Review: The Marvels Project

Before I read "The Marvels Project", I thought that it was unfairly overshadowed by the more high-profile "Siege" event. After I finished reading the entire 8-issue series by Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting about 5 minutes ago, I must conclude that the whole thing, while undeniably an important addition to the Marvel Canon, really isn't as good as expected.

Perhaps the problem was because my hopes for this series were unreasonably high. Firstly, it's set in the Golden Age (more accurately 1938-1942) and I'm a huge fan of Golden Age mystery-men tales. Secondly, it's really the first attempt to tie in the various Golden Age issues together to present a seamless and official "origin" of the Invaders. I'm a huge fan of the Invaders having recently picked up the "70th Anniversary Timely Comics" hardcover along with the "Avengers/Invaders" hardcover. Thirdly, I'm also a huge fan of Brubaker and Epting's work on the regular "Captain America" series. That being said, I found myself largely bored and uninterested in this series. The reason for this is that "The Marvels Project" is really not a story at all! It's very much a by-the-numbers retelling of how the various Golden Age Marvel (then known as Timely) characters got together and formed the first super-group to fight the Nazis. If that was all there was, I remember that Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross did a far better job years ago in the first issue of "Marvels".

Speaking of "Marvels", there are obvious similarities with that work. Dr Thomas Halloway aka The Angel serves as narrator here much as Phil Sheldon did in "Marvels". The work is also reminiscent of the other Alex Ross classic, "Kingdom Come". Here, the dying Two-Gun Kid (who has seen the future of the 616-Marvel Universe) prophesied the coming of that glorious heroic age much like the Golden Age Sandman, Wesley Dodds, prophesied the coming of the dark age in "Kingdom Come". There are also obvious parallels to Alan Moore's "Watchmen" and James Robinson's "The Golden Age". As the progeny of such luminaries, you would expect "The Marvels Project" to be something truly special, right? Truth is, I really wished that it was. In fact, I even put on classic 1940s jazz while reading it just for that added flavour.

The problem with this work is that while Epting managed to capture the mood and atmosphere of the Second World War in his artwork (his pencils also resemble Alex Ross' pencil work in many ways - and that is a definite bonus), the pacing throughout is abysmally slow. You feel that Brubaker has so many things to show the reader - from the familiar unveiling of the Human Torch by Prof. Phineas Horton to the Super-Soldier Serum that created Captain America to the grand superhuman battle above the skies of NYC between the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner and finally to the gathering of the Invaders in the White House. Problem was, while Brubaker and Epting had so much to SHOW, they really had very little to SAY. There wasn't any grand theme that tied the piece together - like the theme of ordinary humans' distrust or discomfort with superheroes in "Marvels" or the fascistic authoritarianism of "Kingdom Come". In fact, I'm a tad frustrated after reading the work as a whole in one sitting because I know that Brubaker is capable of delivering far greater work. I mean, the flashback scenes to the Golden Age in his "Winter Soldier" arc are far more moving and poignant compared to the entirety of "The Marvels Project"! Furthermore, if you are looking for the Invaders kicking the Nazis or the Red Skull, there's nearly nothing here to that tune. The closest we got was Cap, Bucky, Namor and the Angel fighting some rebel faction from Atlantis while the Human Torch and Toro fought a losing battle against the Japs to prevent the Pearl Harbour bombings. That was supposed to be the grand battle but there wasn't any real emotional payoff. In fact, it's ironic that about the only character that displayed any real emotions was Jim Hammond, the android Human Torch. The other iconic heroes simply strutted around being iconic!

As an "origins" story, it more than did its job but there is little more to the tale. Therefore, the tale can only aspire to the level of say, Paul Jenkins' "Mythos" series or Joe Casey's "Avengers: Earth Mightiest Heroes". In other words, a retro take on a familiar myth or a retelling of a story of how our heroes began their careers. Does it then warrant the hardcover treatment? Well, I wouldn't argue with that since I'm a sucker for beautiful hardcover collections anyway. After all, the story is an important one and Brubaker will most likely build on some of the elements here in future Cap stories. In other words, I'll give the work an 8 out of 10 for its importance to the overall Marvel Canon but as a standalone story, it's at best only a 6.5 out of 10 (though I'd say that Epting's beautiful artwork earns a 9 out of 10).

