"Marvel Comics: The Untold Story": Marvel's universe not so different from ours — for better or worse
Thor (Chris Hemswprth) and Captain America (Chris Evans) amid the rubble and quite a New York City rumble in "Marvel's the Avengers." (Provided by Paramount Pictures)
NONFICTION: HISTORY
Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe
A mere decade ago, a detailed look at every notch in the 73-year timeline of Marvel Comics would have been hard to sell to mainstream audiences.
But in 2012, when Marvel Comics is a multibillion-dollar media empire
with a highly visible, blockbuster film franchise and footprints in
every last pixel of the digital world, it's practically required
reading.
That's the idea, anyway, behind "Marvel Comics: The Untold Story."
Written by former Entertainment Weekly editor and comics diehard Sean
Howe, the heavily footnoted, 496-page nonfiction goliath is both
exhaustive and exhausting, an impressively organized telling of the
company's rise from self-made pulp purveyor to muscular corporate
octopus.
And while Howe, who has also written for New York magazine and The
Economist, is no slouch when it comes to untangling Marvel's many (and
occasionally slimy) arms, he smartly focuses on the people behind each
decision and frequentlydelivers colorful laser blasts of prose.
The prologue trots out familiar Marvel characters, such as
Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk, and
briskly sketches the late 1930s publishing climate in which Marvel —
then called Timely Comics — was born.
Central to the narrative is the avuncular Stan Lee, co-creator of
Marvel's most famous superheroes and its public face for decades. His
stereotypically American blend of upbeat hucksterism and naïveté spells
"beleaguered" from the outset.
Anyone looking to go deep will be rewarded. We not only get a sharp
profile of Timely founder Martin Goodman, but a decent sketch of the
origins of comic books in general. From Popeye to DC Comics' characters
such as Superman and Batman, we're shown the baby photos of what have
today become pop culture's strongmen.
Howe goes easy on the historical context, preferring a sort of brisk,
newsreel tone. He introduces dozens of characters — real and fictional —
in quick succession, their stories neatly intertwining. It's a clever
analog of the overlapping mythologies in Marvel's own narrative
universe, which Howe asserts to be the most elaborate in human history.
The account of Marvel's early '60s heyday, when Lee and nascent
legend Jack Kirby whipped up the bulk of Marvel's biggest names, feels
sunny and full of promise; its boom-and-bust cycles and parade of broken
personalities read tragically.
However, the numbingly huge cast of characters gets unwieldy at
times, and the soap-operatic elements feel repetitive, particularly as
Marvel suffers a string of failed editors and expansion plans. The legal wrangling over character creation continues to this day.
Things pick up again as Howe demonstrates that Marvel wasn't just
reflecting society in its comic books, but the company's internal
struggles. By constantly shedding light on the "cesspool of politics and
personality issues," as one staffer called it, Howe invites those with a
casual interest to look closer.
"It was like cocaine culture without the drug use," one editor says,
describing the company's cheesy, ego-driven '80s climate. There are
other striking moments, as when Marvel editor Jim Shooter is burned in
effigy (via a cheap suit stuffed with Marvel's own comic books) and
editorial tensions spill into office fisticuffs.
Howe isn't afraid of melodrama, either, as when he describes the
bitter telephone exchanges between Marvel executives as "epic, hypnotic
fugues."
What else would we expect from a book that trades in superheroes on a galactic scale?
Through it all, figurehead Lee sells Marvel as a chummy bullpen of
buddies while remaining at arm's length from the real business of the
company. It's a familiar story: inspiration and luck, boom and bust,
creative voices fighting for air in the corporate vortex.
Encouragingly, the book takes an ambivalent tone about the value of
such complex, consistently-revised fictional universes — ones that are
repackaged and sold as new material on a regular basis.
Howe has obvious affection for some of the visionary names here, but
his tone remains steady throughout, neither getting too sycophantic nor
soft-pedaling the nauseating injustices Marvel's writers and artists
suffer over the years.
It's daunting to take on such a project, given the complexity of
Marvel's real and fictional worlds. But as microcosms of our own, Marvel
couldn't be more relatable.
John Wenzel: 303-954-1642, jwenzel@denverpost.com or twitter.com/johntwenzel
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