes" (those things'll never last!) and hanging up "Baby on Board" signs on your car, or, if you didn't have a car, just right on your baby. Yes, 1983 was
the year J'onn J'onnz cosplayers came to Earth! (They shoulda took that left turn at Albuquerque.)
Well, the Martians are an evolved and advanced race. Surely they'll be willing to teach us their methods of global peace and harmony and...
hey! Where ya goin'?
You know, I gotta wonder about these aliens that
give us so much advance warning before destroying us. What's in it for
them? I mean, lookit the Xindi. They destroyed Florida
twenty-six episodes before they were ready to blow up the Earth. Did that make any sense? Well, no more than having a beagle in space. Speaking of beagles in space, the world's nations decide to get together and
launch a dog into space band together to become stronger for the sake of humanity! It's just like President Benjamin Franklin said:
"We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. Now, pass me that tankard of ale, wench, for 'tis truly partying time! Yeee-haw!"
And faster than you can set a montage to the tune of hit single "Flashdance...What a Feeling," one of the biggest songs of 1983, everybody teams up with each other and gets things done! Yes, Americans and Russians working together...it's just like the movie
Armageddon! It's partnership and brotherhood, hand in hand, just like the hit "Ebony and Ivory," which was released in 1982 but was still a big hit in 1983. Also, popular 1983 comedian
Yakov Smirnoff helped. "In Soviet Union, rocket fires
us!"
Surprise! It was all a prank that the Martians were put up to by their goofy cousins on Jupiter. Also, it was a way to get the Americans and Russians to be stronger together!
World peace has been achieved thanks to the threat of mutual destruction! That old trick? It worked all along!
And it all happened in 1983...
two years before the events of Alan Moore's
Watchmen. Then, it was beamed back in time, past Thor's nose, to be published in a 1959 issue of
Journey into Mystery. Just so Stan Lee could say
"I did it twenty-four years ago!
Ah, those wacky comic book writers. Always usin'
time travel to get one up on the other.