Welcome back everyone! Today, I'm going to review the celebratory 1000th issue of Marvel Comics. As you know, Marvel Comics has recently celebrated its 80th anniversary with what can be stated is an anthology of multiple heroes that have been created over the years. In what can be stated as an interview, each character is asked "why do the do the things they do?" As we go through the years of heroes, we get to see a backstory of the return of one of the first Marvel heroes.
Let's start with how Marvel Comics wrote and structured its 1000 issue. For the most part, each comic segment is broken up into one panel, celebrating a character or event in each year of the companies existence from 1939 to 2020. The first panel we have is debut of The Human Torch in the first ever Marvel comics issue. As a newcomer into the world of Marvel Comics, I was a little surprised that Johnny Storm was not the original Human Torch, but was a synthetic android created by a Professor Horton. In fact, Johnny Storm would debut at the Human Torch until 1961 when the character was brought back into the comic world by Stan Lee. Needless to say, I felt a little dopey at not knowing all of this beforehand.
As each year progresses, new characters and events are introduced. A few that caught my eye were the introduction of Miss America in 1943 with Marvel Mystery, Spider-Man making his first appearance in 1962 under the Amazing Fantasy run, which of course is followed by the death of Gwen Stacy in Amazing Spider-Man #121 released in 1973. In each panel, the characters described as to their personal motivations of why they are heroes. Some say they fight for love, like America Chavez. Others say they do it because nobody else will do it, such as The Punisher (his origins are revealed in Marvel Preview #2 in 1975).
In several of the panels, the story is related to the history of The Eternity Mask. Originally crafted out of Eternity himself (a powerful cosmic being with unimaginable powers), Eternity Mask was first created by mages during the times of King Arthur, and is said to give its user an "even chance" against their opponents in a fight. Issue 1000 brings back the travels of the Eternity Mask as it passed hands from generation to generation, which included being in the hands of Founding Father Benjamin Franklin during the time of the American Revolution. The mask eventually would end up in the hands of Jim Gardley, The Masked Rider who debuted in the second issue of All Western Winners in 1948. The tale ends with the last panel of Marvel 1000 with the reported return of the Eternity Mask for 2020.
Review:
For the 1000th issue with Marvel, there were some things that I loved, but others not so much. I enjoyed the interview aspect of each character. Every hero (and villain) has their own backstory which melds their personal motivations in doing what they do best. I got the overall impression from most of the heroes involved that since their background has some form of tragedy that affected them so much they will use their extraordinary powers to prevent that from happening to others. I also did enjoy the little tributes to Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and other comic writers and creators that have passed yet still touch our hearts.
The one downside that I would say is that the panels are too short. I understand that there are 80 years of Marvel issues and characters to explore, and there is a lot of ground to cover in one comic book. I did feel, though, that it was a bit hard to follow through with each panel because they were one page. As soon as I got interested with one of the characters, their panel would be over. That was hard to get attached too by having each panel end like that. Overall, though, I did get a good feeling about reading Marvel 1000, which should be the main goal of any comic series when dealing with it's readers. Here's to another 1000 issues of Marvel Comics!
Rating: 8.8/10.
Comments