The Marvels Project

The centerpiece of Marvel's 70th Anniversary celebration! Who is the mysterious old man who lies on his deathbed in a hospital in 1939, and how does his passing mark the beginning of the first heroic age of the Marvel Universe - and signal the rise of the superhumans? Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting unveil the defining story of the origin of the Marvel Universe, revealing the hidden connections that unite the earliest costumed champions and whose reverberations are felt dramatically into the present day! It's a world on the brink of war, and the race is on to create the world's first super-soldier! Witness the first days of the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, and many more - how they shaped the world to come and how the future they would create in turn shaped them! The must-read event of the season for any Marvel fan from the award-winning creators who redefined Captain America for the modern audience! Collects The Marvels Project #1-8.

As his status quo–obliterating run on Captain America continues to evidence, Brubaker has great interest in the star-spangled hero’s history, and in this collection of the eight-issue miniseries, he delves deeply into those roots. In 1939, doctor turned gun-toting vigilante the Angel precipitates an explosion of brightly dressed “marvels,” most significantly the android Human Torch, alienated by his inhuman construction, and the angry young Sub-Mariner, who’s got a big bone to pick with humanity. Before long Cap shows up, too, to take on some Nazis and cement the unification of the future Marvel Universe. Brubaker’s characteristically noirish writing remains sharp, and though he ends up with more of a straightforward adventure than the salient examination of heroism in a different era he might have had, the story requires no previous knowledge to enjoy. Epting’s brawny art helps things along with muscular action sequences and a gritty wartime atmosphere. For Marvel pros, this makes a fine extrapolation of Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross’s magnum opus, Marvels, whose tone and style it’s clearly meant to reflect. --Jesse Karp