Comic Books
The Avengers: The Man Who Stole Tomorrow
by David Michelinie, Pocket Books 1979
Copyright © 2002, Glenn Walker
In the late 1970s this was the most anticipated of the Marvel Novel Series. The writer of the Avengers comics series writing a prose novel about those characters, who could resist?
From the start we are alerted that David Michelinie is not just a comic book writer, he has a good grip on the skills of "real" writing. His first line is a hook: "No one noticed the old man cast two shadows." Hooked and reeled in. This is followed by the Avengers trapped in their own elevator with Michelinie proving he can properly reproduce their personalities onto the text page.
The novel is in two parts. The first concerns the Avengers' struggle against an Eskimo shaman who can conjure an energy entity called Brother Bear and has come to retrieve "god". God is not Thor as one might expect, but Captain America, who while in suspended animation in a block of ice for decades was worshipped by a tribe of Eskimos. Great action with some Sub-Mariner thrown in for good measure.
The second half has the Avengers pursuing Kang (the villain who supplied the shaman with the power to thwart his foes) to his home in the fortieth century and the final conflict there. Pretty straightforward superhero action ensues. It may be cliché in a comic book but novel (excuse the pun) in this form.
It's the little touches that Michelinie puts in that make this fun. Earth in the future is an amusement park, an apathetic footnote in mankind's history. The Beast and Quicksilver argue over whether to listen to Devo or classical music in the Avengers quinjet. The Alaskan sheriff wetting himself when he discovers "this Kang fella" had beaten the Avengers before. And of course the best bit of all, when Kang says to the Beast, "I like you, you're blue."
Always a good read. I've done it a few times. From the great Dave Cockrum painted cover to the end, a cool book.