Marvels #4- "The Day She Died"

[tripodeca113]

(15 out of 45 pages)




Phil's book Marvels has finally been released, and it's a hit. Meanwhile the Avengers are involved in an interstellar war, with the fate of Earth in jeopardy.











Disturbed by the publics mistreatment and apathy towards the Marvels, Phil decides to do something. He'll write a book to clear Spider-Man of the murder of George Stacey.

He begins by interviewing eyewitnesses, to Spider-Man's fight with Doctor Octopus. They claim that Spider-Man was trying to kill witnesses, and throw a chimney at the crowd.




What's going on with these two here? Your meant to pin the crime on Spider-Man, shake your fist inefficiently, then go home early.

Anyway, Doctor Octopus has been captured again. Phil is able to get his publisher to arrange a meeting, by claiming he wants to do a book on supervillains.





Once while Phil and Gwen, are discussing Spider-Man a group of Atlanteans commanded by Namor invade the city .....to rescue one of them being held captive by the UN, and it's all done very responsibly, no one got hurt, only some minor property damage. While the crowd panic, Gwen found beauty in the situation.





Everything's looking up for Phil, George Stacey's death is the ideal subject for his book. Gwen offers to find her father's journal to include in the book. She should have it ready in a few days.

Unable to find Gwen at her home, Phil goes to check out her boyfriends apartment....



Phil chases the Green Goblin...











Phil's assistant Marcia, wants him to continue working, on his book.




A news report of Hawkeye and the Hulk, fighting Zzzax near the waterfront comes on TV.







The use of Danny Ketch does date this a bit.

The story will continue in the flawed, but interesting Marvels: Eye of the Camera!

Comments

[tcampbell1000]

This is one of the best examples of Busiek's greatest gift as a storyteller: his ability to tie the huge, shambling mass of a superhero universe to narratives that are powerful because they are small.

Superhero narratives almost never deal with this kind of retirement, this point of looking into your own heart and realizing you just don't have it any more, whatever "it" is. Instead, everyone acts like it's totally normal for the Justice Society to be chasing bad guys in their seventies and eighties and quipping, "The world sure was different during the Great War, wasn't it, Al? Phones used to be phones, for one thing!" They die and resurrect, but we almost never ask "What would it take for someone like Tony Stark or Hal Jordan to... stop?" I know there are exceptions, but it's generally assumed that they just never will. Phil has spent his life covering the marvels. By ending his career, he transcends them.

Busiek's top priority with this series was to grant human meaning to Marvel's publishing history. And most comics historians agree Gwen Stacy's death was a turning point, a step from the pole of escapism to that of realism, two poles the genre's been navigating between ever since.

The portrayal of Gwen does seem a bit lacking by modern standards. I feel it would've been better if we'd spent a page, or even a panel, talking about Gwen's ideas about her own future. The tragedy of a young life ending is all the tomorrows that will never be, but Gwen spends her time here sifting through her yesterdays, except for one moment where she seems like an innocent young child. There's nothing she does here that isn't about reflecting or affecting the men in her life... except maybe that one moment of joy, and even that is something we experience in terms of how it affects Phil.

There are reasons for this. Phil the narrator is old enough that all twenty-odd-year-olds look like kids to him. Gwen at this stage is still processing the death of her father, hoping Phil's book will assign greater meaning to his memory. Continuitywise, it wouldn't make sense for her to be fitting him in between taking her LSATs or helping out at a domestic-abuse shelter. And Busiek and Ross render their scenes together with care and love: her fetal position when discussing her father's death and the formal-ish outfit she wears as they get coffee are great details.

Even so, even so... Gwen was killed because Gerry Conway and others felt she wasn't interesting enough to live. Busiek and Ross's treatment of her as "the innocent to be saved" doesn't entirely convince me otherwise. In death, she becomes more emoji than person.

