It’s a delight to see those characters, now forever transformed by their iconic films, in an earlier context.

In 1994, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and Spider-Man were the company’s biggest names-now, they’re the comic book film franchises lagging behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which just finished up its usual victory lap at San Diego Comic-Con. Revisiting Marvels twenty years on, during Marvel’s pop cultural ascendency, is an interesting experience. But it was Marvels that stuck with me through the years, cementing my mental image of Gwen Stacy and New York’s integral role in Marvels. At the time, I spent a lot of time trying to identify the characters in Kingdom Come, amazed at the fact that I could. Marvel is about relatable superheroes Marvels tells the story of the Marvel universe through the eyes of a photographer trying to understand just how humanity is meant to relate to these superheroic beings. DC is about aspirational heroes (pre-reboot, of course all bets are off in Grimdark Canyon!) Kingdom Come features larger than life heroes locked in mortal and moral combat.

Ross was inspired to pitch Kingdom Come to DC because he was just coming off illustrating the only Marvel book in my brother’s collection- Marvels.Īs a proper introduction to Marvel and DC, it was perfect. DC was represented by Kingdom Come, an epic and fairly dark Elseworlds end game story featuring roughly everyone in the DC universe. In my brother’s library, there were two graphic novels from each company, alone among the Asterixes, Tintin, and Largo Winch. I’d only been familiar with DC before, having watched Batman: The Animated Series and the odd episode of The Adventures of Lois and Clark, but I had only the vaguest idea that Spider-Man existed. (Madame McBride did not participate in this land grab.) Without my brother to kick me out or stop me from getting my grubby preteen paws on his lovingly curated collection of French comics (direct from the motherland!), I was unstoppable.Īnd that’s how I, at around the age of nine or ten, discovered the difference between Marvel and DC. My dad seized upon it as an office without telling anyone or even taking the bed out, while I was finally able to rifle through my brother’s books to my heart’s content. After my brother went off to college, his room, despite still having all of his stuff in it, was up for grabs.

Marvels busiek ross