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Today, we take a look at Douglas Wolk’s new book, All of the Marvels.
In “Reason to Get Excited,” I spotlight things from modern comics that I think are worth getting excited about. I mean stuff more specific than “this comic is good,” ya know? More like a specific bit from a writer or artist that impressed me.
This time around, we’re looking at Douglas Wolk’s new book, All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told, which just came out this week from Penguin Random House.
The concept of the book is a deceptively simple one, Douglas read every Marvel Comic book from around Fantastic Four #1 in 1961 through the release of Marvel Legacy #1 in 2017 (he kept reading beyond that, of course, but the book had to have a nominal “end” point, and that was the one that he chose. I’ve seen similar approaches that chose 2015’s Secret Wars as the nominal “endpoint,” but again, we’re just talking about an end for the sake of having an end so that the book can be finished). Of course, that in and of itself is not worth a book, and so Wolk gets into a number of fascinating discussions about the very notion of reading the entire output of Marvel Comics (with some exclusions, of course, like licensed works).
WHAT ORDER DO YOU READ THE ENTIRE OUTPUT OF MARVEL COMICS?
The biggest question, and one that Wolk both devotes a lot of time to deciding on and then become a key aspect of the narrative throughout the book is, “What order do you read the Marvel Universe in?”
My buddy Chris is in the middle of a read of the entire Marvel Universe (he’s currently on some one-off issue of Daredevil where ol’ hornhead takes on Namor in a story that I’m sure no one will remember) and Chris is reading the stories in chronological order, as best as they can be presented in terms of a coherent overall “story” of the Marvel Universe (something that I wrote about in the past about how such an attempt really isn’t possible in the end, but Chris plans to pursue the string as long as he possibly can). However, Wolk very quickly notes that this is not the way that anyone trying to read all of Marvel should ever do, and he’s absolutely correct.
Chris is only pulling it off as someone who has ALREADY read a whole lot of the Marvel Universe, and can therefore safely go back and read it in order. As Wolk points out, if you were new to this and trying to start reading the Marvel Universe, you wouldn’t ever want to start here, as you’d be taking DECADES to get to the characters that you actually recognize. You’d get plenty of awesome comic books, of course, but you’d also get a whole lot of Human Torch starring in Strange Tales or the early days of Thor, which is mostly just sot of nonsense stories (sometimes entertaining nonsense, but still nonsense) until Jack Kirby moves the Tales of Asgard back-ups into the main narrative of the series and the book gets a major boost.
So therefore, reading Marvel Comics in chronological order is a no-go.
WHAT ABOUT READING MARVEL’S ‘GREATEST HITS’?
This is a logical idea, just go out and read the “most important” Marvel stories. Go out and check out one of our Top 100 Comic Book Storylines list (the current one is accepting votes right now!) and just start reading from there. This is necessarily a better approach than the chronological one, but the problem here is that so many of what we talk about as the “greatest” Marvel stories are the ones that had the greatest impact on the overall Marvel Universe, but because of this, you don’t really get a great sense of the stories themselves if you just step into the biggest moments. It’s like watching only the season finales of The X-Files or shows like that and not getting the shows that build up the narrative. You get the big moments, but you don’t see what leads to them and gives them their foundation.
Now, those lists ARE very helpful, but they’re meant as a support for the “correct” way to read the Marvel Universe.
THE CORRECT WAY TO READ THE MARVEL UNIVERSE
The correct way is just pick up a comic book that you’re interested in and start reading. Ask a friend what comic they think you would like. Let’s say you’re interested in the new Hawkeye trailer. Then read Matt Fraction, David Aja and Matt Hollingsworth’s Hawkeye run. If you like that, then you can read Kelly Thompson’s Hawkeye. Or Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Immortal Iron Fist. Follow a character, follow a creator, just follow it in any way that you find interesting.
Once you’ve done that long enough, then you’ll be interested in reading the backstories for these characters and how Hawkeye was convinced to fight Iron Man because he was dazzled by the Black Widow. Then you can read the major storylines and you’ll understand more and you’ll want to read even more. Then, finally, there might come a time that you WANT to read the stories in order, even the Human Torch Strange Tales stories.
Wolk explains this approach beautifully and then, in the actual chapters, he shows this approach in action, as he jumps back and forth while discussing the Fantastic Four or Spider-Man or the X-Men and shows how when you’re reading one comic book, a whole other comic book could be an influence or a whole other comic book could be tied in an interesting way and thus, when you’re telling the story of Hawkeye, you are going to jump back and forth between the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, the late 1990s, etc.
Wolk’s chapters therefore have a wonderful stream of consciousness to them that makes you feel like you’re reading along with a friend and it makes the whole endeavor so much more interesting and appealing.
Wolk also does other interesting side bits (like a chapter on politics in comics and one on Presidents in comics and one on music in comics), but the main idea is the stressing that the best way to read Marvel Comics is whatever way appeals to you.
This is a great, fun book about comics that I highly recommend you pick up.
Okay, this feature is a bit less of a reader-interactive one, as I’m just spotlight stuff in modern comics that specifically impressed ME, but heck, if you’d like to send in some suggestions anyways, maybe you and I have the same taste! It’s certainly not improbable that something you found cool would be something that I would find cool, too, so feel free to send ideas to me at brianc@cbr.com!
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