Tribute to the JSA (Smallville - Absolute Justice)

The double-length "Absolute Justice" episode from Season 9 of Smallville was the best thing on TV last year. It featured all the original members of the Justice Society of America - the original Golden Age superheroes. Furthermore, the episode was written by Geoff Johns himself. Watch the clip above and relive the glory days of the Golden Age. The clip reminds me somewhat of the flashback scenes from the opening of "Watchmen". A kind of eulogy to times past.

Watchmen Redux

I spent many years avoiding Alan Moore's "Watchmen". Don't be mistaken. I'm a HUGE Alan Moore fan. In fact, it was because of my admiration and respect for Alan Moore that "Watchmen" always filled with fear and trepidation. I'm a 1980s comic fanboy and anyone worth their salt who has grown up in that decade have read the Trinity of comic book stories that forced comics to grow up - namely, Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns", Alan Moore's "Watchmen" and Art Spiegelman's "Maus". Students of comicbook history still hail those three works as being responsible for taking comics out of comic specialty stores and attracting the attention of the mainstream media as well as academia. They became the predecessors to works like "Love and Rockets" by Los Bros Hernandez, "Sin City" and "300" by Frank Miller, "Sandman" by Neil Gaiman, and the various works in our time by blokes like Warren Ellis, Mark Millar, Grant Morrison, etc.

The thing was, I read almost everything that Alan Moore wrote. Even his much-criticised run on Wildstorm's "WildCATS" title remains a personal favourite of mine up to this day. My daughter is also fast becoming a fan after reading "Swamp Thing", "The Killing Joke", "Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen". She has yet to try my other Alan Moore books such as "Tom Strong" and "Promethea". So why the fear and trepidation over reading "Watchmen"?

I think it's a kind of religious fear. Remember when guys like Robert Ingersoll used to terrorise the crowds with his passionate agnostic pleas and how your church-going grandmother told you that if you listened to Ingersoll, you'll end up losing your faith and going to hell? It was something like that. I grew up on a steady diet of "The New Teen Titans", "The Mighty Thor", "Fantastic Four", "The Avengers" and, of course, the "Superfriends" cartoon. In other words, I was a purist when it came to superheroes. In fact, characters like Iron Man, Hulk, Batman and Green Lantern are as real and vital to my moral/philosophical outlook in life as Elijah, Moses, Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi! I had read enough interviews, essays and commentaries on comics to know that "Watchmen" was somewhat like Friedrich Nietzsche's "Twilight of the Idols" to the religious-types. In short, I feared for my faith in superheroes. Growing up dilluted that faith somewhat but I still held on stubbornly to my childhood toys. Question was, will that fragile faith survive the assault of Alan Moore's "Watchmen"? In addition to all that, there were the rumours of people who had given up on comicbook characters post-Watchmen. Or that comics all became unpleasantly (not to mention, unsavourily) grim-and-gritty in the years following "Watchmen". I can easily think of some examples - Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters, Spider-Man: Kraven's Last Hunt, and countless other examples. Bertrand Russell loved to reiterate the rumours spread by well-meaning religious types against Jeremy Bentham in that Bentham was said to encourage people to boil their late grandmothers' remains for dinner - after all, the minority should comply to any demands that would ensure the "greatest happiness of the greatest number", right? Of course, that was a false allegation but then it haunted many people for many years. I think those rumours about Alan Moore's "Watchmen" had the same effect on me as well.

Truth be told, up to this present moment, I have not read the entirety of the "Watchmen" graphic novel. Like other geeks, I bought the hardcover reprint dutifully but unlike my peers, I consciously avoided reading it. Having it on the shelves was kinda like a mark of legitimacy for me - after all, I proudly tell people that I'm a 1980s fanboy. In other words, this present confession is somewhat akin to admitting that I'm a closet homosexual after being a James Dobson supporter for decades!

