Whether it is spotlighting the Siancong native Lady Lotus (more on her later) or following The Punisher amid a shootout in New York’s Little Sin-Cong neighborhood, it is an inescapable aspect of the title, and one that taints just about any praiseworthy moments in the issue. The plot of the issue jumps across eras, ranging from the Golden Age of the Marvel Universe to the near future, but every jump is centered by a tie to Siancong.

However, treating American wars as interchangeable and, specifically, taking a character out of Vietnam and placing him in a fictional tropical Asian nation that could easily pass as Vietnam, if not for helpful narration, is emblematic of the lack of care and nuance that utterly guts The Marvels. For example, Flash Thompson is now a veteran of the Siancong war, rather than Vietnam. The retcon (which has been thoroughly dissected elsewhere, including a fantastic piece at WWAC) created a new conflict for Marvel characters who previously fought in Vietnam, World War 2 or Desert Storm, and served to remove any timeline concerns continuity sticklers may have. The backbone of The Marvels is Siancong, the fictional nation that recently rose to prominence in the Marvel Universe following a retcon in the History of the Marvel Universe miniseries that reframed the country as the site of a war that spanned decades. However, in execution, the debut reads less as a love letter to Marvel’s history than a reshuffling of continuity minutiae, weighed down by a central focus on an inherently flawed and offensive concept. Kurt Busiek taking the sweeping “anytime, anyplace” structure of his beloved Astro City series and blending it with the humanist perspective and heart of the iconic Marvels miniseries its title pays homage to sounds like a winning combination. Reading The Marvels #1, I could see the skeleton of a series I should love.

The marvels kurt busiek