Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Rated R Reviews: Marvels Project #3

[Screw the "I bought comics" posts, I'm doing short, small reviews when I want. This is the first. It isn't all that different per se or anything, but it's what I feel like doing right now.]

The Marvels Project #3: Not so much a story as an attempt at creating a cohesive whole out of random bits spewed out by young men who thought that today's work would be forgotten tomorrow. Little did they know that, 70 years later, we would still be obsessing over it, mining it for all that we can to give order and sense to what passes for our entertainment. Revisionist history, an attempt to take free-flowing ideas and stories, to make them fit into a small box as we trim them down, organise them, transform each into a piece of a puzzle that we'll now assemble for no reason other than someone gave it to us and that's what you do with puzzles: you assemble them. Then, you look at the picture created, say a nice word or two, and rip it apart, stick it in a box and never look at it again. Because though it is a nice picture and the task of assembling it is pleasant, it's not real, and it doesn't hold up next to the things we actually care about. It's idle exercise, something to pass the time... and what better way to pass the time in comics than to rob and steal from the past? No, not so much a story as an intellectual exercise in puzzle-making.