Heroic Age: One Month to Live

[stolisomancer]

One Month to Live is a five-issue limited series from Marvel, set in mainstream continuity, and all five issues came out in September of this year. The idea came from a conversation between Stephen Wacker and Rick Remender, and each issue has a different creative team. (John Ostrander wrote issue #3, which is what originally got my attention.)

It's very much the kind of project that's characteristic of modern Marvel: it's got decent writers, decent to good art, and it's an okay read, but it's gotten very little exposure and it sold like a juice box full of Ebola. (Each single issue did between 12,000 and 14,000 copies, which is actually better than I thought it did before looking it up.)

The book is a "man on the street" view of life in 616. Dennis Sykes is a bank manager, dealing with a job he despises and with becoming, as his wife puts it, the "instant parent" of his ten-year-old niece Kelly. His life is about to get worse.



Dennis gets stuck with the thankless job of telling a children's hospital that their grant has been withdrawn. On his way out the door, he makes the mistake of interfering with a robbery in progress; two junkies are trying to get drugs from what they think is an ambulance, but which is really just a medical waste disposal truck. One of them upends a bag of waste over Dennis's head...





(Yes, Kelly's a brat. She's also ten, she's lost both her parents, and she gets better over the course of the series.)

Since he lives in a comic-book universe, this has the bizarre upside of giving Dennis the power to telekinetically manipulate inorganic matter, which he discovers while fixing a picture frame. He immediately realizes that he can go get the children's hospital their money back, but after pulling it off, has second thoughts:



The rest of the series is Dennis getting a sort of guided tour through the Marvel Universe, guest-starring the Avengers, Spider-Man, and Wolverine. It's a pretty decent series, although it's very much a deliberate tearjerker, and the last issue has great art by Jamie McKelvie. If you're a trade-waiter, the trade paperback comes out in January.

Comments

[windiebird.livejournal.com]

This certainly wasn't a perfect series but I thought it had some truly touching moments. It is what it advertises, I wouldn't say more than that =)

[jlbarnett]

it being what it adventised is exactly why I avoided it. A hero on a time limit and it seemed likely that we'd actually see it run out.

I wonder if anyone else chose to skip it for that reason.

[angelophile]

This is the first I've heard of this. It seems interesting, but interesting enough to want to pick up? Hmmm. McKelvie art IS tempting...

[lucky_gamble]

Color me interested. Think i'll do some amazon shopping right now if I'm not dirt poor

[greenmask]

Think I'll do some amazon shopping WHEN I'm not dirt poor!

Yay s_d shopping list.

[jcbaggee]

Really enjoyed this, and was pretty surprised it ended like it did (though I won't ruin that here). It had some pretty cheesy, PSA like moments, but all in all a damn fine mini-series.

[big_daddy_d]

Perhaps I'll pick this up afterall.

[halloweenjack]

Had some second thoughts myself; I'd assumed it was a redress of Strikeforce: Morituri (which I enjoyed, but it's already been done), but this seems quite different, and not bad.

[baihu]

Ooo Morituri. I have several issues of it and I really do love the concept. The funny thing is how it's set in the Marvel-verse, yet except for a couple of references, it really might as well be in its own universe. Even the whole sensibility of the series doesn't feel very 'Marvel-ish', which is to its favour.

Aaah makes me feel like scanning some of them!

[elwood]

I don't comment much, but I thought I would speak up on this one.

I knew nothing about this book until I flipped through an issue one day. This is the sort of book that I guess I don't see mainstream publishers do anymore. It had solid art but was really carried through the writing on a solid concept. This is the sort of book that I can give my kid and I know he will enjoy, but at the same time I can read as well.

And for people that are facing end of life issues, or kids living with someone facing those issues, it has a sort of Judy Bloom "how to deal with this crappy situation" feel to it.

[jocutus.livejournal.com]

This is one of those series that really doesn't feel like a typical Marvel book, even though there are Marvel heroes all over it. The "True Believers" mini felt the same way to me. That scene above where he talks Spidey into letting him go sold me on the series, along with a recommendation from my local Comic Shop Guy.

[gehayi]

I never heard of this book,but based on the title, I'd have avoided it too. It sounds like a predestined downer.

[stolisomancer]

It's good clean fun until the last issue, which is sad in a good way.

[auggie18]

On one hand, this looks like a really cool concept. On the other hand, it was helmed by Rick Remender, the man who single-handedly dismantled everything cool and unique about Ryan Choi and got his series cancelled.

...so, don't know.

[stolisomancer]

I thought the end of Choi's series was a bummer, but Remender's Marvel work's been pretty decent. He did a good job with the first issue of the new X-Force, and Franken-Castle was goofy but had its moments.

[shadowpsykie]

heh monthly Bank Robber Quota :)

oh I miss Spidey.... but you have wronged me faaar too often.