Marvel Comics have announced the latest project by “Marvels” and “Astro City” scribe Kurt Busiek, “The Marvels.” Alongside artist Yildiray Cinar (“Superior Iron Man”) and cover artist Alex Ross (“Marvels,” “Kingdom Come”), Busiek will be delving into the lives of the denizens of the Marvel Universe in a new ongoing anthology series.
The opening issue will center around a fledgling Reed Richards and the 1940s super-team, the All-Winners Squad. The issue will also have appearances by tentpole marvelites like Captain America, Spider-Man, the Punisher, the Human Torch, Storm, the Black Cat, the Golden Age Vision, Aero, Iron Man and Thor.
“I described it .. as something like a Tom Clancy thriller, in that there would be multiple threads of story going on, and those threads could come together and split apart again, or maybe never even meet – there could be characters involved in a story that do something important but never meet the other characters in the story, which will very much be the case in the opening storyline, at least,” said Busiek. “I’m sure we’ll keep featuring a lot of big popular characters, because hey, people like them. But that doesn’t mean we can’t stir them together with some of the offbeat weirdos of Marvel — I want to play with the whole thing, make wonders out of forgotten corners of Marvel as well as dealing with the big stars.”
Busiek commented of Cinar, “I’ve been a fan of his since way back when he did an indie comic called ‘Fist of Justice,’ and it’s been exciting to see him get better and better as he progressed to bigger and bigger stuff. And for ‘The Marvels,’ we knew we needed someone who could draw whatever part of Marvel we threw at him, from gritty mean-streets stuff for a Punisher scene to hi-tech Super Heroes with the Avengers to cosmic oddities and ancient history and more.” He explained Ross will be acting as a character designer (just like he does on “Astro City”), designing new costumes and revamping old ones.
The 30-page opening issue hits shelves in May. For more information, look to Marvel’s upcoming May solicitations, and a full interview with Kurt Busiek over at Marvel.com. In the meantime, two further spin-offs of Busiek and Ross’s “Marvels,” “Marvels Snapshot” and “Marvel,” will begin in March.
