Marvels #3

History

Marvels grew out of writer Kurt Busiek's long-standing desire to treat Marvel's Silver Age history as a coherent, emotionally resonant narrative rather than a series of disconnected adventure stories; he pitched the series before Alex Ross was attached, and Ross — then known primarily for his work on Dark Horse's Terminator: The Burning Earth — came aboard to provide what became his first major painted work for a mainstream superhero publisher. Edited by Marcus McLaurin with Tom DeFalco as editor-in-chief, the book was published under Marvel's 'Marvel Select' imprint and released with a distinctive acetate (transparent plastic) outer cover on first printings, a production element that second printings omitted. Issue #3 was released January 25, 1994, with a March 1994 cover date, and ran 45 pages — a double-sized installment at the regular series price — with lettering by Richard Starkings and John Gaushell and interior design by Comicraft.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Story title: 'Judgment Day' — the third chapter of the four-issue Marvels miniseries (cover date March 1994, on-sale January 25, 1994), written by Kurt Busiek with fully painted art, inks, colors, and cover by Alex Ross.
• The issue retells the Galactus Trilogy (originally Fantastic Four #48–50, 1966) from the ground-level perspective of photojournalist Phil Sheldon, devoting approximately 32 of its 45 pages to recapturing that single story from a civilian viewpoint.
• Busiek wove a thematic thread of 'three signs' through the issue, connecting Attuma's prior flooding of the East Coast (from Avengers #27) with the Watcher's fire- and meteor-filled sky into an apocalyptic portent that a street-corner prophet in the story comes uncannily close to predicting correctly.
• First printings of all four Marvels issues featured a distinctive acetate (transparent plastic) outer cover; second printings did not include this element, making the acetate-cover copies production variants unique to the initial run.
• Phil Sheldon is shown collaborating with Ben Urich on a Daily Bugle investigation into Tony Stark, a continuity-conscious detail that places the story precisely within the mid-1960s Marvel chronology; Busiek also depicts a cardboard cutout of Captain America at an Avengers Day event to honor the fact that Steve Rogers had actually quit the team at that point.
• The series as a whole — with this issue as its cosmic centerpiece — won the 1994 Eisner Award for Best Finite/Limited Series and the Harvey Award for Best Continuing or Limited Series; Busiek also received the Harvey Award for Best Single Issue or Story for Marvels #4 in 1995.
• The series was Marvels' constituted the first major painted work for Alex Ross in mainstream superhero comics, establishing the photorealistic painted style that would define his subsequent career (Kingdom Come, Earth X).
• The series was collected into trade paperback and hardcover editions by the end of 1994, has been reprinted multiple times including a tenth-anniversary edition in 2004, and inspired a 2008 sequel series (Marvels: Eye of the Camera) with Busiek returning as writer alongside artist Jay Anacleto.

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