History of the Marvel Universe #3 // Review
Writer Mark Waid’s tour through an exhaustive decades’ long history of a hugely profitable parallel multiverse marches forth into exceedingly familiar territory as The History of the Marvel Universe reaches its third issue. The dawn of Marvel’s Silver Age is given a very breezy walkthrough in an issue featuring art and color by Javier Rodriguez with ink by Alvaro Lopez. It’s quaint to see all the old, familiar elements of Marvel history brought to the page once more. On the whole, though, there’s very little here that hasn’t been visited and revisited countless times in the course of the past half-century.
Galactus is telling Franklin Richards one last bedtime story...the ultimate bedtime story for the Marvel multiverse. A story which started in the primordial dawn of the universe has moved briskly though ancient events in the first issue to the universe’s golden age in the second issue. Now the brisk narrative reaches the 1960s and the dawn of many, many Marvel comics characters including the Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spider-Man, the X-Men, and so many others who have been so beloved over the decades. The Marvel Age has finally arrived in a series that has spent a solid couple of issues covering events which happened before that fateful first issue of the Fantastic Four in 1961. Highlights from the Silver Age give way to those of the Bronze Age with mention of the Howard the Duck, Man-Thing, the death of Gwen Stacy, the Dark Phoenix Saga and more.
Waid’s prose isn’t nearly as inspired as it needs to be to make celebrated cornerstones of the Marvel Universe feel fresh on the page again. To be fair, it’s a nearly impossible task to find a novel way to tell a story like the origins of Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and the X-Men that have already been covered in comics and novels and radio plays and TV series and movies and such. Had there been som defining bit of poetry or underlying insight provided from the perspective of Galactus’ narration, it might have an exciting journey. Waid just couldn’t find an angle with the material that makes this issue anything other than perfunctory. There IS a brief on-page exchange between Franklin and Galactus which continues the framing story for all of one page. But there isn’t a strong enough vision for this issue to be anything other than another rehash of old plot elements that go back over half a century.
Rodriguez and Lopez have a few moments of truly inspired layout in the third issue of the series. A page featuring panels of history in the webbing on Spider-Man’s iconic Ditko-designed costume is particularly clever and quite graceful. In another Annihilus looks suitably badass reaching for the cosmic control rod near the end of the issue. There’s a silhouette of Banner getting hit with the Gamma Bomb blast that manages to feel quite a bit more haunting that it’s typically felt on the comics panel. Yet so much of this issue is merely presenting familiar characters in a familiar way, that it doesn’t give nearly as much of an impression to justify its existence.
With the dawn of the 1960s and the end of the Silver Age finally behind it, Waid has some interesting territory to cover as the series reaches the darker period of comics history. With the coming of the Bronze Age in the fourth issue of the series. There were some vividly dark moments in those issues that should serve as an interesting mood for the visual poetry of Rodriguez’ layout. There are interesting decisions to be made in how Waid is going to handle the increasing complexity of the Marvel Universe as it expands on every different level into the ‘80s and ‘90s. This issue feels necessary to the continuity of the series, but there isn’t enough here to make it feel like much more than an exercise linking the second issue to the fourth.
