InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "When did you draw that?"

colonel_green (colonel_green) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-08-12 15:53:00

Entry tags:

creator: ed brubaker, creator: steve epting, publisher: marvel comics, title: marvels project

In the beginning...

Four scans from The Marvels Project #1, by Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting, wherein we see the beginnings of the Marvel Universe.

"Kermit" would be Kermit Roosevelt Jr, TR's grandson, who had not inconsiderable connections in the early intelligence community (in real life, he orchestrated the overthrow of Mossadegh in the early 1950s).

They've got a whole cargo hold full of dead Atlanteans. Obviously, Namor arrives and kills them all slowly the painfully.

The news heads back to Germany and "Project Nietzche":

Erskine has already transmitted a secret message to the British saying he wants to defect, and FDR and Churchill agree; they recruit Nick Fury and his friend Red to parachute in and extract him.

Elsewhere, there's a lot of the Golden Age Angel (Thomas Halloway), the first real superhero (fighting crime and stuff) in New York, which I liked (especially his interactions with the dying Two-Gun Kid); the origin of the Human Torch plays out; and there's a very brief cameo from Steve Rogers.

(Post a new comment)

	daningram 2009-08-12 07:21 pm UTC (link)
	Sigh...what is Marvel's obsession with connecting Cap's origin to one war crime or another? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	punishermax 2009-08-12 07:49 pm UTC (link)
	Interesting story lines? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	daningram 2009-08-12 07:53 pm UTC (link)
	I don't think that a five part chapter of cheap angst! is worth polluting (until next recon, anyways) over 60 years of history. Cap's the one Marvel hero with a really iconic origin, leave it alone! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	punishermax 2009-08-12 07:54 pm UTC (link)
	Pretty sure this is an elseworlds thing. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	colonel_green 2009-08-12 08:02 pm UTC (link)
	No, it's in-continuity (there aren't a huge number of stories set in this particular period anyway; Brubaker talked a lot in interviews about going over the old stories and picking out details that weren't gone over, like how Erskine came to the US). (Reply to this) (Parent)

In my not-so-humble option

strannik01
2009-08-13 04:34 am UTC (link)

vI don't think that a five part chapter of cheap angst! is worth polluting (until next recon, anyways) over 60 years of history. Cap's the one Marvel hero with a really iconic origin, leave it alone!

You say "cheap angst," I say "interesting developments." And, when you think about it, Captain America's origin has some potentially troubling undertones. A scientist takes a very Aryan weakling and turns him into a eugenicist's wet dream. I mean, there is nothing wrong with playing the origin straight, but if Brubaker wants to add more depth and ambiguity to it, more power to him.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	colonel_green 2009-08-12 07:50 pm UTC (link)
	I don't think unethical experiments by the Nazis taints his origin at all. Particularly since Erskine would have completed his work in the US without such methods. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	daningram 2009-08-12 07:51 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, but the unethical crap forms the foundation of the serum. So it's basis is still in inhuman methods. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	colonel_green 2009-08-12 07:53 pm UTC (link)
	Erskine was always a defecting Nazi scientist. That the Nazis weren't playing by our scientific standards is hardly out-there. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	icon_uk 2009-08-12 07:54 pm UTC (link)
	IIRC Erskine was always a Nazi defector, what did you think he'd been doing for them prior to the defection? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	daningram 2009-08-12 08:03 pm UTC (link)
	He was a defector before writers knew the full extent of nazi war crimes. I doubt they intended for the basis of Cap's origin to be formed on freakin' war crimes. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	punishermax 2009-08-12 08:05 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah but it's not a real strong link to Cap himself, he doesn't call himself Captain Holocaust or anything, it's just a link that shows how muddy the waters in international espionage are and how secrets move from side to side. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	colonel_green 2009-08-12 08:09 pm UTC (link)
	I think it adds to Erskine's decision: he wants to turn the Nazis' dearly-bought weapon against them. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	blake_reitz 2009-08-12 10:57 pm UTC (link)
	Seconded. A related "soft" retcon that I've seen a lot in the past few years, and expect to see during this series, is that the Human Torch was designed to start on fire, as Horton knew what was going on to his fellow Jews in Germany. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	colonel_green 2009-08-12 11:12 pm UTC (link)
	That wouldn't work, chronologically; the Human Torch showed up in 1939, the Final Solution didn't start until 1942. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	blake_reitz 2009-08-13 12:29 am UTC (link)
	um...time...travel? I don't know, just something I've seen mentioned in both Earth X (which is a what if, but pretty accurate for a lot of past continuity stuff) and the recent Avengers/Invaders crossover. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	arilou_skiff 2009-08-13 08:03 am UTC (link)
	Motto. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	halloweenjack 2009-08-12 09:08 pm UTC (link)
	Are you aware of what Wernher von Braun did before he helped found NASA? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	daningram 2009-08-12 09:12 pm UTC (link)
	I don't recall argueing that it was unrealistic. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	colonel_green 2009-08-12 09:19 pm UTC (link)
	"I aim for the stars, only sometimes I hit London." (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	cmdr_zoom 2009-08-13 02:50 pm UTC (link)
	"That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun (Reply to this) (Parent)

tavella
2009-08-13 12:44 am UTC (link)

For that matter, he was a defector before there *was* the full extent of Nazi war crimes. The project Rebirth experiments were in late 1940; the Einsatzgruppen and Zyklon-B didn't kick in until 1941, and Wannsee wasn't until 1942. Not that the Jews weren't hideously oppressed, but it was mainly ghettoization and deportations up until that point. Auschwitz was primarily for political prisoners, dissidents, and prisoners of war up until 1941 or so.

