All of the Marvels by Douglas Wolk
For better or worse, the Marvel Universe has shaped pop culture through Spider-Man, X-Men, the Incredible Hulk, Black Panther, Captain America and friends, not to mention the legions of supervillains they have thwarted but seldom decisively defeated. That Universe (representing only a segment of Marvel’s output since launching in 1939) is expanding at the rate of the real universe. According to podcaster-essayist Douglas Wolk, Marvel produced 27,000 comic books relating to that Universe from 1961 to 2017, over half a million pages and he’s read them all.
In All of the Marvels, Wolk applies a non-linear yet cohesive approach, zigzagging among episodes and heroes as he links characters and plot points that disappear but resurface years later. The work of Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and company is “a funhouse-mirror history of the past sixty years of American life,” Wolk writes.
True enough: atomic energy, technocracy, security vs. liberty, the plight of the outcast and the misunderstood, vast social movements and the changes they engender—it can all be discerned on those crumbling pages (and the blockbuster movies they inspired). The Universe is “a boisterous, tragi-comic, magnificently filigreed story about power and ethics, set in a world transformed by wonders,” Wolk continues.
Wolk posits an anti-auteur theory, showing that the comics were almost always collaborations. “If you think any one person is the sole creator of a particular image or plot point, you’re probably wrong,” he insists, adding, “it’s a mistake to think of any one person who’s worked on a Marvel comic book as its ‘author.’” And yet, he finds delight in recognizing “a line of dialogue or a line or ink that could have come from nobody else’s hand.”
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Wolk demonstrates Marvel’s evolution from racial caricature to racial inclusion (one of many funhouse mirrors of American society) but shows little interest in the roots of Marvel’s stories, including the pulp fiction rags of the 1920s and ‘30s—except when a storyline was obviously licensed from an earlier source (the Fu Manchu cycle). He addresses the mythological origins of some obvious Marvel characters (Thor, Loki) but not the role of superheroes in filling the vacuum in a society where old faiths had lost the power to inspire, enchant or even entertain.
The cumulative psychic impact of all those Marvel comics? Contrary to the pieties of liberal society, evil is real in the Universe and assumes many forms, yet like Milton’s Lucifer, even the supervillains have their reasons. Recent comics have addressed the deliberate shaping of public perceptions (fake news?) Anticipating the conclusions of some physicists, Marvel’s Universe became a multiverse where nothing is as it first appears.
