What's Marvel's so-called "lost generation"? It's John Byrne (plotter/artist) and Roger Stern's (plotter/scripter) version of the Marvel Universe which occurred between 1955 and 1961 (in real time), and I'll tell you right up front: it's one big, 12-issue "Mopee." No other creator (to my knowledge) has ever used these characters, and they were not included in Mark Waid's History of the Marvel Universe (2019). But it's an interesting series nonetheless. In the mid-'50s, between 1953 and 1955, Marvel tried to bring back their "Big Three" Golden Age heroes, but it didn't take. They were much more successful in 1962 when they reintroduced the Sub-Mariner and in 1964 when they reintroduced Captain America. At that time, both characters had been missing for seven years and 19 years (retroactively), respectively. By the time The Lost Generation debuted, the Marvel Universe was nearly 40 years old, yet Fantastic Four #1 was siad to have happened "ten years ago." That means, as time wore on, the gap between the unsuccessful 1950s revival and the beginning of the Marvel Age grew greater and greater, which meant that Namor now had spent 45 years as an amnesiac, and Captain America had spent 55 years frozen in an iceberg. The Lost Generation was intended to account for the ever-increasing "gap" between the two heroic ages. M:TLG pulled the old Zero Hour "countdown" trick: starting with the "last" issue and "counting down" to the first issue. Unlike DC's Zero Hour, M:TLG also counted down backwards through time.
As with John Byrne Generations and Generations 2, this will be my third time through this series. I read it first in monthly installments as it was coming out; then I later read it "backwards" (or should that be "forward"?) in chonological/numerical order. Unlike Generations and Generations 2, which told individual chapters ten or eleven years apart, I remember that M:TLG does not "read" well out of the order in which is was originally published. The central character is Cassandra Locke, a time-traveler from 200 years in the future, and the narrative is designed to be experience from her point of view. If you've got all that straight, let's get started.
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ISSUE #12:
"This is where it ends!" says Uatu the Watcher to Cassandra Locke as the story opens. It takes place "years" before the Fantastic Four came into existence, and the pair are observing the tail of of a battle being fought out in space, Earth's heroes against a Skrull invasion. Teleporting spacially to the flagship, she encounters a dead Skrull woman being watched over by a hairy, white beast called the Yeti who attacks, then flees. A grey-skinned woman named Nightingale appears on the scene. She is obviously an empath and eases Cassandra's pain. But the death all around is too much for her and succumbs to the trauma and dissolves.
In another part of the ship, an Atlantean woman named Mako who has razor-sharp teeth and claws is fighting alongside an armored hero named Templar and Squire, his sidekick and his son. Both are killed but before Mako can avenge them, a Skrull blows the hatch sending them all out into space. Two levels up. an archer named Oxbow and a woman named Pixie hear the hull breach. They overcome a trio of Skrulls, then find the Black Fox who is mortally wounded. He insists that Oxbow and Pixie leave him behind. Then a woman with white skin arrives. Her name is Gadfly and she apparently has had some sort of Batman/Catwoman-like relationship with Black Fox. She confesses her love for him just as he dies. she removes his mask and discovers that his true identity is "Robert." As she kisses him goodbye, she is fatally shot from behind by a Skrull.
Just then an armored robot or cyborg called Walkabout bursts through the wall and avenges them both. Inside a tank within the robot's chest is a fetus-looking thing called Professor Carmody. A black-clad figure called Nocturne then arrives and kills Carmody, but his blaster overloads and he dies as well. Meanwhile, Cassandra finds herself trying to take cover among several other unidentified costumed figures. The one wearing a read and white costume whom she is talking to recognizes the belt she is wearing as belonging to the Clipper. She tells him she found it among some ruins in the future just before he is shot from behind and killed. In a nearby control room, Oxbow and Pixie have joined a man named Effigy. The Skrulls blast him from behind as well and, as he dies, he turns into a Skrull himself (which comes as a complete surprise to Pixie). Cassandra arrives just as Pixie is about to initiate a chain reaction which will destroy the entire fleet. Just before the explosions, Cassandra resolves to to go further back into the past to stop this battle before it starts.
