Thousands of writers and artists have contributed to it.
Every schoolchild recognizes the Marvel story’s protagonists: Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, the X-Men.
“true believers,” “‘nuff said.”
The Marvel story is a mountain, smack in the middle of contemporary culture.
The mountain wasn’t always there.
It’s not the kind of mountain whose face you could climb.
There is no clear pathway into the mountain from the outside.
Parts of it are abandoned and choked with cobwebs.
Other parts are tedious, gruesome, ludicrous, infuriating.
That hybrid formulaabsorbing monster comics and romance comics and humor comicsintosuperhero comicsturned out to be irresistible and durable.
And not even the people telling the story have read the whole thing.
Nobody issupposedto read the whole thing.
That’s not how it’s meant to be experienced.
So, of course, that’s what I did.
I read all 540,000-plus pages of the story published to date, fromAlpha FlighttoOmega the Unknown.
Do I recommend anyone else do the same?
Am I glad I did it?
But there’s another, different kind of fun that comes from piecing together the big story.
Marvel’s narrative also has a peculiar relationship with authorship.
From a reader’s perspective, though, thatwas one of Marvel’s great innovations.
Every little story is part of the big one, and potentially a crucial part.
It wasn’t even meant to workthatway, at first;it wasn’t conceived organically in any way.
Even so, it’s accrued alotof meaning.
It grew with its audience, and then grew beyond successive generations of its tellers.
It’s a tale that never ends for any of its characters, even in death.
From ALL THE MARVELS by Douglas Wolk.
Copyright Douglas Wolk, 2021.
Published by arrangement with Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Random House LLC.
