POSTLUDE: Marvels #3

I think that’s Frederick Foswell next to Phil in that last panel. You can recognize some of the people in the first small panel from the crowd in Fantastic Four #48.

The evangelist had claimed water was the first sign, and that two more would follow. Here’s the fire. And then the fire disappears and stones fill the sky.

Three signs. The water, the fire, and now this. Three signs– and then Judgment Day.

What we are seeing is a pretty direct retelling. Storywise the main difference is there is far more focus on the crowd and showing shots from their perspective. Artwise, the styles are very different.

Is Alex Ross’ artwork better than Kirby’s? It’s more detailed, perhaps more realistic in a sense. There is something to the medium of paint as opposed to pencil and ink in terms of what it invokes. Ross’ work isn’t as dynamic. It doesn’t give the same sense of motion that Kirby’s work does. The images appear often as a series of still photographs. Perhaps appropriate as the story is about a photographer.

When doing a comparison, it’s also worth noting a couple factors. First, Ross has Kirby’s work to use as a basis, along with a quarter century of perspective on the work. Kirby was imagining these things as he was drawing them, things unlike anybody had ever before imagined.

Also, Ross has more time. Ross had 4 issues to get out and plenty of time to do it, along with a full script to work off from Kurt Busiek. Time to photograph models and locations. Kirby had more than 4 issues of comics to put out that month. He had days to conceive, plot, and draw this issue of Fantastic Four, because then he had to get to work on Thor. And Hulk. And Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD.

We see Ross spreading a single page of the FF issue over 3 pages here.

We were only the audience again– and we had no say in whatever was going to happen.

And then Galactus.

They added the prismatic light effects as an homage to the inconsistent coloring from one issue to the next. To suggest why Galactus’ outfit may have appeared green and red at first glance, then purple and brown the next.

The comic proceeds to capture the continuation of the story in Fantastic Four #49.

We will get several full page splash pages of what Galactus is up to, interspersed with the reactions of Phil and the crowd. These are all inspired by the comic, but blown up to a larger scale and lovingly painted.

When Kirby did include crowd reaction shots, even those were captured in Marvels. These panels are nearly identical, though we’re at a different point in the dialogue.

The original comic makes no attempt to ask where the other superheroes were, but Marvels considers how everything connects. We had some discussion of where the other heroes might be in the comments on my post on Fantastic Four #50.

In keeping with the idea of Marvels, this is narrowed to the parts of the conflict that are in public view. A central part of the drama plays out in Alicia’s apartment, where she convinces the Silver Surfer to save humanity. That won’t be captured in Marvels because the public doesn’t bear witness to it.

It’s time to confess that I’m running low on commentary to intersperse these panels with. At the moment, I’m mainly interested in seeing how the recreations compare to the originals.

We see the same TUWL news crew filming the events.

Phil comes to his moment of truth regarding his priorities in the face of armageddon. “If this was really the end– I knew where I wanted to be.”

Reading the first issue of these series, I’d found myself comparing Phil’s reflections on a changed world and a loss of normalcy to Covid. I find myself thinking of Covid again as Phil walks home down empty streets. It reminds me of one of my first ventures out of my house during lockdown. Eerily empty streets. Surreal quiet. Finally a biker rode by with Dominos pizza to deliver. My only sign that civilization was continuing. I don’t want to claim Busiek and Ross were overly influenced by events that occurred 25 years after this comic came out. But it’s definitely what I think of as Phil sees the biker ride by down empty streets.

Because I actually own Fantastic Four #50, we have the original images as opposed to the digital images to compare with. Sorry if it’s a bit of a jarring transition. The digital versions are shinier with modern colors and whiter backgrounds. But the originals are more authentic.

The car driving past has two familiar gentlemen. Original penciller Jack Kirby is in the hat, and original inker Joe Sinnott is in the back with glasses.

And then it was quiet. No one around. They were all inside– or gone. Was this what it was going to be like? Silence and emptiness– forever?

Phil long ago stopped trying to photograph the battle with Galactus, and goes home to hug his family. It’s around here that I tear up.

And just like that, it’s over.

Marvels then gets a lot of mileage out of a background reference put in by Stan and team. We see two men reading newspapers in the original, and the man reading the Daily Bugle notes it calls Galactus a hoax. The other man wisely recommends thinking the opposite of what the Daily Bugle calls facts. I would guess Stan was just taking a jab at J. Jonah Jameson, one of his favorite punching bags. Perhaps a bit of satire about fake news.

