There's a dreamy surrealism to these yarns that can be quite charming. Somebody could probably make a whole series of columns poking gentle fun at individual panels and specific leaps of logic in these pages. I liked "Marvelman and the Giant Morrow" short the most because there's something wonderfully insane about a "King of Vegetables" just popping out of nowhere and issuing an edict against county fairs, only for Marvelman to put him in his place. There's also something uniquely appealing to seeing this suburban English riff on Captain Marvel - - to figure out the corresponding elements of the mythologies, to chuckle at coincidences like Micky Moran's "Daily Bugle" and to get a perspective on the later deconstructionism Alan Moore did.
The Bad
These strips are products of their times - - they weren't intended for modern audiences. Thus, their plots and dialogue can either be described as charming and surreal or crudely simple and hackneyed, depending on what you're looking for out of them. One of the stories is about a mad scientist whose latest scheme is dissolving mountains (for reasons that don't look to profit him at all.) Marvelman shows up, gives him a wallop, throws all his chemicals onto the moon and then comes the next day to clean up his mess. That's the story, with a button line about the dangers of science tacked on. I'll also say that, even if these started off as B&W strips, they desperately need color.
The Verdict - 3/5
Only hardcore fans with a historian's bent are going to enjoy this. It's a great curiosity for those interested in comics history and it can be fun for somebody already accustomed to Silver Age surrealism, but these aren't the stories that made Marvelman famous. They set a greater context for those already in the know, but if you know nothing about Marvelman before reading this, you're going to be wondering what the big deal is after you've read it.
I like reading old comics but Marvel was not smart in this they could potentially kill off excitement from the readers who have no idea who Marvelman is so reading comics from the forties might put them off.
If anything Marvel should have made a new series with the older material as backups since Marvel fill their comics up with useless backmatter.
I said this on another Mir... Marvelman discussion, here on CV, but not going straight to the reprints of Moore and Gaiman's material is ridiculous. The promotional art has clearly been of the Miracleman from that material, and yet they're doling out this 40's stuff? Because I've read some of the Moore/Gaiman Miracleman, this is more likely to kill my interest in Marvel, than in the character. Nobody cares about the 40's stuff - we just want to read the reprints of Moore and Gaiman's material. It's near impossible to get hold of a complete set. When I heard that Marvel had settled all claims and obtained all rights, I fully expected that these reprints would be first on the slate. Wth, Marvel?
I think they're being really dense about this. What they should do, if they don't want to jump into the Moore/Gaiman reprints right away, is to have someone do a take akin to Busiek's Marvels, set in the 40's but with a modern view.
@nick7913: that's actually a kind of cool idea, but I think what there doing is re-releasing the original stuff in more or less sequntial order, then working on reprinting the Morre Gaiman stuff, then eventually finishing the Gaiman run. But I really think that a Marvels style story would be really cool.
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