Marvel Comics #1000 is an awkward blend of event set-up and anniversary tribute
Aux Features Comics Panel
Marvel has never been a company to pass up a trend. DC has seen considerable success with Action Comics #1000 and Detectice Comics #1000, and Marvel wants a piece of that pie despite not having any books that have run for 1000 issues. Enter: Marvel Comics #1000 (Marvel), celebrating the 80th anniversary of Marvel Comics with a book that would have maybe been the thousandth issue of Marvel Comics if it ran monthly for 80 years with a couple years of accelerated shipping. But it didn’t. It ran for 92 issues and ended in 1942, so the book lacks the triumph of Action Comics and Detective Comics #1000, two titles that endured for decades.
Marvel Comics #1000 is caught between dual purposes: setting up a new story spearheaded by Al Ewing and honoring the past 80 years with one-page stories by a massive line-up of creators. The book would benefit from being one or the other, because the chosen structure, while ambitious, makes for an awkward read. The quality of the tribute pages varies significantly, and the fact that Marvel is releasing Marvel Comics #1001 next month with more pages from creators originally announced for Marvel Comics #1000 makes the whole thing come across as a sloppily organized affair.
Putting Ewing in charge of the overarching narrative is a wise move considering his exceptional Marvel track record, and he unites Marvel’s different publishing phases by introducing a new supernatural object and a secret cabal that has been operating in the background for years. At first, the Eternity Mask feels like another new Marvel object imbued with incredible power à la the Cosmic Cube or Infinity Gauntlet, but the Eternity Mask holds more allegorical value. When someone puts on the mask, they are evenly matched with any opponent, tying personal strength to the act of concealing your identity.
The one-page story is a tricky thing, and some creators are far more inventive with how they use the format. Kieron Gillen, Doug Braithwaite, and Diego Rodriguez distill decades of Loki stories into five panels sharing a single line of dialogue. Jimmy “Taboo” Gomez, Benjamin Jackendoff, and Jeffrey Veregge honor Native American culture with their tribute to Red Wolf, built around a striking visual that could easily function as a superhero mural. Many creators go a more light-hearted route: Kathryn and Stuart Immonen return to Patsy Walker for a cheeky guide to selfie success; Joe Hill, Michael Allred, and Laura Allred pit Doctor Strange against his magical cape on laundry day; Ed Brisson, Jorge Fornés, and Jordie Bellaire send Speedball bouncing through the city on an especially pathetic patrol; Jason Aaron, Goran Parlov, and Giada Marchisio reveal Wolverine and Punisher’s proclivity for soothing baths.
The biggest surprise of Marvel Comics #1000 comes courtesy of writer Brad Meltzer and artist Julian Totino Tedesco, telling a poignant story about a new generation of kids named after Spider-Man’s beloved Uncle Ben. Meltzer, notorious for killing the pregnant Sue Dibny in Identity Crisis, makes small amends with this tale of Spider-Man saving pregnant women over and over again, and getting painted sequentials from Tedesco, one of the best cover artists in the game, is a rare treat.
removed from an upcoming collection of Golden Age Marvel comics being published in the U.K. These events, taken in conjunction with Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter’s role as a Trump advisor and financial supporter, make it hard to swallow the revolutionary spirit that a book like Marvel Comics #1000 purports to celebrate.
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“Meltzer, notorious for killing the pregnant Sue Dibny in Identity Crisis, makes small amends with this tale of Spider-Man saving pregnant women over and over again, and getting painted sequentials from Tedesco, one of the best cover artists in the game, is a rare treat.”Identity Crisis is also infamously created because D.C. Editorial wanted to move the comics toward being “dark and edgy” by retconning it so that Dr. Light raped Sue Dibney (Never mind that there’s no way that could have happened since, at the time, the JLA required at least one League member on Watchtower duty at all times.).The rape scene was entirely pointless because Dr. Light was a red herring and had nothing to do with her death. In fact, Jean Loring, the person who actually killed Sue, had no reason to kill her, Captian Boomerang, or Jack Drake since her motive was to get back together with Ray Palmer, whom she left and still had feelings for her.
It wasn’t pointless. The “Crisis” was not that a woman died because that… kind of happens all the time in DC Comics. The Crisis was that the Justice League had been brainwashing and mind wiping friends AND foes for years in an ever escalating cover up. Which yeah… more of the grimdark. Don’t worry though, DC Editorial can just blame one of their in-universe villains for their gross and horrible line mandates and fans will find that to be an exciting storytelling direction!