But Busiek reads into it. He imagines the reaction not just as Jameson’s, but attributes a similar attitude to the public at large. Phil notes he’d expect statues in honor of the Fantastic Four or bridges named after them. But we know none of this happened in the comics. So Busiek is picking up on this detail in this panel as well as these details absent from issues to come to decide that the public reaction to being saved from annihilation by the Fantastic Four is more apathetic than one might expect, then delves into what that might suggest about human psychology.

So where were the Avengers? At least according to this comic. We saw Attuma’s attack happened earlier when the zoo flooded. So this Galactus battle must be after Avengers #27. Then we see this news article about Goliath returning to the Avengers, and the note that the Avengers were trapped outside the city. Hank Pym took on the name Goliath in issue 28. That issue they went off to a far-off mountain area where the Collector’s castle stood. That counts as being out of the city, but that story ends with Goliath collapsing, near death, and not in a position to be photographed. It’s possible the photo was taken before they left on that adventure. The other clue in the photograph is the Scarlet Witch. She and Pietro left the team before the Avengers left for the Forbidden Land in South America. That adventure was long enough and far enough away that I think it makes the best candidate for where they were. I can’t see clear evidence for it in the issue, but commentary found in Marvels Annotated suggests the article was meant to imply the Avengers were in the Forbidden Land in issues 30-31 at the time. The Scarlet Witch being in the photo really confuses things. Could this be an actual mistake by Busiek and Ross? If so, it may be a mistake by Ross, as Busiek’s script just calls for a photo of Goliath.

I tagged Kurt on social media with a question about it.

I have a Marvels question for Kurt Busiek if he has a moment. What’s Scarlet Witch doing in the photo? Shouldn’t she be in Europe when the Avengers return from the Forbidden Land? An older stock photo perhaps? Maybe from just before the Collector battle?

And he responded:

This is the day after the Galactus crisis; the Avengers are still away. So yes, it’s an older photo, modeled kinda-sorta after the cover to 28, when the Avengers were in NYC and could have been photographed.

Kurt Busiek

So once again I failed to catch him in a mistake. And he’s right. The newspapers were the next day. Too soon for the Avengers to have returned and been photographed. So they used a stock photo from when the Avengers were last in New York. Duh. I was wrong to look in that photograph for clues where the Avengers were, as it was plainly taken before the Galactus crisis. Thanks to Kurt for a timely response to my query!

Headlines from the original also speak of Thing roaming the city streets and prowling the back alleys of the city. Why is that more important news than how the Thing and his team just saved the entire world from certain doom?

It’s not surprising that Phil wouldn’t like Peter Parker. They are professional competitors with a similar niche, though Peter Parker’s is focused on a single superhero. And Peter uses his photos to support Jameson’s weird anti-Spider-Man crusade. The pictures Peter has involve his battle with the Looter in Amazing Spider-Man #36. We read that story a little before the Galactus one, but maybe Peter got distracted by apocalyptic events before he could develop the photos.

Senator Byrd has canceled Stark’s defense contracts, leading to Stark International plants closing, as we saw in Tales of Suspense #78. This was just after Iron Man’s return from Asia and his battle with Mandarin and Ultimo. Which suggests that’s where he was when Galactus attacked New York.

Phil is off to his next story. Count Nefaria has imprisoned Washington DC, as we just saw in X-Men #23. It’s not a coincidence we’re reading this comic immediately after that one.

And if the X-Men are off to battle Nefaria now, it means they recently were off battling Lucifer, which could account for where they were when Galactus attacked.

I think that’s Stan Lee at the bar.

Phil has had two internal journeys to go on against the backdrop of these world-shaking events. He’d let his job and what one might even call his obsession with the Marvels photographs get in the way of his responsibilities as a husband and a father. It took the world almost ending to help him get his priorities straight. The comic does end with him again running off to a superhero-related crisis, but this time reassuring his wife that he’ll hurry back, and they’ll still make the trip to see her parents. It’s all about balance.

The other journey was his relationship to the Marvels. He’d come to idolize them, but as the tabloids dragged them down more and more, he wondered if he’d put too much stock in them. That story could end with him settling on a balanced or nuanced take. But it doesn’t. The Fantastic Four saving the planet from an unimaginable threat was enough to convince him his earlier attitude was correct. These people truly were marvels.

Unfortunately, the rest of the public is more apathetic, much to Phil’s dismay.

Were people embarrassed at the fear and helplessness they had felt and taking it out on the Marvels?

