I begin with my traditional spoiler space picture of someone who has nothing to do with the topic at hand:
Alan Hale Sr. & Jr. (To quote Russell Johnson: "At one point, the two men looked almost exactly alike."
Issue #1 covers from the beginning of time to the birth of one James Howlett. Random thoughts:
- The art is tolerable, but not great. I would've put a better art team on a book like this, myself.
- The storyline is, essentially, Galactus and Franklin Richards sitting around at the end of time, shooting the breeze while waiting for the universe to end. Apparently, Galactus' energies will be the seed to create the next universe, which Franklin will survive into. (Is he going to become the next universe's "Galactus"? Anyway, Franklin asks Galactus to narrate the history of the universe to him, so he'll remeber it all in the next iteration of reality.
- The problem with this set-up is that it tends to go all over the place. One minute they're talking about cosmic stuff, the next minute fairly mundane stuff. Why would Galactus know or care about Sir Percy of Scandia or the Two-Gun Kid?
- Marvel cosmology is littered with "cosmic" characters, the vast majority or whom are not even infinitesimally interesting.
- The annotations at the back would be interesting, I suppose, if you were the sort of Hardcore Fanatical Completist who owns copies of every comic Marvel ever published and might therefore be liable to go look them up.
Next Time: Captain America! The Human Torch! Bucky! The Red Skull! Marvel Girl! Iron fist! Doctor Strange! Namora! Mystique?
Replies
I think I liked the art more than you did, but not enough to argue about it. ;)
I agree with you about the set up being all over the place. It reminds me of the mid-‘90s debacle Onslaught (which led to “Heroes Go Bye-Bye”). The big one-shot dust up begins with a close-up of the Watcher, who introduces himself, describes his function, and then intones: “My job is done.” What!? Because a handful of super-heroes disappeared? Are you serious?
I agree with you, too, about Marvel uninteresting cosmic characters (apparently they are now referred to collectively as “Abstracts”). I was pleased to learn, however, that “most of what we know of [them] is gleaned from the first few pages of Quasar #20,” so I can look it up if I want to.
I’ll cop to being one of those “Hardcore Fanatical Completist” you describe in #5.
No, really? ;)
Jeff of Earth-J said:
Um, guilty as well.
Case in point: I was intrigued by the assertion that Tuk, the Caveboy was referred to as an Inhuman. I read those stories, once, years ago, but I didn’t remember much about them, so I decided to refresh my memory. It turns out that Mark Waid didn’t just pull that out of his arse as a “neat idea” (such as “Mercury” and “Huricane” actually being Makari of the Eternals). The intro to the very first story says: “Ak, the last of the shaggy ones, called him Tuk. But the boy didn’t realize that ‘Tuk’ meant ‘avenger’ and that he was destined to roam the prehistoric wilds of 50,000 B.C. in search of ‘Attilan,’ island of the gods, to reclaim a lost throne..” Also, in the third story, he visits the island of Atlantis.
I read it. Could it be that all these cosmic characters (or some of them) will be placed in the MCU? Just a thought.
I'll be here to follow the discussion.
Spoiler Space for Issue #2 courtesy Coleman Francis, a director so bad he makes Ed Wood look like John Ford.
Issue #2 covers from the start of the Twentieth Century until just before the origin of the Fantastic Four.
Random Thoughts:
Overall: So far, this series is OK, but not nearly what it might have been.
Library time's running out, so I may have more to say tomorrow.
The Baron said:
What, pray tell, is a "decades-long Sinacong War"? We know James Rhodes and Frank Castle were in Vietnam, but weren't Ben Grimm and Reed Richards in the European Theater of Operations during their time in service?
Since Reed and Ben are older than Rhodey and The Punisher, why even posit that they were in the same war? It's just as easy to put Reed and Ben in Vietnam and Rhodey and The Punisher in Afghanistan, and makes more sense.
I almost picked up the first two issues today, but decided I'd wait for the trade.
But I have no fear of Spoilers and will read along and contribute if I can. So far it sounds like Waid (it is Mark Waid, right?) is trying to write a history that doesn't involve, or involves as little as possible, a sliding scale or permanent time markers for its heroes. Something that will stand for a while, maybe even a gereration.
Still, "Siancong War" sounds like a cheap cop-out. Can't wait to see what he'll do with the Space Race and the FF. Maybe it willl be a decades-long Moon War.
Apparently the Siancong war (adapted from the Sin-Cong war in Avengers #5) is indeed Waid's concept for a sliding scale war. The idea is that it can be used to eliminate the need to keep moving characters to more recent wars. So instead of moving the Punisher from Viet Nam to the Gulf War to whatever comes next, a writer can just always say he was in the Siancong war. And that fact that it was decades long means that characters of various ages can all be part of it.
I do think you lose a bit of grittiness and realism when you use a fictional war though.
That being said, I wanted to address and amplify Baron's points, because I'm curious, too.
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