Marvel Database
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Marvel Database

King Solomon's Frogs are a pair of brass time machines created by an unknown ancient inventor.

History

Early owners[]

The North African King Solomon was the earliest known owner of the Brass Frogs, having received them as a royal gift.[2] The Frogs claimed to have been watching the Earth for as long as Uatu the Watcher, traveling back and forth from Solomon's time to various futures seemingly unbeknownst to Solomon himself. They believed that a future where Wakanda grew to control the whole world was highly unfavorable.[3]

The Frogs were buried with Solomon among the rest of his riches in King Solomon's Tomb when he died. When a group of thieves, Aladdin among them,[4] looted the Tomb, most of the thieves sought after the precious jewels, but Aladdin himself was interested in the technology within the Frogs. Taking one Frog with him, he accidentally triggered its time-warping capabilities and summoned a huge monster from another time, which ran wild and destroyed the city around him. This creature game to be known to history as a genie, inspiring the story of Aladdin and the Genie from the 1001 Nights. The Frog continued to change hands over the centuries, resulting in the appearance of many strange creatures from other times throughout history.[2]

Modern day[]

An early experiment with the stolen Frog in the 20th century resulted in the appearance of the prehistoric Monster in Scotland's Loch Ness.

The Black Panther Azzari the Wise came to own the Frog, and unlike many of its other owners understood its true power and dared not to meddle with it, choosing to bury it instead. Unfortunately, the Collector Alfred Queely sought after the valuable object and dug it up from where it had been hidden. When the Frog once again warped time, an archaic Warlord appeared and killed him.

A rival collector of antiquities, Abner Little, discovered that the Frog had resurfaced, and contacted Azzari's grandson King T'Challa to help with its recovery. While they were able to leave Queely's residence with the artifact, they were intercepted by other members of the Collectors, and when they arrived at Little's base of operations Princess Zanda and her men ambushed the pair. In the conflict, the Frog was once more activated, and this time brought back a person from 6,000,000 years in the future: Hatch-22.[2]

While Zanda was under the impression that the Frog required a control code to be fully used, Little knew that a second Frog, still left in King Solomon's Tomb, had the ability to send things away in time, forming a complete time machine when used in combination with its twin. Traveling to the Atlas Mountains with Zanda, T'Challa and Little were pursued by an Ogar, the Tomb's mechanical defender, but managed to find the second Frog just in time, combining them together and beaming Hatch-22 back to where he had come from. Though Zanda wished to take the invaluable time machines with her, their conflict caused the Tomb to begin to collapse, forcing the trio to quickly flee atop Solomon's Flame Chariot.[5]

Unbeknownst to any present, the Frogs activated one last time as they were cast aside, summoning a T'Challa from ten years into the future, who traveled on his own back to Wakanda intending to happily live out the rest of his life in his home country.[6]

Enemy of the State II[]

Though the Frogs were thought lost when King Solomon's Tomb caved in on them, their time-warping nature allowed them to perpetuate themselves after their supposed destruction, causing an ongoing loop or "black hole in time" and appearing for only limited windows of time in the current era.

With T'Challa having been the last one to activate them, they were drawn to his life force, and one ended up on Kiber Island, where Kiber the Cruel had once drained much of T'Challa's essence. Having previously been destroyed in a nuclear confrontation between Wakanda and Atlantis, Kiber Island was restored in the time warp, along with many of T'Challa's previous adventures, including the appearance of the Warlord, Hatch-22, and Kiber himself. Overcoming these obstacles once more, the future T'Challa and his team, this time including the unwitting Everett Ross, reclaimed one of the Frogs.

The other Frog was claimed by the White Wolf-controlled Xcon terrorist organization, who augmented it with modern technology to target specific individuals. With this, they kidnapped the Prime Minister of Canada and President Bush of the United States from several seconds into the future; the future leaders arrived disoriented and vulnerable to hypnotic suggestion, allowing Xcon to replace the true leaders with time-displaced duplicates under their own control. Xcon kept their Frog in a briefcase on a floating casino in Sault Saint Marie, Ontario, which T'Challa enlisted the help of Logan to reclaim.[7]

Once he had his hands on both Frogs, T'Challa performed this same process on Tony Stark; when the conflict between Wakanda and Xcon was over, Stark, the President and the Prime Minister were then returned to their appropriate points in the timeline. Right before the Frogs were set to fade away to another part of the time loop, however, Henry Gyrich, who had been overseeing US-Wakanda relations at the time, confiscated them as evidence; when he slammed his own briefcase shut on them, they activated one last time, sending the nearby group to Alberdene Texas in the year 1875; they were able to return to their time only through the intervention of Thor, who was active in the time period.[8]

The New Fantastic Four[]

At some point, Wakanda came back into possession of King Solomon's Frogs. When newlyweds T'Challa and Storm joined the Fantastic Four as Reed and Sue's replacements on their honeymoon, they came into conflict with the Silver Surfer, and used the Frogs' teleportation capabilities to take the fight to him in outer space.[9]

When the Baxter Building came under attack from a being native to the Negative Zone, T'Challa attempted to use one of the Frogs to send it back. Instead, both the creature and the Fantastic Four found themselves on a Skrull world in the Zombiverse.[10] After several unsuccessful attempts to escape back to their home world, the Fantastic Four arrived in the lair of Psycho-Man. Though the Thing suggested leaving the Frog in Psycho-Man's hands as they made their escape, T'Challa and Storm came to the conclusion that it actually possessed some manner of intelligence, and swore to take it back with them for the greater good. This time, however, the Frog activated of its own accord, sending the Fantastic Four to another Skrull world in their home universe, Kral IV.[11] The Four managed to find a craft to transport them back to Earth, but both Frogs followed them, and teleported them back instead.[12]

Third Frog[]

Initially thought to be only two, a 'Third Twin' was discovered to be in the possession of the Prince of Orphans. When the trio were reunited, they became a Concordance Engine.[citation needed]

Properties

Artificial Intelligence: The Frogs are capable of observing the world around them, traveling of their own accord, and even verbal communication; however they seemingly do not often display these capabilities in front of other intelligent beings.[3]

See Also

Links and References

References

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