POSTLUDE: Marvels #2

Featuring: Marvels
Release: December 14, 1993
Cover: February 1994
$5.95
Writer: Kurt Busiek
Artist: Alex Ross
Letterers: Starkings w/ John Gaushell
Editor: Marcus McLaurin
Assitant editor: Spencer Lamm
Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco
Cover design & logo: Joe Kaufman
Interior design: Comicraft
45 pages

Previous		Next
Weird Science #20	PRELUDE
Tales of Suspense #72	Reading order	Sgt. Fury #22
Marvels #1	Marvels	Marvels #3

The real story was the people who’d been scared too long. Who’d been wound tight by talk of mutant menaces and hidden conspiracies and shadows under the bed.

I’ve mentioned before I want to frame our reading around the Marvels miniseries from the 1990s. That hasn’t really been obvious yet. We read Marvels #0, which retold a few pages from Marvel Comics #1. And we read Marvels #1, which paralleled 1940s Marvel comics. But our reading is concentrated in the 1960s. Finally, we get to Marvels #2, which parallels the 1960s Marvel stories, ranging from Avengers #6 (May 1964), the 191st entry in our reading, through Tales of Suspense #69 (June 1965), the 404th entry in our reading. Quite the range. We are reading it after completing the Iron Man story from Tales of Suspense #72, because we’d first needed to tie up some continuity ends.

We’ve hinted before at the theme of this comic, and I’d like to just discuss it up front. The two centerpiece stories are the wedding of Reed and Sue in Fantastic Four Annual 3, and the attack on the X-Men by the Sentinels in X-Men #14. The writer Kurt Busiek had noted in his own Marvel Universe research what we also found in our reading here, that these events must occur on nearly consecutive days. That’s not obvious from any comic, but does follow from a close reading of the many interconnected comics. And the two stories make for quite the juxtaposition.

The contrast between these two arcs becomes the central tension of this issue. The Fantastic Four wedding is the celebrity event of the century. The press covered it, crowds of fans gathered, famous people like Tony Stark and Millie the Model attended. The Fantastic Four are super-powered heroes and beloved by the public.

The X-Men are also super-powered heroes. But where the Fantastic Four gained their powers from cosmic radiation, the powers of the X-Men are innate, based on an accident of birth, perhaps from radiation their parents had been exposed to. The “Children of the Atom”. And that difference is big enough that the same public who cheered on the wedding of the FF members would listen with interest and nods of approval as Bolivar Trask went on the airwaves to declare mutants a menace and announce he’d created robot-hunting Sentinels to hunt and kill the X-Men.

We read the Heroes & Legends retelling of the wedding, which focused on this very tension in the form of a child, who was a huge fan of the Fantastic Four, but afraid of the X-Men. He learned better by issue’s end.

Here, the arc will play out within Phil Sheldon, the photojournalist who specialises in shots of the people he’s dubbed the Marvels. A person who idolizes heroes like the Fantastic Four and Avengers, but fears mutants like the X-Men.

It’s entirely irrational, just like all forms of bigotry.

That’s enough belaboring of themes. Let’s dive into the story. As we do, we’ll try to draw the parallels between what’s happening on the page and our reading.

I’ll note that the title is called “Monsters”, which brings to my mind Thing and Hulk. The latter doesn’t appear, and the former is a minor player at best.

It’s 20 years after the events of Marvels #1. Phil Sheldon is now an established freelance photojournalist happily married with two kids. We see hm doing freelance work for Barney Bushkin at the Daily Globe. The shadows on the page somewhat obscure Phil’s eyepatch, a lifelong injury sustained last issue by getting too close to a superhero battle.

We remember meeting Barney in Amazing Spider-Man #27. He’s nicer than Jonah, but asked too many questions for Peter’s tastes.

The story opens amidst the events of Avengers #6. Phil rushes to the streets to cover the Masters of Evil spraying the city with Adhesive X. Over the course of this issue, we’ll get glimpses of several Marvel stories from Phil’s perspective. Sometimes the art will line up tightly with the original, and we’ll try to capture that.

