A true marvel...

It's been a few years since I read the original graphic novel release of Marvels by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross, and this past week I picked up the 10th Anniversary Edition of Marvels in tribute of, well, ten years since its original publication, I guess.

The original series - which takes up just over half of this volume - is a wonderful tale of the early times of the Marvel universe as seen through the eyes of a photographer who observes the events unfold as a non-super powered observer. He finds himself passing on an opportunity to report on World War II and instead stays in the New York City of the Marvel world, watching the Sub Mariner and original Human Torch migrate from terrors to heroes to objects of national pride and back again. The same photographer, then, finds himself tangential to nearly every significant event in the history of the Marvel world - the invasion by Galactus, marriage of Reed and Sue Richards, introduction of the X-Men, and even death of Gwen Stacy.

Through the outsider position of Phil Sheldon - the aforementioned photog - we see how normal people viewed their world after the introduction of the people he comes to call Marvels. He goes through the very believable emotions of alternately loving and fearing the superbeings, feeling himself to be inferior to them, wondering where his world would be without their help an hinderance, through acceptance and rejection of all they do for and to his world. The story is a very human take on the Marvel world, and it's one of the best-written comics of the last dozen or so years.

This really is a modern classic.

The 10th anniversary edition adds some background information, behind the scenes kinds of stuff to flesh out the volume. The original scripts aren't much to see as nearly all the dialogue is in the final product anyway. The story proposals are interesting in that they show what other scenes might've taken part in the story, but they're far from necessary. The one-page commentary on each issue is excellent and provies some good background on what Ross and Busiek were working on and considering as they produced the graphic novel. Following the scripts is a full production of nearly all the newspaper stories that appear in the panels - fully-written stories that ened up being reproduced too small for legibility in the final product. And the extra material ends with a collection of much of the artwork that Ross produced for the volume that ended up in Wizard magazine or other press kits. Ross also provides a key to many of the cameos that he included throughout the work - from Lois and Clark to Ross's father to even Busiek himself.

The extended anniversary edition is good and worth the extra bucks to a collector who is looking for an archival edition - along the lines of the recently-released Watchmen: The Absolute Edition - but it isn't necessary to enjoy the story. The original Marvels is outstanding and a wonderful combination of perfectly-melded artwork and storyline with Ross's hyperrealistic art supporting Busiek's amazingly humanistic tale.