Now THIS is how you make a love letter to your history.
Told in the vein of Busiek and Ross’ Marvel’s but from the perspective of one of the far, far lesser known heroes of the Golden Age, Brubaker and Epting team up what they do best; a noir-style spy drama, but in the nascent world of gods and heroes in the Golden Age of the Marvel Universe, synthesising it’s Golden Age history in a beautifully-drawn cohesive narrative explaining even the blanks and why certain heroes disappeared outright.
The writing is typical of Brubaker, first person noir to a fault, making it highly immersive especially with the quasi-photorealistic artwork of Epting and the many variant covers by Gerald Parel substituting for “photographic evidence” of the Marvels. It is simply a treat to read.
My only gripe is a cliche, whereupon history is rewritten to make it far more America-centric with a secret invasion on the Eastern Front of America as “the last bastion of the free world” against the Nazis and all that. It’s truly interesting how easy it is to point fingers at other regimes while ignoring how nation-centric a lot of Western(ised) media is, glorifying the nation, dismissing efforts of others as “[insert] propoganda” while treating it’s own as “normal” or “acceptable.”
But other than that, it is a treat to read.
