Marvels

I know I'm kind of late to the party, but this is easily on of the on of the best stories I've ever read from the Marvel universe. I can't say I'd recommend this to everyone though. As you probably know already the superheroes take a back seat to an 'average Joe' photographer in this one. I for one found it fascinating reliving some great moments in the history of Marvel from the point of view of the general public. One of my favorite moments was seeing the Fantastic Four's first clash with Galactus. It was funny to me to realize how odd the whole thing would have seemed from the out side. Mr. Fantastic just holds a little thing up to Galactus and he leaves. I mean what does one think after seeing such things?

I imagine that this read would be fun for a lot of long time fans. Going through and remembering different points in Marvel history. Though I think this is a great graphic novel I can also see this being some what boring looking for some of the more typical clash-of-titans type of comic book stories. Also, special note I really enjoy the art work of Alex Ross and in particular I enjoyed one panel where he worked in a homage to the painting Nighthawks, which while appearing in popular culture lots of other times before it fits in so well into Ross's style you almost wouldn't even notice it's there

Kurt Busiek, Marvels (Marvel, 2003)

So while all those big superhero battles were going on, what was the rest of the population thinking? Kurt Busiek gives us one answer to that question in Marvels, a story that touches on a large number of the stories battles in the Marvel universe, giving them to us from the perspective of a newspaper photographer-- not a superhero himself, just one of the guys on the street. We get to see the ambivalence of the common folks towards superheroes, which is pretty unusual for the genre (at least in the pre-Watchmen days); that is, of course, the point. If you ever wondered what happened to all the people inside when a big superhero battle took out an office building, this is definitely one to check out. ****

Although we call them graphic novels, the truth is that in the world of comics the writers generally are given more credit than the illustrators for the ultimate result. Alex Ross is one of the exceptions. He is, in fact, one of the few artists whose work on a project might be more of a pull for potential buyers than the writer involved. There is a subtlety to his work that few other artists in the genre can match. I'm no expert on the art of illustration, but a lot of his appeal seems to derive from departing from the sharp lines that most writers use. He appears to work primarily in charcoals, giving his images a far more nuanced and softer edge. The result is incredibly striking. There are other artists in the genre I really love (like John Cassaday and Bryan Talbot, to name merely two among dozens), but for me no one stands out quite like Alex Ross.

What makes this such a great book is that the writing keeps pace with the artwork. Kurt Busiek's retelling of the history of the Marvel Universe from the standpoint of a newspaper photographer is absolutely brilliant in depicting that history as background rather than foreground. To be honest, when the story does dwell over the photographer's reactions to what he has witnessed, the narrative wobbles a little. And the ending is truly a weak one, as the whole book just seems to sputter out with no climax of any kind. In fact, if there had been a strong ending this would easily have gone down as one of the 4 or 5 greatest superhero comics ever produced. Even as it is, it is one of the top dozen.

But as good as the story is, the great appeal of the book for me is the artwork. For my money, Ross draws people better than anyone in the business. He makes his figures look real in a way that no one else manages. They are also lovely, but it is the concrete realism he embues his figures with that makes them special. To contrast his work with Cassaday, whose work I love nearly as much, Cassaday's figures tend to look wonderfully stylized, posed to look impressively epic rather than natural. I love PLANETARY or THE ASTONISHING X-MEN in large part because of Cassaday's artwork, but you can't look at his figures and sense any kind of realism, despite how lovely they are. But you can almost imagine stepping into the pages of Ross's MARVELS.

This book goes, of course, on any short list of the great superhero graphic novels. Most serious fans of the genre will already own it. For those who do not but want to build a start up library of adult comics, this should be right up there on the list of first purchases.

"Marvels" was first published in 1994, written by an up-and-coming writer named Kurt Busiek, and introducing the world to the art of Alex Ross, whose painted style was (and, in many ways, still is) a revelation (albeit a revelation that would henceforth be mostly associated with rival DC Comics). I will start by saying that the comparisons to Ross' DC project "Kingdom Come" (with writer Mark Waid) are in most ways misleading. The only real similarity between the two is that they are both early famous works by Alex Ross; "Kingdom Come" is an epic set in an alternate future where the role of heroes is in dispute between the old guard and the next generation, between metahumans and non-metahumans, and between heroes and the general public. "Marvels" is a man-on-the-street story, following a photojournalist from the debut of the first heroes in the Golden Age circa 1939, through to the death of Gwen Stacy in 1973 (publishing time). Along the way, Busiek exmines the meaning of the heroes ('marvels', as the photojournalist calls them) to the ordinary people they protect, and shows how various classic stories (the coming of Galactus, the night of the Sentinels) affected them. Particular mention must be made of Busiek's handling of mutants, and the prejudice they face; it often seems to be somewhat arbitrary that mutants are hated while other superhumans, like the Fantastic Four, are celebrated, but Busiek really digs deep and makes the fear mutants face seem reasonable. The story of the young mutant girl is absolutely heartbreaking, as sad as anything I've ever read. Alex Ross' art rendres the whole story with precise realism. All in all, a fine piece of work.

How can I be objective: that's us in this four issue series that followed an everyman through WWII and into the beginning of the Marvel Universe circa 1970-something. Ross used many of his friends (and idols) as models in this magnificent tribute to the compendium of Marvel's greatest moments.

MARVELS shows heroes at their best across three decades of great Marvel comics. Any aging fanboy reader of the 60's would love this.

You can spend a fortune on more elaborate versions of MARVELS with all of the notes, script and such, but for a good old-fashioned reading experience, this softbound edition is terrific.

Aside from WATCHMEN and perhaps LOVE & ROCKETS, Alex Ross put his heart on every page of this history of heroes. A loving tribute to the best of American comic book mythology, MARVELS forced open the pages of Marvel's at-the-time kicked-around heroes and painted them as legends. It redefined comic book production values and dared the industry to think quality. Without MARVELS, there wouldn't have been a KINGDOM COME or DC's splendid Ross books.

After MARVELS, Marvel produced a non-Ross sequel called RUINS that portrayed the Scarlet Witch as a prostitute in a bombed out New York: shameful, embarrassing hackery at an all-time low that was as insulting to their characters as it was to their readers and especially Ross and Busiek's noble opus. Ross returned to Marvel with EARTH X and UNIVERSE X, both under-appreciated epics with a great, great team of writers and artists on board: real WOW! stuff. 2007's DC series JUSTICE did for the JLA what MARVELS brought to the masses: painted art, silver-age heroes and a reason to be a kid again for all of 20-some pages every couple of months. Somewhere in the great perhaps, Jack Kirby is lovin' alla this...