But I've since seen the Zack Snyder-directed "Watchmen" film about half a dozen times. In fact, I'm writing this entry immediately after viewing the Director's Cut DVD. In fact, I'm sooooooooooooo in love with the film that I'll probably rewatch it countless more times in the future. It is my favourite superhero-themed movie of all time (yes - even more than the first and second "Superman" films, the first and second "Spider-Man" films, "Batman Begins", the first "Iron Man" film and "X-Men 2" put together). And no, I did not end up cynical or swearing off superheroes. In fact, it reaffirmed my faith in the romantic heroic imagination. The film had a pervasive sense of sadness and nostalgia throughout - a kind of unsecret wish for the "good ol' days" of costumed-adventuring when we could easily tell who the bad guys were and that the good guys did what was right because they were the right thing to do - all mixed in with a dash of swashbuckling adventuring, humour and fun.

Perhaps it's because I'm living in 2010 - and have survived reading far more deconstructive works such as Warren Ellis' "The Authority" and Grant Morrison's "New X-Men"? I can imagine the flabbergasted folks in 1985 who were confronted with these new kinds of comic storytelling that was nary to be found outside the indies, the UK magazine-sized strips and weird Euro sci-fi journals. Or perhaps it was the combination of Reaganomics, Thatcher's iron-fisted government and Cold War paranoia that drove people to "The Dark Knight Returns" and "Watchmen" (and to a lesser extent, "Elektra: Assassin" and "Daredevil: Born Again") and then proclaiming that comicbooks have grown up and transcended the "Biff! Bam! Boom!" of the Adam West "Batman" TV show. Too bad so many readers forced to books to deal with "realistic" issues that all they saw were the political, sexual and moral connotations of the works while missing the romance of those same books. Too many people failed to see beyond the bone-crunching violence and suggestive sexuality in those books to notice that "The Dark Knight Returns" was so very romantic - e.g. when Batman rode on a horse to rally his followers, it was the wild west come back to live in modern day Gotham. In "Watchmen", the central core of the story was really Silk Spectre's love for two men - Dr. Manhattan and Nite-Owl II - a love that could either save the world or doom it to nuclear armageddon! Both works remind us of the vitality and continuing relevance of mythic archetypes - what would the world have been like without King Arthur, Gilgamesh, Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes or Allan Quartermain? What would the world have been like if Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster did not dream up the stories of a Superman from the doomed planet Krypton who landed in Kansas? What would the world have been like if Bill Finger and Bob Kane had not dressed up a man in a Bat-costume and paired him with a bubbly sidekick in tight green shorts? Ultimately, both works and countless others after them remind us to always cherish the magic of storytelling - chiefly, sequential and graphical storytelling. We've come a long way since the advent of the four-colour comic strips in the local Sunday papers. But thankfully, we've not gone too far away as to forget the charm and magic of the medium and its many colourful characters. Excelsior!

Hi, I'm a Marvel...and I'm a DC: Wolverine and Watchmen

Wolverine meets the characters from Alan Moore's "Watchmen". Again, who's Alan Moore?

Hi, I'm a Marvel...and I'm a DC: Deadpool and Green Lantern

Deadpool meets Green Lantern. Both characters were played by Ryan Reynolds at one time in the history of the human race. WHY, oh why?!?

Hi, I'm a Marvel...and I'm a DC: Wolverine (Deadpool) and Watchmen

Another great vid starring the 'Pool and the characters from Alan Moore's "Watchmen".
Uh... who's Alan Moore again?!?

"To Catch Them If They Fall": Grant Morrison's Answer to "Watchmen"