Actually the Editor for Identity Crisis said that Editorial specifically wanted the Sue’s rape to be included in the story as part of a statement to readers that the books to be darker and edgier.The rape scene had nothing to do with the plot, you could literally replace it with anything else and it’s impact would have been far more effective. It’s only there because DC higher ups wanted a rape scene.
Thanks for the image posts. That’s nuts.
Okay yeah, that’s specifically gross that they said “we want a dark thing to have happened… how about a rape? Rapes are super dark, and that’s fun!” Reminds me of Batgirl’s treatment from years before, so I guess DC Editorial just always has a poisonous, anti-woman atmosphere about it.
Reminds me of Batgirl’s treatment from years before, so I guess DC Editorial just always has a poisonous, anti-woman atmosphere about it.I believe Len Wein’s exact words were, “Yeah, okay, cripple the bitch.”
Thank goodness for Ostrander rescuing her from that terrible decision by turning her into Oracle, which was a great way to use a disabled character as a hero.Almost to the point that I was disappointed when New 52 and Rebirth turned her back to Batgirl.Especially since it marginalized both Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown.
It was indeed a great save by Ostrander (and n52/Rebirth has been largely terrible, obvs.). What I don’t get is why Killing Joke was ever considered in-continuity in the first place, rather than an Elseworlds-style one-off.
It’s only there because DC higher ups wanted a rape scene.If they were so intent on shoehorning a gratuitous rape scene in their comic than they should have hired Mark Millar.
I actually disagree with that. In order for that story to work, (assuming you want the conceit of the story to work), then Dr. Light’s crime needed to somehow be categorically different than the crimes other supervillains had committed in the past, since it was the genesis of the idea by the League that Zatanna do this. It did not specifically need to be a rape, but it did need to be a crime simultaneously so horrifying and different than the League had experienced before that it was plausible for their first idea to be ‘let’s erase this.’ I am not a huge fan of The Identity Crisis, but I do disagree that the rape of Sue Dibny was simply ancillary to the plot of the story.
Whether originally intended or not and despite this editors opinion the rape is VERY MUCH part of the story in the final execution.
This guys is always dogging on Identity Crisis. The way he goes on about it I assume he hasn’t read it. Great book! Maybe it snubs some goofy continuity which in no way matters to DC anything but as a one off it’s quite well written and tests the morale rigor of the Justic League in a story more realistic and gritty then you’d expect for a DC comic of the time.
Also that great Deathstroke fight! “WATCH THE BIRDIE!”
Took place on the Satellite not Watchtower…and there’s plenty of times the team is called away from the satellite.
But yeah….the Dibneys have Thanagarian, and Kryptonian tech for security but DONT HAVE A BASIC FUCKING CAMERA?? There’s no one who can use magic to whip up a scene from the past to see who did it? And you don’t put civilans in Arkham.
“These events, taken in conjunction with Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter’s role as a Trump advisor and financial supporter, make it hard to swallow the revolutionary spirit that a book like Marvel Comics #1000 purports to celebrate.”There’s also the fact that Marvel’s current EiC got his start by pretending to be Japanese (https://io9.gizmodo.com/marvels-editor-in-chief-really-wishes-we-could-all-just-1826509024).
there’s also many other facts – I keep them all right here in a kitchen sink in a completely unrelated house.
Way too many people are unaware of the Akira Yoshida thing.
Cebulski’s real name sounds like it should belong to a justifiably forgotten US1 character, but that has nothing to do with his offensive fake identity from back in the day.
Dude didn’t pretend to be Japanese. He published under an obviously fake pseudonym as Japanese as Johnny Cowboyman is American. It’s almost like you misrepresent things and take them out of context to suite some sort of personal agenda?
yeah this continues to be one of the craziest things. i get that editor-in-chief of marvel comics isn’t exactly a celebrity, but i do think it’s wild this hasn’t been a bigger story.
The biggest thing he’s guilty of is being a filthy weeb. He did something dumb, but that’s all it was and it happened almost 15 years ago. I’m not saying it’s cool, but the world was a different place. He played A Million Little Pieces with Marvel and more or less won.
I bet he’s a big fan of The Vapours.
I think one of the main issues is that they don’t have much to put in one-page stories for the early decades, so most of the Ewing stuff is there, and then only appears sporadically before the final few pages bring it back. It’s not good pacing.There was a few bits I liked in there, but it mostly didn’t work for me.
That Loki page is amazing, title and all.
I just want to be clear. Marvel Comics #1000 isn’t an actual 1000th issue of anything, is it?
