Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Marvel Universe* (*But Were Afraid to Ask Stan Lee)

So...you're a new fan to reading Marvel Comics! You've picked up a comic book here and there and seen that Iron Man movie and probably can remember "Don't make me angry...you wouldn't like me when I'm angry" and you can sing 5/8ths of the lyrics to the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon theme song...well, welcome to the wonderful world of Marvel Comics. Each and every month Marvel publishes 350 comic books set in the "Marvel Universe" and starring their rich tapestry of heroes, villains, supporting characters, and Aunt May. If you're just coming aboard now with the new "Heroic Age" stories, there's a few basic things you need to know about Avengers Disassembled. And House of M. And Civil War. And The Death of Captain America. And, um, let's see...Planet Hulk, Annihilation, One More Day, World War Hulk, Messiah Complex, Dark Reign, Necrosha, War of Kings, The Wedding of Daredevil and Foggy Nelson, Punisher Gets Carved Up Like a Christmas Turkey, Wolverine-Fest '09, and Siege. Whew! That's a lotta comics. You pile those suckers on each other and you can reach all the way to the top of Uma Thurman. (And who wouldn't wanna?)

Then again, you may not want to read all those comic books. That's where The House of Ideas' useful line of Marvel Saga comic books come in. Rather than reading hundreds of comics, Marvel Saga abridges the major events in the Marvel Universe, only hitting the most important high points of its history. Trouble is, even in their well-intentioned attempt to give your only the highlights, sometimes Marvel Saga moves a little too quickly through history:









Maybe the extensive line of Official Handbooks of the Marvel Universe can help you out by filling in all the details, huh? Well, maybe not for the beginner. They tend to get bogged down in minutia and trivia. Remember these famous Marvel characters from movies, cartoons, and merchandising?



That's why I'm here, folks: to ease you into the modern post-Siege seventy-three Avengers-teamed foil-wrapped-Thor'd contemporary Marvel Universe, in a swift and easy way. Here, folks, is everything you need to know about the Marvel Universe...simplified!










































So, there ya go! Everything and everybody you need to know about to read all the Marvel comic books. Join me again tomorrow when I'll present The Legion of Super-Heroes: Simplified!



Also, where to find Waldo.

365 Days with Hank McCoy, Day 152

Panel from Avengers Two #3 (July 2000), script by Roger Stern, pencils by Mark Bagley, inks by Greg Adams, Colors by Tom Smith, letters by Sharpefont and PT

365 Days with Hank McCoy, Day 151

Panel from X-Factor Annual #4 (1989), script and pencils by John Byrne, inks by Walt Simonson, colors by Tom Vincent, letters by Jim Novak

365 Days with Hank McCoy, Day 150

Panel from Avengers #180 (February 1979), script by Tom Defalco, pencils by Jim Mooney, inks by Mike Esposito, colors by Bob Sharen, letters by Denise Wohl

Ten of a Kind: G-g-g-ghosts!

(More Ten of a Kind here.)

Separated at Birth: Everyone knows it's Dobie

L: The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis #3 (Sepember-October 1960), art by Bob Oksner
R: Windy and Willy #2 (July-August 1969), art by Bob Oksner
(And see also at the bottom of this post, Swing with Scooter #36)
(Click picture to muscle-beach-size)

L: The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis #6 (March-April 1961), art by Bob Oksner
R: Windy and Willy #3 (September-October 1969), art by Bob Oksner
(Click picture to toddler-size)

L: The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis #12 (March-April 1962), art by Bob Oksner
R: Windy and Willy #1 (May-June 1969), art by Bob Oksner
(Click picture to Taurus-the-Bull-size)

L: The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis #19 (May-June 1963), art by Bob Oksner
R: Windy and Willy #4 (November-December 1969), art by Bob Oksner
(Click picture to tossing-the-bull-size)

L: The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis #20 (July-August 1963), art by Bob Oksner
R: Showcase #81 (March 1969), art by Bob Oksner
(Click picture to Denny-Terriosize)


No, folks, you're not seein' double (five times!) DC's 1969 comic book series The Way-Out World of Windy and Willy (four issues plus a debut in Showcase) was inspired by DC's own '60-'64 series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis...inspired by, in this case, meaning very nearly the same comic book! Each of the Windy stories was a reprint of a Dobie story, relettered and retouched to reflect the changed character names and designs, with newly drawn covers using the same old jokes as five issues of Dobie by the original artist, Bob Oksner! So, which DC-Earth do you think Dobie lived on...and did Willy live on its version of Earth-2? Now that there's only fifty-two earths, are they both stuck on Earth-28, the home in the multiverse of Alan Ladd, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Pat Boone, Bob Hope, and Puffy AmiYumi? And if so, when will they cross over with Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman?

Call me, Didio. I've got the whole 12-part megaseries worked out in my head already.

---

EDIT!: Hold the phone, Separatists! We've got ourselves a triplet!:


Swing with Scooter #36 (October-November 1972), art by Stan Goldberg and Henry Scarpelli

Brought to my attention by "Dauntless" Dr. K of Dr. K's 100-Page Super Spectacular, here's a third version of the beach gag shown above on Dobie #3 and Windy #2. The evidence mounts for an analysis of Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development to be applied to the pre-Crisis Earth-28: in a world where three pairs of teenagers make the same jokes in the period of twelve years, surely there's some giant hand at the beginning of time spinning events into some sort of multiple-earth beach-gag tapesty!

Or, maybe, like everybody imitating the Fonz or Austin Powers, it's just an old joke used one time too many. Only Rip Hunter, Time Master could tell us for sure!

Thanks, Dr. K!

365 Days with Hank McCoy, Day 149

Panel from The Beast #3 (July 1997), script by Terry Kavanagh; pencils by Cedric Nocon, Paul Pelletier, and Hector Collazo; inks by Jamie Mendoza, Hackshack Studios, Harry Candelario; colors by Ariane Lenshoek; letters by Richard Starkings and Albert Deschesne

Saturday Morning Cartoon: Superman in "The Mechanical Monsters"

Superman: The Mechanical Monsters (November 28, 1941), directed by Dave Fleischer, starring the voices of Bud Collyer as Superman/Clark Kent and Joan Alexander as Lois Lane

He was the Talk of the Town

from The New Yorker, April 29, 1939

1939 World's Fair map by Carl Rose, from The New Yorker, April 29, 1939
(Click picture to tomorrow-size)




Westinghouse advertisement from The Saturday Evening Post, 1939



from The New Yorker, October 26, 1940



from The New Yorker, October 26, 1940



from The New Yorker, October 13, 1951





Cartoon by Perry Barlow from The New Yorker, October 26, 1940

365 Days with Hank McCoy, Day 148

Page from X-Men #12 (September 1992), script by Fabian Nicieza, pencils and inks by Art Thibert, inking assists by Dan Panosian and Trevor Scott, colors by Joe Rosas and Marie Javins, letters by Tom Orzechowski