I had a great Sunday last week. Okay, actually I was so sick that I could barely function. My headache and toothache was giving me excruciating pain but I had an entire day out with my wife. Never mind that I had to skip my lectures and cancel a class that I was supposed to teach in the afternoon. It was still a really good day. We caught a movie ("Old Dogs" starring John Travolta and Robin Williams), we had a great lunch and I picked up the "Watchmen" hardcover for the very first time - along with the Irwin paperback "Watchmen & Philosophy: A Rorschach Test" (edited by fellow geek and scholar Mark D. White). It was a restful day and a much-needed break from my endless studies. But, like the geek that I am, a mental vacation from my law-studies simply mean reading philosophical essays on Utilitarianism vs. Deontological ideals of ethics! Better still, applying those same philosophical concepts to Ozymandias and Rorschach! Overall, Alan Moore's classic work was a rich philosophical piece that deserved to be read countless times in order to mine all the deep philosophical treasures within. The only problem is that, reading that work tends to give you a prejudiced view of comicbooks - somewhat like a bitter taste afterwards because the Bearded Brit literally comes along and thrashes your favourite childhood heroes (read: toys) and exposing them to be nothing more than psychotic, twisted and fascistic megalomaniacs (or in the case of Nite-Owl II, a sexually impotent fat slob who "couldn't get it up" without being in-costume!).

The problem with the aftermath of "Watchmen" was that people really didn't know what to do with superheroes anymore (without looking silly). J. M. DeMatteis and Keith Giffen (paired with the expressive pencils of Kevin Maguire) simply celebrated the "silliness" in their Justice League relaunch in 1987 without trying to make the superheroes out to mean anything more. Other folks tried to go the "realistic" route and made their characters even grimmer, grittier and more twisted than Alan Moore's creations. It was not until the late-1990s that we finally got an answer to Alan Moore's "Watchmen". The superheroes that we grew up with need not be fascistic or megalomaniacal. In fact, when we watched "Superfriends" on TV as kids, we didn't fall in love with the characters because they ruled over us. We loved them because they stood for right-over-might and protected the common man while having a few laughs in a fraternising sort of way. In other words, they didn't have to be grim or gritty at all to appeal to the adult. More than anything, they should bring us back to a simpler and more innocent age where we didn't read our politics or philosophy in our comic books.

The said answer came in the form of Grant Morrison's JLA. As I write this, the bald Brit is celebrating his fiftieth birthday. I'm thankful that it's one Brit answering another Brit - that way, you wouldn't get the typical criticism of the work being a result of mindless American jingoism or male fantasies. In fact, Morrison wrote the title in a high-concept sci-fi manner that Brits love (as evidenced from their incessant devotion to the interminable adventures of "Dr. Who") but he did it without the anger of Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" or the psychosis of Alan Moore's "Watchmen". One of the gems in Morrison's work is that he managed to make Batman cool as hell without resorting to the deep-seated anger that Frank Miller employed - read the first story for the coolest portrayal of Batman in an edge-of-your-seat "Die-Hard" sort of situation to see what I mean. His work was pure superheroism done right - heck, it's done so intelligently that even if you're embarassed by your once-upon-a-time fixation on "Disco Dazzler", you'll still be proud to be seen in public with volumes of JLA Deluxe Edition hardcovers under your arm!

My favourite thing about JLA is that Grant Morrison managed to answer Alan Moore with one simple line from Superman - "Why should they need us at all? To catch them if they fall." Superheroes aren't supposed to rule over us - a lesson we learn from "Watchmen", "Squadron Supreme" and "Kingdom Come". More than anything, they are really fantasies that inspire us. Fantastic creations for a kid like me who grew up looking for role-models after becoming disillusioned with family, school and church. They are not supposed to be megalomaniacs like Ozymandias or distant gods like Dr. Manhattan. They are only supposed to be catching planes that fall from the sky or beat back Starro the Conqueror the next time he comes calling! In other words, superheroes aren't real. They are simply a celebration of the imagination. True celebrations should not be condescending - real comic fans are always wary of self-referential fanboy parodies pretending to be funny while hiding its own inbred cynicisms. Only a writer of the calibre of Alan Moore could adequately write them to represent deep philosophical concepts - others do so awkwardly resulting in some truly awful and ugly comicbooks (Bloodstrike or Deathblow anyone?) For the discerning reader, Grant Morrison's work is the answer to a decade of doom-and-gloom presented not just as a justification for the continued existence of superheroic-fantasies but done so intelligently with the right amount of gusto and fanboy affection.

Finally, if you're not looking for high concept and philosophy but just some mindless fun, there's always Jimmie Robinson's "Bomb Queen"! :)

[Check out this post on Comics You Should Own for an appreciation of Grant Morrison's JLA.]