Post by rberman on Oct 24, 2018 17:33:05 GMT -5
“Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, way before Nirvana there was U2 and Blondie and music still on MTV… She’s still preoccupied with 1985.” – 1985 by the band SR-71
The Story: In the mid-1960s on Marvel’s version of Earth Prime, comic book collecting tween Clyde Wyncham manifests unpredictable mutant powers. He summons a throng of mesmerized neighbors outside his house one night. But when the reanimated corpse of his deceased father knocks on the door, his mother clubs him on the head with a candlestick, in the kitchen, and he spends the rest of his life as a drooling vegetable.
Flashing forward to 1985, Clyde’s best friend Jerry Goodman is now a divorced father of Toby, a tween boy who loves reading comic books, from his dad’s oldies to the newest ones Marvel has to offer. One day when he and his dad are hanging out near the abandoned Wyncham house, a mysterious man offers to sell them Clyde’s collection of untouched Silver Age Marvel comics. They take the stash to the local comic store.
Over the next couple of days, many Marvel Comics villains appear in Toby’s town, terrorizing and even killing many citizens. Toby explores the storage shed (longtime home of Clyde’s comic book collection) behind the Wyndham house and finds a portal to the Marvel Universe. He enters and returns with a collection of super-heroes to defend his town.
But the villains are not defeated until Toby’s father Jerry is shot dead in Clyde’s presence. This awakens Clyde long enough from his brain-damaged stupor long enough to banish all the villains whence they came. The heroes take Clyde back to the Marvel Universe so that he won’t trouble our world with any more outbursts. Toby grows up to become a comic book writer so that he can write a “1985” series in which his father cheats death, awakening after a long coma.
My Two Cents: This 2008 series sounds like the plot for a really solid issue of Astro City, playing off of the whole Earth-1 vs Earth-Prime distinction. The conceit is that the Marvel Universe exists parallel to ours, and comic book writers are discovering it rather than creating it. It also sounds a lot like stories that Grant Morrison would tell or indeed has told. It’s not fair of me to label this sort of tale primarily as Morrisonian, but there it is; I do. Especially since its plot turns into “turtles all the way down”: Toby writes the story of 1985, which contains the story of Toby writing the story of 1985, etc.
The other story recalled here is that of Tron or The Last Starfighter, in which expertise at nerdy hobbies becomes the key to victory. See, mom! My comic book trivia might save us all one day! I’m also reminded of the 1993 film Last Action Hero, in which a child is sucked into an action movie, and then the hero and villain spill out into the “real world.” That Schwarzenegger movie bombed at the box office, but I admired its high concept.
Mark Millar does not tell this tale in one issue, or even three issues. It takes six issues, because the first three issues are heavily padded (from a plot perspective) with repeated cycles of “innocent citizens are doing their thing, when there’s a strange noise out back. Lo and behold, (insert splash page of an iconic Marvel villain) comes inside and murders them!” Though this is highly repetitive from a plot perspective, a nostalgic tale like this is going to be all about the feels. A fifty page or sixty page graphic novel would have been another option.
A couple of plot elements were left wanting. It’s stated that the villains are summoned to rampage in our world due to Clyde’s rage over his beloved Silver Age collection being removed from his old home. But the first villain (The Mole Man) is the one who gives the comics to Toby and Jerry in the first place. Also, not so much a plot hole as an unsatisfying element: Toby’s trip to retrieve heroes from the Marvel Universe makes for some cool images (especially the difference in Tommy Lee Edwards’ art style between the dark Earth-Prime and the bright and sketch-like Marvel Universe), but the heroes don’t actually save the day. Clyde does. We needed a scene in which Captain America convinces Clyde to do the right thing, or Professor X calms him telepathically, or something. But who didn’t want to be the little kid in this image?
Toby is an obvious authorial stand-in character, though his life circumstances do not match Mark Millar’s. Toby is the child of divorce, his father Jerry a struggling musician. After Red Skull kills his father, his mother moves with Toby to England, where her second husband has taken a job. Mark Millar grew up in Scotland with parents who prized education, but both died when he was a teen. But the shared commonality is a love of comic books from early childhood, which in Millar’s case can be traced to his older brother’s hobby.