In light of that, I think it's an interesting choice that the story ends with Phil handing his career over to Marcia Hardesty. With Gwen, Phil got flashbacks to younger fatherhood, when his own children were just innocents to be protected. Recognizing in Marcia the fire that once drove him, he's being a more age-appropriate kind of father, the kind who's ready to step aside and let the youngs inherit the world. He may've hoped to allay Gwen's troubles, but he does Marcia a greater favor by letting her take on his troubles. You can't protect them forever, Phil.

[laughing_tree]

It's interesting how the actual denouement of "Your love of superheroes will have a shelf life, so when it does accept it, move on, and pass it on to the next generation" almost never gets discussed in all the discussion of this series and how it's love letter to the genre. Wonder why that is?

[lordultimus]

Well, considering the writer is still writing superhero comics, it's a little easy to miss.

[silverhammerman]

An early forerunner in the surprisingly pervasive genre of stories about passing the torch and moving on, after which the writer went back to business as usual.

[laughing_tree]

Though it might not have been if the series were less successful. Busiek's said that if Marvels hadn't come out, he likely wouldn't have been able to remain in the industry.

[laughing_tree]

How does that make it easy to miss? It's a story, not autobiography?

[lordultimus]

"At some point, everyone loses interest in superheroes... Except me! I'll love them until the day I die!"

I'm just saying, if Busiek actually retired from superhero comics, people would actually register this moral.

[laughing_tree]

It'd be more evident, yeah, but it's already so prominent that, even contradicting the writer's own life, you'd think more people would pick up on it. I mean, it's not exactly subtly. It's the literal ending.

[starwolf_oakley]

You have to wonder if a superhero that constantly gets accused of treason and murder would get tired of it after a while.

Busiek himself mocked it a bit during his AVENGERS run with George Perez. During the Squadron Supreme arc.

"...The Avengers will be placed under arrest!"
"Again? But that trick never works!"
"Shut *up*, Hawkeye!"

Or that line from Mission: Impossible - Fallout.
"How many times has Hunt's government betrayed him, disavowed him, cast him aside? How long before a man like that has had enough?"

[donnblake]

"How can you be assuming *again* that Hero-Man would betray us? Last time you arrested him, threw him in jail, tried to depower him, and sicced a giant robot on his headquarters and then it turned out he was innocent all along!"

"Yeah, but we arrested him, threw him in jail, tried to depower him, and sicced a giant robot on him! This time he's got a really *good* reason to turn on us!"

[tripodeca113]

"We should kidnap Hero-Man's loved ones, to ensure he stays loyal to us. And send another giant robot so he gets the message!"

[zachbeacon]

This is the one issue that never really worked for me.

I get that they want to give Phil a personal stake in the end of the Silver Age (ie Gwen’s death) but they used the weird Saint Gwen character that only existed in nostalgic flashback comics like Spider-Man Blue

(I know Marvels IS a nostalgic flashback comic but Busiek is the kind of writer I hold to a higher standard just because he’s usually so much better than everyone else)

Also the Phil and Gwen friendship is Doc and Marty being besties (BEFORE the events of the movies) levels of baffling.


Semi-Related but Image is now publishing a bunch of Kurt's creator owned stuff again. Its just digital now but hopefully they do physical soon. DC/Vertigo never collected those last few Astro City arcs in trades and I need them.

[janegray]

...Why is Doc and Marty's friendship baffling?

[zachbeacon]

At the end of the trilogy, it isn't. They went through a lot together. They're basically family.

At the beginning of the trilogy ... well I'd just like some backstory for this intergenerational friendship between two people with nothing in common. Does Doc fix musical equipment to pay the bills (would explain the speakers in the first movie)? Did Doc hire a local kid to watch Einstein when he was out "shopping" for plutonium?

[lbd_nytetrayn]

You should check out IDW's comics for your answers to that.

[janegray]

I just never questioned it. Doc was the coolest adult ever, as a kid I would have absolutely spent most of my free time at his place. And Marty was the only one who didn't treat him like he was crazy/delusional/dangerous, so of course he'd welcome the company.

...Granted, as a kid I spent most of my time with trusted adults anyway because I was bullied by my peers, so I may be biased here.