Nope, like the article says it’s just a theoretical number of Marvel Comics (the actual comic called Marvel Comics) if it hadn’t been cancelled, which maybe would’ve hit 1000 last week… theoretically. DC did an event back in the 90s called DC One Million where they did the math and saw that if their comics reached issue one million (assuming an average shipping schedule), than it would be in the 853rd century. So then they did a bunch of minis starring the theoretical descendants/versions of heroes in that century (Batman has a robot Robin of course), and then did a time travel adventure with the heroes of today. What I’m saying is that if you’re gonna do a “Hey what if this comic still published?” comic, there’s neater gimmicks to try.
Thanks for the explanation. I thought it might have been an Easter egg or something.
It’s about as significant as Wolverine #1000, Deadpool #1000, and Spectacular Spider-Man #1000. Well, slightly more significant, I suppose, but it makes as much sense as those three.
I enjoyed Chip Zdarsky’s recent Spider-Man: Life Story miniseries which imagined what Peter Parker’s life might have been like if he had aged at the same rate that the book was published.
Yes, it was fucking brilliant. I might be turning into a Zdarsky stan between that (the last page of #6 was so.good…), the White Trees, and his art on Sex Criminals.
They should have added up every issue of every Marvel book ever published and then used whatever round number that’s closest to, called this like “Marvel 10,000″ or “Marvel 100,000″, or whatever, I have no idea how many issues that would come out to. I guess they were too lazy to count.I get it, I’m lazy too. But I don’t own a huge comics company.
I wasn’t sure about this, but you make it sound amazing! can’t wait to pick it up! Kudos to Cebulski for bringing it to fruition!
This felt like two projects awkwardly welded together, but I honestly didn’t mind because there were enough fun stories and Ewing’s awesome throughline to make the read worthwhile. J. Scott Campbell and JMS mocking some of their own mistakes were particularly great. Also that Walter Simonson Iron Man page is gorgeous.
I haven’t finished Marvel 1000 yet, but talking to someone who has, the owner of my local shop. I mentioned that I thought it was odd that a page was dedicated to Jack Kirby’s first work at Marvel, but there was no mention of Stan Lee yet in the book even though I’m well past The FF and Spider-Man. Surprisingly, he said there were no pages dedicated to Stan Lee, which made us Wonder if Marvel Comics 1001 would be Stan Lee centric. If they do a whole history this way with no mention of Stan that would be a great disservice to his legacy.
That page wasn’t dedicated to Kirby’s first work with Marvel, it was about Kirby introducing sci-fi to Marvel with Strange World 1. Which seems like a dubious claim tbh, but I guess there wasn’t much going on 1958.Stan gets center billing on the in memoriam page at the end of the issue, in between Kirby and Ditko. His cameo with the Watchers in GotG Vol 2 gets mentioned on the 2017 page.
One of the pages in the preview above is dedicated to Stan Lee.
Good article, Marvel Mystery Comics ended in 1949, actually not 1942. I believe it lasted 92 issues (which makes sense as it premiered in 1939) before being retitled ‘Marvel Tales’, a Horror Anthology.
I still haven’t gotten around to reading my copy, but I ended up ordering two just for the ‘60s Allred cover for that Allred-y goodness and the ‘80s Tedesco cover for having She-Hulk front and center. Probably would’ve gone a bit more nuts on variant buying based either on the artist or the characters present, but the $9.99 cover price sort of puts a stop to that. But hey! I bought one copy more than I did for Action or Detective 1000! TAKE THAT DC! Amusingly/typically, my chosen Action cover was also the Allred one.
On balance, I found the contributions to be more hit than miss. Biggest surprise of the bunch: Rob Liefeld has gotten better at drawing, it seems. His work isn’t quite great, but it was competently done. And he makes a pouch joke!I did not know about all that background nonsense, though. That really bothers me. It’s nice to think that comic writers/artists are allowed the freedom to tell the story as they see fit (within reason), but then shit like this brings me crashing back to reality.
Okay, I legit teared up reading that Spider-Man page. That is such a perfect Peter Parker thing to do.
Hmmm… if Marvel wants me to care about stuff like a supposed “1000th issue”, maybe they should stop restarting their books with new issue #1s every few years.
This really has been driving me nuts for years. “If you count the three ongoings we canceled, some issues from a book with a completely different name, plus that miniseries you completely forgot about, this issue is a round number arbitrary landmark of some kind!”
should have reached out to Christopher Priest for a page.