I’d like to quote some excerpts from Alex Ross on creating this issue, specifically his thoughts on Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s partnership was the best thing that happened to comics in the sixties. Both men were at the top of their form and together gave this medium what Lennon and McCartney gave to popular music. The Galactus storyline in particular was the high point. It remains a landmark in the history of comics. Here mainstream comics zoomed up to speed with the cosmic contemplations of the mind-expanding sixties youth culture. I never knew this at the time (as I wasn’t even alive yet) but I know now all the effects it had then, when Kirby conceived the Fantastic Four’s ultimate foe as “God”.

Grafting my style onto classic Kirby images has been one of the most delightful experiences of my life and easily one of the most intimidating. One artist can easily put more polish on another’s work by having more time to fuss with it, especially when you’re translating traditional pen and ink 4-color art to a more illustrative, painted approach, but to be able to capture the liveliness of Jack Kirby’s drawing and the sheer energy of his storytelling is a near-impossible task.

…

The time I spent with Kirby’s work studying scenes panel by panel to reinterpret sequences, could not have given me a more intimate respect for this man who was a titan in his field. I’m fortunate to have met Jack Kirby a year before his passing and grateful to Kurt Busiek and Marvel Comics for the opportunity to have walked over some of the same ground and enjoyed the beginnings of the universe he was instrumental in creating. The third chapter of MARVELS is very honestly intended as an expression of admiration for the single most creative and prolific individual in the history of comics.

God rest you, Jack.

Alex Ross

Rating: ★★★★★, 97/100

Characters:

• Holly McCann
• Phil Sheldon
• Ben Urich
• Jameson’s secretary
• Captain America
• Quicksilver
• Scarlet Witch
• Hawkeye
• Mayor of New York
• Senator Byrd
• Nick Fury
• Druid
• Dum-Dum Dugan
• Japser Sitwell
• Doris Sheldon
• Bethie Sheldon
• Jenny Sheldon
• Attuma
• Kraven
• J. Jonah Jameson
• Thing
• Dragon Man
• Human Torch
• Hulk
• Fred Foswell
• Silver Surfer
• Galactus
• Watcher
• Mr. Fantastic
• Invisible Girl
• Punisher
• Iggy
• Peter Parker

Story notes:

• Holly McCann of Stark Industries to wants to offer a tour to Phil Sheldon and Ben Urich. Phil turned it down.
• Cover of Business Week, September 14 1963, titled: “Stark: The Avengers’ Financial Hero”; photo features Tony Stark, Wasp, Ant-Man, Hulk, and Thor.
• Daily Bugle headlines: “Sen. Byrd sez Iron Man botched weapons test”. Subheadline: “Trial run of mini-sub goes awry; is Avenger to blame?” Article by Benjamin Urich. Features photos of Senator Byrd and Iron Man
• Newspaper clipping: “Stark and the Countess: Is it for real this time?” Written by Everett Sand[?]. Photo of Tony and Countess de la Spinosa.
• Jameson hired Sheldon to work with Urich on article, “Is Tony Stark trying to buy respect?”
• Both Phil and Ben have a wife named Doris; Doris Sheldon calls.
• Avengers had been framed by a couple enemies. Mayor apologized and declared Avengers Day. Avengers appear at ceremony.
• Crowd remained suspicious of Avengers and Stark.
• Senator Byrd demands Stark answer to the courts; reporter notes Stark has vanished.
• Stark issued a subpoena to appear before Byrd’s Committee.
• Egg-shaped menaces attack and are defeated by SHIELD using Stark weapons; Ben thinks this is publicity for Stark’s legal troubles.
• Miss McCann delivers Sheldon press releases from the Iron Man Foundation on the charity work they do.
• Phil wanted the Marvels to be pure; Stark was sordid.
• Sheldon with family at zoo; Doris complains he’s always busy; then the zoo floods.
• Phil wants to go take pictures but Doris insists he promised a family day.
• Radio broadcast from Hawkeye lets people know Attuma is behind rising tides, and that Avengers are on top of it.
• News footage of battle between Fantastic Four and Dragon Man.
• News reports from DC that Hulk is attacking White House.
• The Times headline: “Half-naked savage captured on British coast”. Subheadline: “Daredevil accused of murder”. Photos of Ka-Zar arrested by police and of Daredevil.
• A woman wonders where the Avengers are.
• It appears to the crowd that the FF lost.
• Man notes nobody has seen the Avengers or Spider-Man.
• News footage captures Reed confronting Galactus with Ultimate Nullifier.
• Daily Bugle: “Publisher calls Galactus hoax”, “Editorial by J. Jonah Jameson”, with pictures of Galactus and Reed.
• Paper headline obscured: “[Ga]lac[tus] [va]nishes, [Fa]ntastic Four [no]t available [for] comme[nt]”. Photos of Galactus and Reed.

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