Meet the Man Who Read All 27,000 Marvel Comics To Create a Cohesive Story

The appeal of All of the Marvels, writer Douglas Wolk’s ambitious project to read all 27,000 issues of Marvel Comics and turn it into one big narrative, I believe only sounds enticing given the sheer size and success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which Ironically is a separate narrative all together. I say this not to poo poo the project but I don’t know who else would be interested except for a fan whose vector into the universe is via the movies.

It might as well be called All My Children. Soap operas have been doing long running interweaving stories at this scope for decades.

As a long time comic book reader I don’t know anyone who reads or understands their narratives in that fashion. Also Marvel has a distinct advantage over DC in this area and that is the sheer output of a handful of key creators all under, for the most part, under one conductor, Stan Lee.

Wolk begins with Fantastic Four #51. Junot Díaz reviewing the book in the New York Times says: Wolk starts sensibly with the comic that ignited the Marvel revolution: Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s Fantastic Four. Fantastic Four ushered in modern superheroes as we now understand them — a fractious, self-doubting (and in many cases self-loathing) set of figures freighted with commonplace concerns. The last part was key; Kirby and Lee planted the superhero firmly and generatively in the soil of the “real” in ways that the stories of other superheroes were organized to avoid (looking at you, DC) — and readers just ate it up.

“All of the Marvels” is published TODAY! pic.twitter.com/7rUNWqXvlu

— Douglas Wolk (@douglaswolk) October 12, 2021

But Wolk doesn’t begin his exegesis with the first issue of Fantastic Four (November 1961), as one might expect. He starts instead with Issue 51. This might seem odd, but it is in fact breathtakingly smart. What Wolk has divined is that the Marvel story he’s after is not going to reveal itself linearly — and his rhizomatic approach allows him to track what really matters to this epic of epics without getting baffled by chronology or the size of the labyrinth. By vaulting from key moment to key moment, zipping across time and the various interlocking franchises, Wolk traces the innovations and strange experiments that made the Marvel magic work. Which is why beginning with Issue 51 is essential; as Wolk notes, it is in this issue (and, for my money, the three issues that precede it) where all the ideas that Kirby and Lee had been tinkering with finally come together.

Here’s the New York Times Book Review on it: https://t.co/DoGudQbApe

— Douglas Wolk (@douglaswolk) October 12, 2021

In his analysis I find wonderment though.  Wolk makes a convincing argument that the Marvel formula, what you might call its Super Soldier Serum, is monsters + romance + superheroes + topicality. But it was in Issue 51 that Kirby and Lee hit the mother lode; discovered the precise amount of human misery you need to inflict on a superhero in order to sell the galactic and fantastic, to make it real. The galactic fantastic without human anguish: kid stuff. Human anguish without the galactic: soap opera. But the two blended together in the right proportions equaled a new type of imaginative vibranium. Once Kirby and Lee cracked the Galactus Equation, Marvel never looked back.

Wired’s @jetjocko: https://t.co/v0huwwqh9C (Rack of comics photo #2!)

— Douglas Wolk (@douglaswolk) October 12, 2021

Mister Fantastic cries out: “I’ve done it!! I’m drifting into a world of limitless dimensions! It’s the crossroads of infinity — the junction to everywhere!” Mister Fantastic might as well have been speaking for Marvel itself. And for Wolk, too. For it is in his Fantastic Four discussion that “All of the Marvels” ignites, and where Wolk reveals what happens when you read all those comic books and take them seriously: You gain the ability to discern the source code of the Marvel comic universe.

CBR gets at my feelings about the book: “Every comic book fan remembers their first visit to the local comic book shop — perusing the cramped aisles full of dazzling and bright covers and trying to avoid getting distracted by the collectibles on the top shelves. Opening a book here, an issue there, figuring out which story from a seemingly endless supply to read. It was an exciting moment, full of possibility and choice — each individual’s personal Issue #1. But it was also a daunting task, one that carried a certain weight to it. Many of the characters that line the shelves of these shops have been around for decades. With so much material, where does one even begin? With who?”

And Comics Beat makes an interesting note: “It should be noted, Wolk also peppers interstitial chapters between each larger guide to help provide further coloring for the overall Marvel experience. For example, following a reader’s sojourn with the Fantastic Four, they’ll be treated to a timeline that fleshes out the history of giant monsters in the publisher’s catalogue. Nothing anyone truly needs to know, but an extra fun wrinkle that, once you understand the connection, really enriches your appreciation for Jack and Stan’s first ride with Reed, Ben, Sue, and Johnny.”

And Wired in its introduction to their Q&A with Wolk says: “A longtime cmics reader gets good at dealing with different versions of time. The image in any individual comic panel might capture an infinitesimal slice of an instant, a picture of Planck time—but then how to account for bubbles of dialog that’d take minutes to deliver? Or the images in a panel might include the ghosts of their own past to show motion or change. The gutters between panels can encode moments, minutes, months, or millennia. A cliff-hanger might take four agonizing weeks between issues to resolve, but an instant in story-time. Some comics are telling stories that started more than half a century ago; nobody expects anyone to remember everything.”

There was an exploration that used to have to happen that required a careful triangulation of zeal, obsession and detective work and literal diving into back issue bins to uncover past stories. Today they are available in collections or online and with handy Cliff Notes via Wikipedia that will never quite be the same.

ALL OF THE MARVELS
A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told
By Douglas Wolk
384 pp. Penguin Press. $28.