The Giant-Man shot is a famous image from Marvels, and informs the cover of my own softcover collection. Alex Ross had this to say about the picture.

My intent was to illuminate the super hero clearly and believably, where their public impression would be striking and credible in their world and ours.

Alex Ross

Looking back to the theme of the issue previously belabored, what’s important from this scene is Phil’s reaction to the heroes. He speaks of Captain America with reverence, describes himself as being “in awe”. He says of the battle:

It was life or death– It was grand opera– It was the greatest show on Earth– and we– every single one of us– we had the best seat in the house.

That’s how Phil reacts to seeing the Avengers. Keep that in mind. We’ll see later how he reacts to the X-Men.

Phil sees a publisher to pitch a book of his photos. He refers to his subjects as “Marvels” and wants that to be the title of the book.

The publisher is located in the Flatiron Building in Manhattan. I visited there once, to see my cousin at work. It’s the location of the Daily Bugle offices in the Spider-Man movie.

Let’s check out the posters on the wall. Marvels is all about the little details. Various books or articles from this publisher.

A poster about Santo Rico, “Country in Crisis”. We visited there in Tales to Astonish #54. It was under the control of the fascist El Toro.

Seduction of the Innocent is a real book by Frederick Wertham in 1954, focused on how comic books were corrupting the day’s youth. It has become the centerpiece for a backlash against comics in the era, particularly against publishers like EC Comics, whose Weird Science tale we just read.

While talking to the publisher, we see a flaming 4 in the sky out the window left in the wake of the Human Torch’s flight. Human Torch does this every so often. It’s a signal to the rest of the team. For example, Strange Tales #123. This signal was in connection with Torch’s battle with the Beetle.

As Phil walks home, we pass Benson’s Department Store, which features a line of clothing inspired by the Wasp. We recall from Tales to Astonish #58 that the entire line was a clever trap by the Magician. But we also saw from the issue that the designs were quite popular with the public. This again illustrates the basically celebrity status of the Avengers in the minds of the public. Wasp is a fashion icon, and women want to dress like her.

Busiek and Ross show us two good shots of Wasp fashions in the window, one just before and one just after the scene we are about to see. The contrast is intentional.

As Phil is walking past Benson’s, he stumbles upon an excited mob.

Some mutants had tried to kill a construction worker. Later reports would indicate the X-Men had actually saved the construction worker. But this didn’t ring true to Phil. He knew about mutants.

They wanted us dead. Everybody knew that.

Phil joins the crowd, who have the X-Men cornered in a dark alley. The X-Men could destroy these people but choose not to fight back as the crowd starts hurling things at them. Phil himself picks up a brick and nails Iceman in the head.

Why would Phil do this? After being so starstruck by Captain America and the Avengers, after pitching a book about the Marvels where he describes his photos as celebrity shots.

When he saw Human Torch, he took a picture. When he saw Iceman, he threw a brick.

And his reactions seemed entirely in line with everybody else. The very same people who would cheer on the Avengers, buy his book, or buy Wasp-inspired fashion were the people ready to form a mob out of their hatred of the X-Men.

Aspirations. Fears. People looked at Captain America and saw the best of themselves reflected. They looked at the X-Men and saw something other. Something to fear.

Iceman briefly wants to fight back, but Cyclops stops him. “They’re not worth it!” he shouts. These words echo with Phil.

But there was something about the mutants. They were the dark side of the Marvels. Where Captain America and Mister Fantastic spoke to us about the greatness within us all– the mutants were death. They didn’t even have to do anything. They were our replacements, scientists said. The next evolutionary step. We– homo sapiens– were obsolete. And they were the future. They were going to kick the dirt onto our graves. It was a terrifying thought. Well, obsolete or not, we weren’t going out without a fight. Not when we had so much to protect.

The last is what it comes down to. As Phil thinks these words, he gets home to his wife and kids. His fear is rooted in concern for those he loves.

His daughters, Bethie and Jenny, are playing Thing vs. Hulk, perhaps recalling the events of Fantastic Four #25. They then move on to Human Torch vs. Eel, perhaps recalling the events of Strange Tales #112.

