Marvel 1985

I liked Mark Millar's Marvel 1985, but I wanted to love it and could never quite get there. It needed to be either half as long or twice as deep. The story had quite a few great character moments, but just not enough plot to sustain six issues.

The setting is "our universe" in 1985. Toby, a 13-year-old comic fan, starts seeing Marvel villains creeping around his town. Over the course of the story, the villains start killing people, so Toby has to figure out how they came through from the comic world and how to get the Marvel heroes to come over and fix the problem.

At home, Toby is facing some not uncommon problems. His parents are divorced, and though his stepdad is an okay fella, Toby is very close to his father, a comic-book-reading slightly bummish former musician. There are hints that Toby's mom chose her new husband for his ambition, which gets the family things like a new car and a possible move to England, but Toby is upset with the possibility of leaving his father behind.

The entire story could have been three really great issues rather than six pretty good ones. The story sags in the middle, with scenes of villains running around and Toby hanging out with his dad, but nothing really moving the plot along. The heroes appear at the end and have their brief moment of glory, making everything all right as is their function. Toby's true hero, of course, is his father, and the story spends a lot of time reassuring the reader that even shiftless dads without full custody can be positive male role models. I guess.

The ending is confusing on a couple of levels, rather typically for a Millar story. Toby's dad gets hurt badly, and the only chance for him to live is by tossing him into the Marvel Universe, where mortal wounds aren't always mortal and anyone can come out of a decades-long coma in perfect health. What is unclear is why Toby as an adult would feel the need to manufacture a love life for his dad (as amusing as the choice of obscure-Marvel-supporting-character-girlfriend may be), or why 13-year-old Toby didn't just grab his spiral notebook as soon as he got home to write the ending immediately. Apparently the happy ending is only valid if created by a sanctioned Marvel writer.

Despite the flaws, I enjoyed the concept and some of the exploration. I also appreciated the touches of '80s realism, like He-Man t-shirts and the comic shop dude who drinks from a disappearing TARDIS mug - much like the one I got sometime in 1985 and still have today. [It's in the sink. Not dishwasher safe. - RD]

- JC