FSC: MARVEL GRAPHIC NOVEL #1

First of all, it’s got to be said: at a time when a regular issue of a new comic book cost 60 cents, the fact that this first MARVEL GRAPHIC NOVEL was priced at $5.95 was almost intolerable. Yes, it was 64 pages long by a top creator, yes it was on far better paper and was larger overall–the dimensions of a European color album, which is what had inspired the format in the first place. But regardless, this was a lot of moolah to be spending on a single comic book purchase in 1982.The actual bite of the cover price was concealed for me a little bit, in that I got my copy during the brief period of time when I was having my comic books shipped to me every month C.O.D. from Geppi’s Comic World. So I wound up paying for the entire shipment at once and wasn’t innately aware of just how much of that cost went to this one item.

Putting the cost aside, this really is a very strong story and a very nice package. The assorted reprints over the years haven’t ever quite captured the feel of the original, in its larger dimensions and slick colors and paper. It represented, in my opinion, the capstone to creator Jim Starlin’s first period at Marvel. It’s a book in which he wraps up all outstanding business and story threads that were still lingering from his initial decade at the publisher. While he’d return in later years, by that point his experience and perspective had changed somewhat, and his work hereafter felt often like remixes of ideas he’s already explored in earlier stories. Reportedly, this story was particularly meaningful to Starlin, as his own father had died a short time before.

The titular Captain Marvel was, to put it kindly, a bit of a dog of a character. He’s originally been created in a rush so that Marvel’s owner Martin Goodman could secure a trademark on the name Captain Marvel. There was apparently some interest in an animated cartoon series featuring that name, so the Marvel incarnation became a warrior from an alien planet sent to spy on Earth. It wasn’t a great strip, and it was cancelled pretty quickly despite attempts to revise it to make it more appealing–new costume, new powers, new supporting cast, etc. But the thing that brought it back wasn’t anything that Marvel did. Rather, it was DC licensing the original 1940s Captain Marvel from Fawcett. To prevent them from reviving the character under the Captain Marvel name, Mar-Vell was brought back and given his own series once again. But it was still a lower-tier title, with only one true bright spot in its long run: when Jim Starlin was briefly writing and drawing it.

Eventually, the need to keep the series going had passed, and Captain Marvel was cancelled. At around this time, Roger Stern put forward a new idea: why don’t we create a new character using that name? After all, that’s the part that we need in order to hold onto the trademark. Roger planned to do such a thing in the pages of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and AVENGERS which he was writing. But before that could happen, something had to be done about the existing Captain, Mar-Vell. As the creator most associated with the character, Jim Starlin was given the opportunity to bring his story to an end. it was quickly decided that this tale would be told as the first of Marvel’s new line of Graphic Novels–in this format, Starlin would get a greater slice of the pie than he would have had this been produced as a standard comic. Rather than having the hero expire in some life-and-death battle, Starlin took a much more human approach and instead had him contract terminal cancer.

So this book opens with the semi-retired Captain Marvel living on Titan among the relatives of his old and now demised foe Thanos. He’s fallen in love with a woman, Elysius, and settled down to live out the rest of his days. But when he, Mentor and Eros are ambushed by a coterie of Thanos-Thralls who are still marauding despite the extinction of their leader, Mar-Vell finds himself more exhausted by the effort than usual. Mentor offers to run medical tests upon Mar-Vell, but through his Cosmic Awareness, the hero already knows what the problem is: he’s got cancer. years ago, in Starlin’s last adventure featuring the character, he had been forced to seal off a deadly canister of nerve gas that threatened to poison the area. Turns out that while he survived that exposure, it had the long-term effect of giving Mar-Vell cancer.

For the most part, there isn’t any overt action or fighting. Instead, the heroes of the Marvel Universe join forces in an attempt to cur cancer and save Mar-Vell’s life. All the while, the hero’s condition worsens and he works to get his affairs in order. When word of Mar-Vell’s impending demise gets out, in a memorable scene a military envoy from the Skrull Empire arrives to present him with an award for valor as their Empire’s greatest enemy. It’s all very sad and affecting, and very nicely realized by Starlin. In the end, of course, the heroes come to the limits of their abilities, and unable to defeat the foe that is this unrelenting disease, they settle in for the inevitable end.

As Mar-Vell’s time grows short, the petrified form of Thanos stirs from where it has stood since the Mad Titan perished and makes its way to Mar-Vell’s side. He restors Mar-Vell’s vigor and tells him that, as his greatest foe, Mar-Vell’s death should be a thing of glory. So he stages one final climactic battle with Captain Marvel, with the fate of the universe apparently at stake and all of Mar-Vell’s deceased enemies joining in the fight. It’s a fitting last struggle, for all that it is all just for show. Because in the end, all men are finite, even men such as Mar-Vell and Thanos, and death comes to them all in the end. Ready to pass on to whatever comes next, Mar-Vell embraces the personification of death, and his life ends.

It is quite possibly the best single story that Jim Starlin has ever produced, at once cosmic and resolutely human, with an undercurrent of sadness and finality and a genuine empathy for both the character and anybody who has faced actual death at some point in their lives. What’s more, despite some abortive attempts to bring the character back over the years, it’s a story that’s been permitted to stand. And that’s proper, I think, in that it isn’t about the sort of death that super hero comic books are often full of, operatic bombast. it’s quieter, more contemplative, more realistic, and so it feels more genuine, especially to any readers who have had encounters with the same terrible disease that ends Mar-Vell.

For all that I liked it at the time, I didn’t yet have enough life experience to truly appreciate just how good a story this was when it first came out. It justifies its ridiculous price tag.