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The Comic-Fan’s Comic.

Published 1994

I’ve been reading comics for several years now, this isn’t just my first attempt to go in blind reading 16,000 issues assuming I’ll like them. I have some background knowledge, I’ve read some of the greats, one of which even being the landmark DC comic also painted by Alex Ross:

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And honestly, after reading a lot of the Ultimate Universe of Marvel recently – an alternate Marvel universe that ran concurrent with the existing main 616 universe from 2000 to 2015 – I started feeling down on comics, thinking a lot of them were bad. And trust me, a lot of the Ultimate Universe is….. well just look at it:

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But Marvels?
Ohhhhh man, this is comic book.

This was the third time that I was hit with a sense of wonder SO powerful that I was brought to tears.
It’s still only issue 2.
Something I often say that I like about comic books is how silly they can be:

• Magneto having his own asteroid he operates out of.
• Mr. Fantastic meeting up with Stan Lee to have the Fantastic Four’s stories published.
• The X-Men in an alleyway in a bunch of weird, ill-fitting costumes.

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But take that last one and frame it with a mob on either side and an angel protectorate above.
Light the entire scene from a mutant’s glowing red eyes to make them feel otherworldly.
Then include every fabric fold and imperfection in the costumes to remind us they are not so otherworldly, that they’re more similar to us than we realize.
And finally show all of that from a low perspective, to remind you how big everything felt when you were little.

And it stops being silly, it transcends its own conventions and fills the audience with awe.
Would that the world were full of such Marvels.