“Who would protect us from the mutants?” wonders Phil.

The next day, Giant-Man is fighting Spider-Man. This is affecting traffic and train schedules. The crowd blames Spider-Man. The battle took place in Tales to Astonish #57.

Part of the idea of Marvels is to deliberately contrast the approach to these heroes taken in the original comics. The fundamental idea of Marvel Comics was heroes with foibles and insecurities. Thor may have the powers of a god, but his dad doesn’t approve of his girlfriend. Captain America feels out of place. Spider-Man needs money for Aunt May’s medical bills. But the public wouldn’t see much of this. To them, these characters may appear above such problems. These characters may appear larger than life, as superheroes were often originally portrayed back in the 1940s. So we never get into the heroes’ heads in this comic. We hear very little dialogue from any of them. We see only glimpses of them, as they appear to Phil.

I let the events in Marvels inform the order we read these books in as best as I could. But Avengers #6 is a mess of an issue, full of internal contradictions, and hard to reconcile with the other books. I had to conclude the Giant-Man/Spider-Man fight fit better before the Masters of Evil battle than after. Plainly the opposite conclusion Kurt Busiek reached in his research. We both agree they must be close in time. One takes place the day after the other in Marvels. I think that’s the only piece of chronology from this comic not reflected in our reading order, that we read Tales to Astonish #57 before Avengers #6. I otherwise tried to use this issue as a guidepost for the order of events.

For example, you will note our reading order jumps straight from the Fantastic Four wedding to the X-Men/Sentinel battle to the Iron Man/Titanium Man battle. That choice was informed by those being the final 3 events referenced this issue.

I will note Busiek confusingly set the Spider-Man/Giant-Man battle of issue 57 after the Wasp fashion line-up of issue 58 was released. Which further explains this point of contrast between the order of events in this issue and our reading order.

People in the press room refer to Kraven and the Beetle. Spider-Man’s battle with Kraven in Amazing Spider-Man #15 must be upcoming. The reference to the Beetle gives weight to the suggestion we’d picked out the correct instance of Human Torch making a big flaming “4” earlier.

The references to “heavy machinery” and “the barricade” are a little more subtle. Marvels Annotated claims to have the answers. The heavy machinery show was in Journey Into Mystery #105. The barricade reference confuses me. Marvels claims it’s from Tales to Astonish #57, but I wonder if that’s a mistake., as it’s not obvious what they’re referring to. Perhaps they are referring to a police barricade to cordon off the Spider-Man/Giant-Man fight.

Thing’s girlfriend Alicia is putting on a sculpture exhibit dedicated to superheroes. She’s referred to here as Alicia Masters, but we’ve not yet learned a last name for her. We only know her as Alicia.

There are many behind-the-scenes sources where Alex Ross details his artistic process. People are always based on models, sometimes friends of his. Sometimes he uses celebrity likenesses. We won’t attempt to list all of these here, but we’ll note a couple.

Tony Stark’s visage is sometimes based on Errol Flynn and sometimes on Tony Dalton. Dalton was Ross’ idea, but Don Heck had originally had Errol Flynn as an inspiration when he’d designed Tony Stark in the first place. Alicia is based on Linda Hamilton.

Amusingly Professor X is based on Patrick Stewart, who of course would go on to play Professor X in a film some years later. I think all of us had the same fan-casting in mind.

Most of the Marvels are present at this gallery in their civilian identities. I like the detail of Matt Murdock feeling the statue of Daredevil.

And that Phil is casually at an event with the very mutants he’d cornered in an alley, just without realizing it.

This entire event is of course one side of the coin, the celebrity side of the Marvels. The darker side of the coin is seen on vandalism outside: “Mutants Die Bloody”. Even at the event, a patron whispers about “horrible muties”.

Phil offered some Iron Man pictures to the Daily Gazette, covering the Williams embezzlement scandal. Williams Innovations and Stark Industries are competitors. Simon Williams would become the super-villain Wonder Man in Avengers #9.

