Continuing in our look at Mark Gruenwald’s pre-Marvel fanzine OMNIVERSE, dedicated to examining consistency in the depiction of fictional realities in comic books.
After a write-up of several recent science fiction stories, Gruenwald takes it upon himself to review several recently-released comic books to see if they measure up to his own beliefs and standards about the manner in which fictional reality should be consistently portrayed. This is kinda a suspect metric to be applying, in that none of the creators involved were in any way aware of Mark’s Treatise, nor were they expected to abide by its rules. But it let Gruenwald dissect and discuss a bunch of recent stories, so there’s that.
Next up is an overview of an entire comic book series, in this case THE FLASH as written and researched by Dean Mullaney with the help of Ken Gale and Mitch Itkowitz. Dennis Jensen, who in later years will ink Carmine Infantino on the title, provides a header and spot illustrations of the Scarlet Speedster.
We’ll continue our look at OMNIVERSE in the coming weeks.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
I enjoyed OMNIVERSE, but I was so baffled by that review column.
I mean, I can understand the Bechdel Test, to pick a review criterion that the creators of the film may or may not have been aware of and likely weren’t guided by — it at least has a point to make about how women are portrayed in film, which has applications beyond itself. But “How Omniversal is it?” only measures how well a story fits into this arbitrary box Mark made up, and doesn’t say anything about whether the story is good or bad, told well or poorly, worth your time as a reader — it’s like reviewing comics based on how many orange triangles they have in them.
But to each their own. It interested Mark, at that time, and that was enough.
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