In 1961, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four #1 hit newsstands and set a new standard for superhero comics in terms of storytelling and characterization. It also marked the beginning of the Marvel universe, although writers and artists since then have incorperated more and more of Marvel's golden and atomic age roots. Marvel, as a shared universe, would continue to grow and prosper up until today, but with Stan Lee's dogmatic "illusion of change" hanging over the line, drastic steps would have to be taken to explain why these characters in the sixties were still quite young and vibrant decades later.
From this, the concept of "Marvel Time" was born. We're expected to believe that, no matter where we are reading from, the Marvel Universe and the interconnected stories within began about nine or ten years ago. This, of course, created another dilemma. Now there were several decades worth of actual human history that had been rendered blank and Marvel-less by the slow creep of Marvel Time. Captain America and most of the other Timely-era characters would stay entrenched in WWII, but there was still the matter of filling out the 50's, 60's and 70's.
In the year 2000, veteran Marvel creators John Byrne and Roger Stern believed they had a solution. Not lacking for ambition, their series Marvel: The Lost Generation featured an era's worth of new creations that had been retrofitted to fill in the blank space that had become the mid-20th century. The series revolved mainly around the superhero team known as The First Line and a futuristic anthropologist named Dr. Cassandra Locke who is tumbling through time, uncovering these "previously unmentioned" heroes and villains, revealing them to herself and the reluctant reader.
The heroes of the First Line are somewhat . . . shall we say cookie cutter? John Byrne's designs are strong, but one can't help but look at them as pastiches of older heroes. Byrne does a pretty good job of imagining what heroes created by the likes of Bob Brown and John Buscema would look like, and writer Roger Stern gives the script an old-school flavor. (Which shouldn't be difficult for the guy who weaved all of those incredible Avengers yarns in the 80's.)
The issue at hand (#7) takes place during the height of the Red Scare, with Skrulls in place of Commies and the potentially offensive Yellow Claw standing revealed as the true menace to both the Invaders and the First Line by issue's end. The cover is a classic "two teams clash while a nuetral party cries out in anguish in the middle" piece. The story here reminds me of the JSA: 1950 arc from Geoff John's storied run on the title, with the H.U.A.C. coming down on masked heroes while another menace takes advantage of the rampant confusion and paranoia cropping up in the American people.
The superhero melodrama is confined to two-thirds of the issue--quite literally, as the bottom of each page fills us in on the simultaneous adventures of Dr. Locke as she unearths the other half of the plot and, in this issue, runs afoul of the Human Torch. (Not that one, the other one.) This is a neat gimmick and a fun way to mess with the format, but I can also see it wearing thin over the course of a twelve issue maxi-series.
Another gimmick that made this series stand out at the time was the numbering. As Dr. Locke is falling further back in time, so do the issues count down from 12 to 1. It's cute, and ultimately non-intrusive, but I have a feeling the edgier fan of the approaching new millenium may have rolled their eyes at the concept. After all, prjects like this and Starlin's Infinity books would become rarer and rarer as the decade would unfurl and the Ultimate line is literally on the way before thise series could even finish its run.
Recent history (the last 20 years or so) has shown us that Marvel would find more success taking their present stock of heroes and de-aging them than they would in trying to retcon in new characters to account for Marvel Time. Unfortunately the real trick to appreciating Marvel Time is all-too-simple: Just don't think about it too much!
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