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Informationen zum Autor Douglas Wolk Klappentext Winner of the 2022 Eisner Award for Best Comics-Related Book A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice The first-ever full reckoning with Marvel Comics’ interconnected, half-million-page story, a revelatory guide to the “epic of epics”—and to the past sixty years of American culture—from a beloved authority on the subject who read all 27,000+ Marvel superhero comics and lived to tell the tale “Thorough, fascinating, and joyfully executed, All of the Marvels is essential reading for fans and scholars alike.” —G. Willow Wilson (Ms. Marvel) “A revelation, a tour both electrifying in its weird charisma and replenishing in its loving specificity . . . a testament, and a tribute.” —Jonathan Lethem “Brilliant, eccentric, moving and wholly wonderful. . . . Wolk proves to be the perfect guide for this type of adventure: nimble, learned, funny and sincere. . . . All of the Marvels is magnificently marvelous. Wolk’s work will invite many more alliterative superlatives. It deserves them all.” —Junot Díaz, New York Times Book Review The superhero comic books that Marvel Comics has published since 1961are the longest continuous, self-contained work of fiction ever created. Thousands of writers and artists have contributed to it. Everyone recognizes its protagonists. Eighteen of the hundred highest-grossing movies of all time are based on parts of it. And Douglas Wolk has read the whole thing. Wolk sees both into the ever-expanding story and through it, as a prism through which to view the landscape of American culture. In his hands, the mammoth Marvel narrative becomes a fun-house-mirror history of the past sixty years—a boisterous, tragicomic, magnificently filigreed epic about power and ethics, set in a world transformed by wonders. A huge treat for Marvel fans, this book is also a revelation for readers who don’t know Doctor Strange from Doctor Doom. Here, truly, are all of the marvels. Leseprobe The Mountain of Marvels The twenty-seven thousand or so superhero comic books that Marvel Comics has published since 1961 are the longest continuous, self-contained work of fiction ever created: over half a million pages to date, and growing. Thousands of writers and artists have contributed to it. Every week, about twenty slim pamphlets of twenty or thirty pages apiece are added to the body of its single enormous story. By design, any of its episodes can build on the events of any that came before it, and they're all (more or less) consistent with one another. Every schoolchild recognizes the Marvel story's protagonists: Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, the X-Men. Eighteen of the hundred highest-grossing movies of all time, from Avengers: Endgame and Black Panther down to Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy, are based on parts of the story, and it has profoundly influenced a lot of the rest: Star Wars and Avatar and The Matrix would be unimaginable without it. Its characters and the images associated with them appear on T-shirts, travel pillows, dog leashes, pizza cutters, shampoo bottles, fishing gear, jigsaw puzzles, and bags of salad greens. (Some of the people who love the story also love to be reminded of it, or to associate themselves with particular characters from it.) Its catchphrases have seeped into standard usage: "Spidey-sense," "you wouldn't like me when I'm angry," "I say thee nay," "healing factor," "no-you move," "bitten by a radioactive spider," "puny humans," "threat or menace?," "true believers," "'nuff said." Parts of it have been adapted into serial TV dramas, animated cartoons, prose novels, picture books, video games, theme-park attractions, and a Broadway musical. For someone who lives in our society, having some familiarity with the Marvel story is useful in much the same way as, ...