Back on the Moon, the Watcher confers with someone off-panel at first who ends up being Dr. Strange. Uatu predicts that people such as Reed richards, Henry Pym and Bruce Banner are destined to be key in Earth's next generation of heroes. (Even though this story takes place years prior to the space flight which created the Fantastic Four, Dr. Strange is nevertheless already active behind-the-scenes. "Cassandra may have failed at this generation's end," says the watcher, "but at its beginning she has already succeeded! And therin hangs her tale..." I know that's a lot to unpack if you haven't read the series, but here we are. And I'm sure Locke's first name is no accident.
they were not included in Mark Waid's History of the Marvel Universe
Now, now, that's not true. There's a panel in issue #2 of the History noting that the First Line existed, and fought Skrulls, and that no one anywhere ever, ever, ever cared about them. (OK, I made that last bit up, but they were in there.)
My recollection of Lost Generation is that it was an interesting idea, badly executed. I don't recall that any of the characters were all that interesting.
Whoa, right you are! I did consult the History yesterday before I posted, but I missed that panel.
"Interesting idea, badly executed" pretty much sums the series up, but keep reading, won't you?
ISSUE #11:
I'm beginning to recall the cognitive disconnect I experienced when reading this series for the first time more than 20 years ago. The original "gap" the series was intended to fill was about six years (1955-1961) as discussed yesterday, but the conceit of this series lengths that gap to something like 35 years (1955 though, say, 1990 or so). M:TLG #11 was clearly set at some point during the 1980s. Topical references include the Sony Watchman (which Wikipedia tells me was introduced in 1982). Ben Grimm and Reed Richards are shown in college in this issue, which makes me wonder just how many years prior to Fantastic Four #1 this issue is set. The thing about Mark Waid's History of the Marvel Universe is that it presents events in chronological order without attempting to link them to specific events. For example, this is the caption Bob mentioned yesterday: "The Yankee Clipper, Black Fox, Liberty Girl and Nightengale were the first Line, defending Earth from Skrulls and other threats." A line of dialogue from M:TLG #11 states: "Aside from that screw-up in Iran, the First Line's hardly been seen since... when? Nixon was in office?" Pictured on the cover are Pixie, Walkabout, Mr. Justice and Firefall. The other guy is pretty much lifted from an old Lee/Ditko "suspense" yarn (I'm not sure which one) and retrofitted to suit the story. I've decided to dispense with the detailed plot summaries because I figure anyone reading this would already be familiar with the overall plot by this point or simply doesn't care all that much.
"Interesting idea, badly executed"? I'll take Bob's critique a step further: "Stupid idea, badly executed." And I have thought that lo, these many years.
To wit: There is absoluntely no reason to run a story backward, except to prove that you can do it. Which is a real "Hold my beer" moment.
And it's really not that hard -- just write your story, block it into 12 increments, and then draw/publish them in reverse order.
There are multiple downsides to this idea.
One is reader confusion. It may be easy to run a story backwards, but it's not easy to read one that way. Why would you ask the reader to do it? There is no upside to reading a story backwards, and you have to wait a year to read it in the right order, providing you're interested enough to get all 12 issues (or the trade). And if you've been reading the story as you bought it, and found it lacking, you might not want to invest the time to go back and re-read something you've already read, only this time in the right order for whatever minor benefit you might glean, and be really angry. (Hint, hint, I felt that way.)
Another is that Byrne was handcuffing himself. What if, while drawing issue #5, say, he has an idea for a neat bit of backstory or foreshadowing that would require minor changes to the ending to facilitate? Too late, you've already published the ending. Many creators talk about how they begin with a basic plot, but as they flesh that out and add dialogue, more ideas come to them that improve the story. To paraphrase Raising Arizona, Lost Generation was a barren and rocky place where those ideas could find no purchase.
