According to the cover, this one-shot offers a self-doubting superhero with real life problems, a villain with a shtick out to rule the world, a good looking (but otherwise absent) girlfriend, family drama, conflict, twists, turns and fisticuffs. Basically the sort of stuff you would find in just about any other Marvel Comic on shelves in 1984.
Marvel's Generic Comic was the idea of then Marvel editor Larry Hama. Hama had been toying with the satirical idea of a story that checked off all the boxes of the Marvel style of comics a year or so earlier. Hama had planned to include such a story in the pages of Marvel's humor mag Crazy, when the publisher unceremoniously pulled the plug on the MAD Magazine imitator.
Larry Hama was not a creative force known to let a good idea die, no matter how generic. Over the course of about a year, Hama kept pitching the idea until editor Tom DeFalco caught on to the concept and the project was greenlit. Steve Skeates was assigned writing duties for a project he went on to proclaim the most fun project he had in his career up to that point.
Generic Comic tells the origin story of a character commonly referred to as The Unnamed Super-Hero. With his brother Bobby in a coma and a girlfriend tired of waiting for a proposal, he's desperate for a long promised promotion. A collector of glow-in-the-dark chatchkes, the lad gains all around super powers when he smashes his Three Mile Island snow globe in frustration. Along with abilities of flight, speed and super hearing, the young man's lanky body begins to rival that of a bodybuilder.
Seeing a chance at changing his fortune, the man decides to become a super hero. Thanks to an ad in the morning paper, he heads down to a superhero supply store for a costume. All he can afford is a generic all-white bodysuit complete with equally plain domino mask and cape. It's not much to look at. But at least it matches his hair which turned white thanks to all that radioactive day-glo.
Things begin to look up for the newest hero of the world designated Earth-84041. He performs a couple of acts of heroism. A couple of goons are defeated. However, this string of good luck comes crashing down when the Unnamed Super-Hero meets the Unnamed Super-Villain who comes complete with a special hypnotic helmet that causes the protagonist to lose his confidence and become a quivering ball of jelly!
It seems rather odd that Marvel would back such an unusual project. Especially one that openly mocks the very formula of the House of Ideas. One theory is that Marvel supported the project in order to secure the copyright to the terms 'Super-Hero' and 'Super-Villain'. If you use a magnifying glass or a dose of super-vision, readers will notice that under the copyright information on the bottom front page, it does indeed state that Marvel co-owned both terms. If it's true, this seems like a legal blunder on par with Marvel's earlier attempt to enforce their copyright on the word 'Zombie.' However, some fans dispute this theory claiming that the copyright statement was a joke put in by Hama or DeFalco.
Unfortunately to this day, we still don't know how illustrated and inked the book. Not a single by-line credit is attributed to anyone, anywhere in the book. Despite both Hama and Skeates discussing their roles in creating the Generic Comic in interviews, it's a real head scratcher that nobody has ever asked for them to identify the missing staff members who contributed to this uniquely common work.
Worth Consuming!- if only for being such an oddity!
Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.
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