Phil’s daughters have a secret. They are sneaking some food from the dinner table. The parents assume they are taking it to a stray cat or dog.

Phil covers the announcement of Reed and Sue’s engagement, approaching one of the centerpiece stories for this issue.

The engagement is celebrated in several magazines. Life appears to reuse an old photo, as we saw it taken in Fantastic Four #24.

The page shows the entire theme of the story in a microcosm. The two sides of the coin.

Phil meets up with Harris Hobbs, the reporter present for Thor’s battle with Absorbing Man in Journey Into Mystery #114. The press greets the New Avengers, who we met in Avengers #16. The Daily Chronicle reports Sue was kidnapped by the Frightful Four, as we saw in Fantastic Four #38. Phil gets a shot of Daredevil battling Stilt-Man from Daredevil #8.

Phil works in the city, but lives in the suburbs. The Marvels and mutants are all in Manhattan. In the suburbs, his family is safe. Or so he thought. His neighbors have formed a mob over a mutant sighting in the area.

Phil makes the connection to his daughters sneaking food away. It hadn’t been a dog they were feeding, but a mutant girl.

The girl is named Maggie, and her look is inspired by the mutant child from Weird Science #20, which motivated me to read it.

Meeting Maggie is the turning point for Phil’s character in the issue’s single best page. The artist switches back and forth between Maggie and Phil, zooming in closer on Maggie’s face with each panel.

And Phil comes to his great revelations. That his friends and neighbors would murder this child, and all of them with her. But that she isn’t dangerous. He sums it up: “Dear God, Doris– she’s just a little girl.”

I’d like to pause for an aside. We’re coming up imminently on the end of Wally Wood’s Daredevil run, and Steve Ditko’s time with Marvel will end not long after. Neither departs on the best terms, and both had difficulty working with Stan Lee. Crucial to understanding their disagreements is appreciating what it means to write a comic. And the fundamental differences between comics that employ a script→art approach vice an art→script approach.

If we think about the upcoming issue of Amazing Spider-Man we will read, the process went something like this. Ditko, with no input from Lee of any kind, drew 20 pages of comic art and added notes to explain what was happening and what the characters were saying. Lee took this work and made a final script to hand to the letterer.

For Marvels, Busiek and Ross and others had some initial brainstorming about what they wanted for this series and what they wanted for this issue. Busiek then sat down and wrote a script. He then gave that script to Ross to illustrate. Busiek really wrote this comic. To illustrate that, I wanted to see the script for the above page as Busiek wrote it, and you can see how much of his input made it to the final page.

PAGE TWENTY-EIGHT – 6 PANELS

[28.1] A QUICK SLICE OF PHIL’S FACE, TIGHT ON HIM SO WE CAN ONLY SEE HIM FROM BROW TO LOWER LIP, SCARED AND UNSURE, WEIRDLY LIT BY THE LAMPS. (H)

1 Phil: I —
2 Phil: –I–

[28.2] LOOKING PAST PHIL AT THE MUTANT KID. (S?)

3 Phil: How– how long— has it– ?
4 Caption: I couldn’t think. Was it contagious? If the girls had touched it–
5 Caption: If they’d been infected somehow–

[28.3] ON THE GROUP OF THEM. JENNY IS TALKING TO PHIL, AND SHE, BETH AND DORIS ARE ALL LOOKING AT PHIL. PHIL’S LOOKING AT THE MUTANT, WHO LOOKS BACK AT HIM NERVOUSLY.

6 Jenny: We found her in the park, Daddy. After that big storm.
7 Jenny: She was all wet and cold–!
8 Mutant: I was h-hungry, mister. Or I’d have kept hiding…

[28.4] ON THE MUTANT, A GOOD CLOSE-UP TO MAKE US AS SYMPATHETIC AS POSSIBLE. HER EYES ARE TEARING UP, THERE’S SPACE AROUND HER TO MAKE HER LOOK ALONE AND FRIENDLESS– THE WORKS. (H)

9 Mutant: Daddy got fired outta his work— Mommy cried all the time–
10 Mutant: They said they couldn’t take care of me any more– that it was all my fault—
11 Mutant: They w-went away—

[28.5] ON PHIL, SCARED BUT UNSURE. (S?)

