Marvel Comics #1000

Seeking to cash in on DC's success with Action Comics #1000 and Detective Comics #1000, the House of Ideas got creative in their 80th anniversary with Marvel Comics #1000.

True, I was sucked into the hype. I went to my local comic book shop and ordered my selection of a variant cover. My choice was tough. I really love Alex Ross and his regular cover was amazing. But I was in love with the 1960s cover done by Mike Allred!

Marvel Comics #1000 was worked on by 80 different creative teams and it was a wide range of talent! From Kareem Abdul Jabbar to Peter David to Joe Hill to Toby Whithouse- it was a massive potpourri of names. Sadly, Stan Lee passed before getting to contribute to this milestone comic. 

The book stars out with a pretty cool concept from the very first panel of Marvel Comics #1 way back in 1939. The 3 men who witness the creation of the mechanical Human Torch are apparently a part of some secret Science Guild. They've been working in the background of the rise of superheroes for the past 80 years and Atlas agent Jimmy Woo is on the hunt for why they've spent 8 decades looking for the discarded mask of a fallen mystery man.

Each page of this book covers a single year progressing from 1939-2019. This format moves the story of the Science Guild forward from 1939 until about 1943. Then it starts to sprinkle tributes about first appearances and major events throughout the book. If Marvel Comics #1000 would have either stayed with a single cohesive story, a year at a time or having 80 different tribute pages- I would have been happy with this one-shot. 

But Marvel decided to ramble. For one thing, the publisher decided to choose some really weird things to be giddy about. Like 1980 was devoted to a brief encounter between Doctor Doom and Iron Man. At times, Marvel gets preachy. I'm talking Axel Alonso, all readers who think unlike us are stupid, preachy. But for a company that claims to be 'woke', I thought it was quite odd that one tribute was devoted to Storm's punk era look in the mid-80s. That just seemed hypocritically sexist to me. 

However, that tribute page for 1977 about a galaxy far, far away. WOW! It gives me re-newed hope of a Marvel/Star Wars fantasy crossover!

Marvel Comics #1000 had promise. It just couldn't decide which way it wanted to go. 80 different Tributes or epic story spanning all of Marvel's publishing history. You only had to choose 1 direction Marvel. But you got greedy and the lack of quality and care bled through!

Rating: 5 out of 10 stars.