Written by Ed Brubaker (Criminal, Captain America)
Pencils by Steve Epting (Captain America)
The Marvel 70th Anniversary celebrated last Tuesday, Aug. 11 saw the release of two new titles from the House of Idea(s), The Marvels Project being one of them. In the tradition of Marvels (and maybe even DC's Kingdom Come), The Marvels Project runs down the reaction of us "normies" to the presence of supernatural, super powerful beings among us. The "normy" doing the running down in this case is a little known (to me anyway) hero named Angel from way back, when Marvel was still called "Timely Comics" and comics cost a strawpenny and nobody told lies. In this, the first issue, Angel is still Dr. Holloway and as he toys with the idea of fighting crime he relates the state of late 1930s America on the brink of war with Germany. Plus the American Government has invented the Human Torch. Plus Germany has been conducting experiments on Sea-People and the Prince of Atlantis is pissed. Fascinating Times, indeed.
Ed Brubaker is an unstoppable force. I don't want to stop him. Incognito is one of the best books out there, Captain America still kicks ass and Criminal? Come on. I think one of the things that makes his writing so sweet is his whole matter-of-fact approach to the fantastic. He just completely nails the tone of a life weary, unbiased observer who gets the outlandishness of what he's seeing but still wants to find out what happens next. The Marvels Project is this to the umpth degree. I fucking love it. You might think by this point that there was little left to work with when it comes to this theme of super-hero realism but that was before Brubaker got his mitts on it.
Read The Marvels Project, you won't be sorry.