But it's NuMarvel, so Cap has to be the product of hideous experimentation on murdered innocents; everything has to be filthy.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	strannik01 2009-08-13 04:39 am UTC (link)
	But it's NuMarvel, so Cap has to be the product of hideous experimentation on murdered innocents; everything has to be filthy. Given that Jack Kirby and Joe Simon created Captain America as a response to Nazi aggression in Europe, which did involve lots of murdered innocents, I'd say it's actually quite fitting. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	tavella 2009-08-13 05:27 am UTC (link)
	There's a huge fucking difference between inspired to defend people by seeing suffering, and actually being created from the torn bodies of said people. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jlbarnett 2009-08-12 11:38 pm UTC (link)
	war crimes were all over the place at the time? Erskine was a German scientist. Though I thought he was originally Jewish and that's why he ran from Germany (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	tavella 2009-08-13 12:53 am UTC (link)
	Well, they had done euthanasia of the mentally handicapped, and ghettoized or deported Jewish populations, but the roving death squads, the mass exterminations, the medical experiments were yet to come. And yes, Abraham Erskine was Jewish; he was an analog for all the brilliant scientists like Einstein that had fled the Nazis. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	omgwtflolbbqbye 2009-08-12 07:53 pm UTC (link)
	Is this a new mini-series? I never heard of it before. I always love it when they try to thread the mythology of the Marvel Universe into our actual history, or at least the cool cryptic/ conspiracy theory aspects of our world. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	colonel_green 2009-08-12 07:54 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, it's the centrepiece of their celebrations of the 70th anniversary of Timely/Atlas/Marvel Comics. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	punishermax 2009-08-12 07:56 pm UTC (link)
	Did anyone get the Marvel Comics #1 reprint as well? It's pretty pimpin, it has origin stories for the first Human Torch, Namor, a Ka-Zar story, PLUS a an actual text written story which is pretty cool. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	volksjager 2009-08-12 08:32 pm UTC (link)
	Wasn't there some book called "conspiracy" that alleged that all the marvel hero/villains were created under a program headed by Tony Stark's father ??????? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	blake_reitz 2009-08-13 12:33 am UTC (link)
	I remember that! There was some kind of secret cabal of guys who would later be major players (General Ross, Howard Stark) and guys who would later be mad scientists (Dr. Egghead, I forget who else). (Reply to this) (Parent)

strannik01
2009-08-13 04:45 am UTC (link)

Yeah, but that was dealing with creation of Silver Age Marvel heroes. It originated as a response to all the monsters that popped up during the 1950s. Reed Richard, who was then a young genius scientist, suggested that American military may want to invest in creating super-beings to combat the threat, and they did just that. Things didn't always go according to plan (see Spider-Man and Daredevil) and the program was eventually shut down.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	mullon 2009-08-12 10:42 pm UTC (link)
	I wonder what the total number of Marvel secret governement conspiracies is now. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	colonel_green 2009-08-12 10:47 pm UTC (link)
	There's not much new here in terms of that, beyond that the government provided financing for the original Human Torch. (Reply to this) (Parent)

chocochuy
2009-08-12 11:34 pm UTC (link)

So,are the Atlanteans a key element on the Super Soldier Serum or what?

That could explain somehow the almost superhuman abilities on Captain America and it could also be said that the Vita-Rays treatment was a way for the human body not becoming a weird amalgam while retaining some of the properties of Atlanteans

It could be a very hard process that only Professor Reinstein (or Erskine as seen in these scans) was capable of doing

What do you think?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	colonel_green 2009-08-12 11:44 pm UTC (link)
	They were clearly used for something, though no real specifics. Possibly they were a source of biological data. Certainly, if you were trying to amp up ordinary humans, examining the biology of people who are extremely physically similar to humans (enough so to interbreed with them) but much more resilient would be very useful. (Reply to this) (Parent)

tavella
2009-08-13 12:57 am UTC (link)

I wish Brubaker could be convinced to leave Steve Rogers well enough alone, at this point. He seems to determined to ruin anything good about the character; instead of being the product of the Nazis cutting off their own nose to spite their face, by driving away brilliant but moral scientists, he's now the product of hideous, murderous experimentation on innocents. Thanks a lot for poisoning the character further, Brubaker.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

colonel_green
2009-08-13 02:02 am UTC (link)

Given that Erksine defects over their methods, I don't see how that doesn't make him moral; in this case, it's a man drawn into Hitler's regime who realizes that what's going on (even, what he himself has done) is wrong and pulls out.

Look at Erskine's appearance in Reborn #2; he's a friendly, resolved person.

And I really don't see how Brubaker has been "poisoning" Steve during his run.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	ashtoreth 2009-08-13 05:35 am UTC (link)
	Killing Chinese soldiers was inappropriate. Especially at this economic time. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	colonel_green 2009-08-13 02:21 pm UTC (link)
	Oookay. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	oddpuppets 2009-08-13 03:30 pm UTC (link)
	Scan and context please. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

ashtoreth
2009-08-13 08:32 pm UTC (link)

Gak! I was talking about Captain Bucky. I see I wandered off the subject. (Interestingly, while nothing is made overtly clear in the text of Bucky's infiltration of China, a close examination of the art of the fallen Chinese soldiers reveals they were all shot non-lethally.)

I also thought I found the real lifeinspiration for the villain Professor Pandemic of that arc here, but it turns out he's Japanese, not Chinese.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	jcbaggee 2009-08-13 10:04 am UTC (link)
	Haven't really been able to read this past the initial intro pages yet, which feel like they are practically panel for panel lifted from Kingdom Come. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	colonel_green 2009-08-13 02:27 pm UTC (link)
	I don't really see the comparison; KC is narrated by an old dude talking about how humanity has lost its hope in the future, this is a young man who becomes the first superhero. (Reply to this) (Parent)