Marvel 1985 #6 (of 6) (Marvel – Millar / Edwards)
At last—the heroes are here! The biggest, most powerful Marvel Super Heroes throw down in final conflict against the cruelest, most evil Marvel Super-Villains, with the fate of the real world in their hands. For young Toby Goodman, will this be a chance to see his comic book dreams come true? Or will he arrive too late to save his father? And—who is Clyde Wyncham…and more importantly, who does he become, and what role will he come to play in the Marvel Universe of today? Answers arrive at last in the breathtaking conclusion to Mark Millar and Tommy Lee Edwards’ super hero epic!
You know how sometimes you watch a movie and you don’t think it’s going to very good at all, so you set pretty low expectations and then you watch it and you’re pleasantly surprised with how much you enjoyed it… well this was sort of the opposite of that situation.
The glaring negative of this issue was that it was so anti-climatic. Mark Millar spent five issue laying the incredible groundwork for some phenomenal mind-blowing conclusion and then it just ended in a sort of lame way (not unlike some Stephen King novels I could name). As it turns out there is one mutant in the real world (our world), Clyde Wyncham, who has reality-bending powers (think Franklin Richards or Proteus) who got a brain-damaging blow to the head from his mom as a child when he brought his dad back from the dead. As an 90% mental comatose adult, Clyde threw a fit when his nurses took away his comics. So, he brought the Marvel Villains to the real world to teach them a lesson. Young Toby Goodman figures this all out, finds the portal into the MU, gets the 80’s Marvel heroes who come back with him to save suburbia from all the baddies.
Wait, it gets weirder…
Just when the great battle is on (very reminiscence of Secret Wars), Jerry – Toby’s dad (a childhood friend of Clyde’s) brings back all of his comics and Clyde sends away the villains, even Galactus. So the heroes didn’t even need to show up, just the comics. During the scene though, the Red Skull shoots Jerry and kills him. The heroes take Clyde back with them into the MU, so he can get the help he needs and to be honest they are better suited to deal with mutant powers. So now, Mark Millar has introduced another character to the MU that can change anything at his will, and we have never met him before… that’s awesome… awesome like a ceiling that is 3 feet too short. And then we find out that the entire narrative is from Toby’s presepective who has grown up and wirtten the comic book Marvel 1985 (putting him in Mark Millar’s shoes) and thus he also has “god” power becasue he is creating the narrative and he brings his dad back from the dead in the MU.
I feel like this was all a waste of time. This was one huge set up for the villain that Millar has introduced in the present Fantastic Four storyline and in Old Man Logan. Way to go Clyde, you go from being a comic book fanboy to being a really big badguy.
The positives here was Edward’s art, which I know not everyone likes or gets. But I think it was a great framing for this type of story. There was a greta splash page when the 80’s heroes arrive in all of their glory: Black Spider-man not worrying about Venom, Nightcrawler’s big red collar, Storm’s mohawk (yes, it is still hot!).
Overall, not needed and certainly didn’t need to be six issues just to introduce a villain (wait, did John Byrne help wirte this?)
Issue Grade: C-
Series grade: B-