12 Caption: They were evil! The mutants– they wanted to kill us all!
13 Caption: Everybody knew that!

[28.6] ON THE MUTANT, A TEAR TRICKLING DOWN HER CHEEK. (S)

14 Mutant: A-are you going to send me away–?

By putting (H), Busiek is suggesting a horizontal panel. By putting (S), he is suggesting a square. You can see Ross disregarded these suggestions and laid out the page his own way, using vertical rectangles for panels 3-5. The pictures contain precisely what Busiek suggested, but I think Ross’ instincts for laying out the page were better, and the end result is pretty perfect.

For contrast, Ditko has nothing like that when sitting down to draw the next Dr. Strange or Spider-Man. He has nothing at all. The story had not been written, leaving it to Ditko to write the story with pictures.

Back to the story, Phil starts taking the time to actually learn about the X-Men. How they freed a military base from Magneto (X-Men #1), protected defense secrets (X-Men #2), and were guests at the Fantastic Four engagement party just like the other Marvels (Fantastic Four #36).

He also finds newspaper articles featuring the thoughts of Dr. Bolivar Trask.

Hey, Madam Medusa’s disguise didn’t fool you, did it?

That shot of Medusa is one of the more notable continuity errors in this comic. That’s the disguise she used to kidnap Sue Storm. But that kidnapping had already been reported by a newspaper earlier in the issue. Perhaps it’s not a mistake. Perhaps she just doesn’t have that many outfits and happens to be wearing the same one again today.

Phil sights Iceman and Beast, perhaps on their way to Coffee A-Go-Go. He wants their help with Maggie, but is scared Iceman will remember him.

We come now to the wedding.

Phil notes it went off without a hitch. But that’s because the Watcher erased everybody’s memories of the true events.

There’s a lot going on in that picture. I won’t try to name everybody. You can look for the Beatles yourself. I will note Gabe is whispering to Nick, just as in the original. He’s concerned about Stan and Jack trying to get in without an invitation.

Conspicuously absent are the X-Men, who did attend the wedding. Busiek thought their presence would confuse the issue’s central theme. He gave a nod to their presence by reminding us they were at the engagement party. However, I think their presence would serve to show just how complicated an issue prejudice really is.

I want to draw our attention to one other guest. Fourth row from the back, next to J. Jonah Jameson is his friend from the club we’ve seen a couple times now, but whose name we are yet to learn. First seen in Amazing Spider-Man #25.

Busiek sets it up so Xavier’s televised debate with Trask is the very same day as the wedding.

The day’s television broadcast had the city united in cheer. The evening’s sent them into a panic.

Trask’s words hit home. People got scared. People rioted.

Phil rushes home, fearing for his family. He finds them safe, but Maggie gone. All that’s left is a note. This parallels the ending of the Weird Science tale, which ended with reading a note expressing the mutant girl’s love.

Soon enough, the world is back to normal, and the television is advertising an upcoming bout between Iron Man and Titanium Man.

Phil never learns what happened to Maggie.

Rating: ★★★★★, 97/100

Characters:

• Barney Bushkin
• Phil Sheldon
• Captain America
• Black Knight
• Iron Man/Anthony “Tony” Stark
• Radioactive Man
• Thor/Don Blake
• Melter
• Giant-Man/Hank Pym
• Bennett Schwed
• Human Torch
• Angel
• Iceman
• Beast
• Cyclops
• Marvel Girl
• Beth Sheldon
• Jenny Sheldon
• Doris Sheldon
• Mr. Fantastic/Reed Richards
• Invisible Girl/Susan Storm
• Dorrie Evans
• Alicia Masters
• Wasp
• Professor X
• Peter Parker
• Rick Jones
• Willie Lumpkin
• Pepper Potts
• Happy Hogan
• Jane Foster
• Dr. Strange
• Matt Murdock/Daredevil
• Foggy Nelson
• Karen Page
• Jane Foster
• J. Jonah Jameson
• Harris Hobbs
• Quicksilver
• Scarlet Witch
• Hawkeye
• Stilt-Man
• Nick Cosgrove
• Arthur Lindstrom
• Maggie
• Medusa
• Patsy Walker
• Hedy Wolfe
• George
• Ringo
• Paul
• John
• Dum Dum Dugan
• Gabe Jones
• Nick Fury
• Jonah’s friend from club
• Mary Tyler Moore
• Dick Van Dyke
• Frederick Foswell
• Betty Brant
• Iggy

