Dear Kurt Busiek: Marvels

[davidelliott]

I wanted to express personally to Kurt B that I had some time to kill today and went to my local Barnes & Noble.  I read through the "Marvels" trade collection and WOW!  The story REALLY held up to Alex Ross' artwork.  Usually, his art overshadows the story, but this is the one project I've seen that I actually enjoyed the story.

I'm not a big Marvel fan, but this book took me back to the '70's and reading my older cousin's Marvel back issues.

Props, kudos and can't say enough good things...

Thank you!

[crispy snax]

oooh i do love marvels... im tend to stray away from alot of marvel stuff but marvels is just classy... do you know what else is good? astro city

[nightwing]

"Marvels" is the one book where Alex Ross' art not only works perfectly, but makes it hard to imagine anyone else's working as well.  The whole conceit of the book is that it's Marvel history through the eyes of "real" people, so the photo-realism is a natural fit. "Kingdom Come" tries to recreate this dynamic, to some extent, but it doesn't work as well, and over time, as Ross' work becomes ubiquitous and begins to overshadow everything else on the stands, the bloom is off the rose.  What Ross does is cool but it is not comics.

Thank goodness Marvels was my first exposure to Ross; I doubt I'd enjoy it as much today, now that I've seen every trick in his bag.  But I'll echo the kudos to Kurt; this is a great, great series that doesn't get as much praise as it deserves.  It was poised to, briefly, but then KC and other stuff came along and stole its thunder, rather unfairly.