All in all, a fun little "done in one" series full of nostalgia.
The Story: In the mid-1960s on Marvel’s version of Earth Prime, comic book collecting tween Clyde Wyncham manifests unpredictable mutant powers. He summons a throng of mesmerized neighbors outside his house one night. But when the reanimated corpse of his deceased father knocks on the door, his mother clubs him on the head with a candlestick, in the kitchen, and he spends the rest of his life as a drooling vegetable.
Flashing forward to 1985, Clyde’s best friend Jerry Goodman is now a divorced father of Toby, a tween boy who loves reading comic books, from his dad’s oldies to the newest ones Marvel has to offer. One day when he and his dad are hanging out near the abandoned Wyncham house, a mysterious man offers to sell them Clyde’s collection of untouched Silver Age Marvel comics. They take the stash to the local comic store.
Over the next couple of days, many Marvel Comics villains appear in Toby’s town, terrorizing and even killing many citizens. Toby explores the storage shed (longtime home of Clyde’s comic book collection) behind the Wyndham house and finds a portal to the Marvel Universe. He enters and returns with a collection of super-heroes to defend his town.
But the villains are not defeated until Toby’s father Jerry is shot dead in Clyde’s presence. This awakens Clyde long enough from his brain-damaged stupor long enough to banish all the villains whence they came. The heroes take Clyde back to the Marvel Universe so that he won’t trouble our world with any more outbursts. Toby grows up to become a comic book writer so that he can write a “1985” series in which his father cheats death, awakening after a long coma.
My Two Cents: This 2008 series sounds like the plot for a really solid issue of Astro City, playing off of the whole Earth-1 vs Earth-Prime distinction. The conceit is that the Marvel Universe exists parallel to ours, and comic book writers are discovering it rather than creating it. It also sounds a lot like stories that Grant Morrison would tell or indeed has told. It’s not fair of me to label this sort of tale primarily as Morrisonian, but there it is; I do. Especially since its plot turns into “turtles all the way down”: Toby writes the story of 1985, which contains the story of Toby writing the story of 1985, etc.
The other story recalled here is that of Tron or The Last Starfighter, in which expertise at nerdy hobbies becomes the key to victory. See, mom! My comic book trivia might save us all one day! I’m also reminded of the 1993 film Last Action Hero, in which a child is sucked into an action movie, and then the hero and villain spill out into the “real world.” That Schwarzenegger movie bombed at the box office, but I admired its high concept.
Mark Millar does not tell this tale in one issue, or even three issues. It takes six issues, because the first three issues are heavily padded (from a plot perspective) with repeated cycles of “innocent citizens are doing their thing, when there’s a strange noise out back. Lo and behold, (insert splash page of an iconic Marvel villain) comes inside and murders them!” Though this is highly repetitive from a plot perspective, a nostalgic tale like this is going to be all about the feels. A fifty page or sixty page graphic novel would have been another option.
A couple of plot elements were left wanting. It’s stated that the villains are summoned to rampage in our world due to Clyde’s rage over his beloved Silver Age collection being removed from his old home. But the first villain (The Mole Man) is the one who gives the comics to Toby and Jerry in the first place. Also, not so much a plot hole as an unsatisfying element: Toby’s trip to retrieve heroes from the Marvel Universe makes for some cool images (especially the difference in Tommy Lee Edwards’ art style between the dark Earth-Prime and the bright and sketch-like Marvel Universe), but the heroes don’t actually save the day. Clyde does. We needed a scene in which Captain America convinces Clyde to do the right thing, or Professor X calms him telepathically, or something. But who didn’t want to be the little kid in this image?
Toby is an obvious authorial stand-in character, though his life circumstances do not match Mark Millar’s. Toby is the child of divorce, his father Jerry a struggling musician. After Red Skull kills his father, his mother moves with Toby to England, where her second husband has taken a job. Mark Millar grew up in Scotland with parents who prized education, but both died when he was a teen. But the shared commonality is a love of comic books from early childhood, which in Millar’s case can be traced to his older brother’s hobby.
All in all, a fun little "done in one" series full of nostalgia.
