By Mark Millar (story), Tommy Lee Edwards (art), John Workman (letters)
The Stilt-Man will never, ever, be an A-list villain. Every now and then, some writer tries to “reinvent” him, and it always fails. The Stilt-Man will never be scary. But in the latest issue of 1985, in a simple five-panel sequence, Tommy Lee Edwards shows us how strange and wondrous it might really be to have an 80-foot cyborg stride across a suburban working-class neighborhood, silhouetted against the setting sun. So hats off to Edwards for another beautiful job.
This issue continues the theme set forth in the first: a group of super-villains, and at least one hero, have somehow been transported from the Marvel Universe as it was in 1985 to the “real” world. It’s unclear whether these are the original 616 characters, or doppelgängers created by some mutant power in “this” universe. Judging from the clues Millar keeps dropping, I suspect it’s the latter… and that Toby’s dad, his boyhood friend Clyde, and their monumental comic book collection have something to do with it.
Millar’s writing is spot-on, proving that while he usually goes for bombastic action, he can also do subtle scenes of human interest. My big gripe with the book is the one I often have with stories where kids run into mythical creatures and then try to convince adults to believe them. The scene where Toby tells his dad about the Hulk is frustrating because if my son told me he’d seen the Hulk, and he really believed it, I’d rush him to the hospital and have them check for brain damage, because that’s what a loving parent would do—should do—in the real world. But of course for the purposes of the story, Toby’s dad’s disbelief (or apparent disbelief; he may know more than he’s saying) is only an impediment to the plot. For me, at least, it punctures my suspension of disbelief and reminds me that what I’m reading is only fiction.
Other than that, though, the book is very good. The pace is gaining steam, and the sense of danger slowly ratcheting upward. At the end of the book, Sandman and Electro show up to demonstrate just how terrifying these rather average villains would really be if they were to show up at somebody’s home.
The task of putting supermen in the mundane world is a tricky one; the writer is always balancing on the razor’s edge between the sublime and the ridiculous. Will Millar drop the ball? So far he’s making it work, so I’ll just have to keep buying to find out. (Grade: B+)
- Andrew C. Murphy
Filed under: Marvel Comics, Reviews Tagged: | 1985, Fantastic Four, John Workman, Mark Millar, Marvel Comics, Old Man Logan, Secret Wars, Tommy Lee Edwards