Minor characters:

• Fred (Daily Globe Reporter)
• Eunice (gossipy patron)
• Arthur (bigoted neighbor)
• Jay (reporter)
• Gavin (reporter)

Story notes:

• Phil refers to recents major events over the course of “months”: the birth of the Fantastic Four, Thor, Giant-Man, Namor’s return, and the return of Captain America.
• Black Knight and Radioactive Man spraying Adhesive X.
• Phil coins the term “Marvels” and wants it for a book title.
• Bennet Schwed, publisher of Empire Books.
• Bennet Scwed’s name inspired by Bennett Cerf, publisher of Random House, and Peter Schwed of Simon & Schuster.
• Poster on wall of Empire Books: Emergency Exit by George Holt (pen name for E.C. Tubb), published by British Science Fiction Magazine vol. 1 No. 6, 1954.
• Scwed suggests text for Phil’s book could be by Isaac Asimov, Ben Urich, or Norman Mailer. Urich introduced in Daredevil #153, 1978, but established as longtime reporter.
• Phil considers comparing Marvels to Herakles, Gilgamesh, Roland, and King Arthur.
• Clothing inspired by the Wasp at Benson’s Department Store.
• Couple in elevator appear to be JFK and Jackie Kennedy.
• Witnesses claim X-Men tried to kill construction worker, but some claim they were trying to save him.
• Phil throws a brick at Iceman.
• Crowd sights Thor flying.
• Kraven coming to New York.
• Sculpture gallery from Alicia.
• Gossip about Sue and Namor.
• Statues: Hulk, Dr. Doom, Namor, Iron Man, Rama-Tut, Super-Skrull, Thing, Executioner, Daredevil, Thor, a piece we’ll see later.
• Attendees at sculpture gallery: Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Hank Pym, Jan Van Dyne, Alicia, Charles Xavier, Scott Summers, Jean Grey, Peter Parker, Rick Jones, Willie Lumpkin, Pepper Potts, Happy Hogan, Matt Murdock, Foggy Nelson, Karen Page, Don Blake, Jane Foster, Stephen Strange.
• Phil felt the suburbs were safe from Marvels.
• Vandalism: Muties out; kill all muties
• Engagement celebrated in magazines: Redbook, Life, Seventeen.
• Phil gets on the Globe press list for the FF wedding.
• Mutant sighted near Phil’s neighbors the Kemperers.
• Lauren Bacall and Millie the Model at wedding.
• Seen at wedding: Beatles, Nick Fury, Gabe Jones, Dum Dum Dugan, Willie Lumpkin, J. Jonah Jameson, Jonah’s friend from club, Phil Sheldon, Karen Page, Daredevil, Dr. Strange, Mary Tyler Moore, Dick Van Dyke, Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Captain America, Alicia, Thing, and Human Torch.
• Press reception: Phil Sheldon, Barney Bushkin, J. Jonah Jameson, Ben Urich, Betty Brant, Frederick Foswell, Iggy
• Old Daily Bugle article of All-Winners Squad: Namor, Toro, Human Torch, Captain America, Miss America, Whizzer, Bucky.
• Gavin & Jay named for Jay Gavin, pseudonym for Werner Roth, who drew X-Men #14.

Previous		Next
Weird Science #20	PRELUDE
Tales of Suspense #72	Reading order	Sgt. Fury #22
Marvels #1	Marvels	Marvels #3