Third is that all of these characters have to die, get frozen in ice, go on a permanent space mission, or somehow disappear forever (or at least until someone resurrects them), because they haven't appeared in Marvel Comics for, at that point, 40 years. Or if you include the Golden Age, more than 60 years. Which means Byrne isn't going to waste his best efforts on these characters, and they're going to be lame. But looking at the lameness of Trio (which Silver Age Fogey just introduced me to), maybe he did give it his best efforts, and they were lame anyway. The point being: These were characters created to be killed, and were never going to be world-beaters, and were ones the reader was unlikely to invest in.
Especially since they were all killed in the first issue. Killed in the first issue! Right there you've also killed all interest in the characters, and all drama in the story. What is the point of reading past the ending? The next 11 issues just gave us the quotidian details of the final days that brought them to their demise, which is actually kind of depressing. "Enjoy that sandwich, Black Fox, it's your last."
And lastly, what was with all of the historical references? Nixon, Reed Richards in college, etc. That just locks Marvel history in place, which the whole point of elastic "Marvel time" was supposed to redress. If you lock Reed Richards' college years to a specific point in time, then you've undone all the work erasing his World War II service. This is astonishingly bad retconning.
Did anyone -- anyone at all! -- think this through?
For my money, Lost Generation should go in the same memory hole as Spider-Man: Chapter One, which was also astonishigly bad retconning. I loved, loved, loved John Byrne's work, from Rog 2000 to Iron Fist to X-Men. At some point, though, he started churning out so much bad writing (but still good art) that I began to sour on his work. And at this point, I have no interest in any further work he might do, if he conceives and writes it himself. It took a lot to sour me that much on a creator whose work I used to adore, but Lost Generation was one nail in that coffin.
But yes, I'll keep reading your posts, Jeff. Why do you ask?
John Byrne had developed a strange storytelling device by this point: Have the beginning figured out and the end but only hint at the middle AKA the actual story beats. He introduced several characters without ever explaining them. Their relationship with each other is mentioned as if we already read it before!
And worse than all of them being killed, they all have to be forgotten! No one can say, "That Black Fox sure was something!" or "Hawkeye's good but he's no Oxbow!"
However the First Line heroes were given entries in several later Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe but when Byrne left Marvel, no one decided to use them even in flashback stories!
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And worse than all of them being killed, they all have to be forgotten! No one can say, "That Black Fox sure was something!" or "Hawkeye's good but he's no Oxbow!"
This.
However the First Line heroes were given entries in several later Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe but when Byrne left Marvel, no one decided to use them even in flashback stories!
The phrase "lame characters" leaps to mind. They need to be put on a parallel world (Earth-L?) and left there.
One is reader confusion... What if, while drawing issue #5, say, he has an idea for a neat bit of backstory or foreshadowing...?
Here's a case in point. After I already had it fixed in my head that this story was being told in reverse order, the first scene in "issue number one" (i.e., "twelve of twelve"), was set in "New York City... just a few short years ago." three of the characters are sitting in a diner reading the Daily Bugle's coverage of, essentially, Fantastic Four #2 (when knowledge of the Skrulls was first publicly revealed), which is a scene that occured a few years after "issue number twelve." Yes, after all the anachronisms in this story, I will cop to being confused by when I read this story for the first time (with a month between each each chapter).
But yes, I'll keep reading your posts, Jeff.
I just reread Marvel Premiere #35-37 (Ap-Au'77) where Roy Thomas' creation, the 3-D Man battled a "secret invasion" of Skrulls in 1958, well before their actual debut in Fantastic Four #2 and concurrently with M:TLG.
I don't recall whether Stern/Byrne folded this in to M:TLG or not (it would seem a no-brainer), but I'm trying not to page ahead.
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