I give this a big fat 'meh'. Based on the cover I was all set for some intense good versus evil showdown...Instead, I got mostly a kid who reads too many comic books and obviously wanted to be part of something. The bad guys move into the real world at a house where his dad's best friend used to live, and no one believes the kid until it's too late (except maybe his dad). Then of course the kid is the only one who can do anything about it...which I'll leave you to discover on your own.There's nothing wrong with this, but nothing that really jumps out and says WOW. It's a miniseries, kinda ho-hum.Read if you like, but I didn't get much out of it. I suppose some will talk about how it's everything about the power of comics and belief in yourself and stuff like that, and how they related, but nope, not me. There's some solid art, but the story is just kinda boring to be honest...I was expecting a lot more. A young boy and his divorced father bond over their mutual love of Marvel comics only for - gasp! Marvel villains to show up in their sleepy, backwater town and begin to wreak havoc! Suddenly it's up to the boy to save the town somehow while we discover the dark past of his father - is he the loser his mother told him about or is he something more?I've read enough Mark Millar to know this guy knows how to write a damn fine superhero comic so ordering this was a no-brainer - weird year to pick but then I trust this writer to tell an entertaining story. Eep - seems I was wrong! While he is generally awesome, "1985" is by no means a flawless, or even half good, book. The story is too slight to be stretched over 6 issues. We see the same thing repeated over and over - boy struggles with reconciling his divorced father's situation of no money compared to his mother and step father who do have cash, he retreats into comics, then witnesses a Marvel character appear in real life. After a while it becomes predictable, and frankly the boy and his father's story just wasn't strong enough to sustain a full 6 issues.Also, the build-up about his father's "dark past" and "that one day" is such a cop out in the end, revealed in a couple of pages in an offhand way as to seem like nothing in the overall story. Then the superheroes - the villains seep over to the real world until the final issue and then the heroes show up and save the day. All the characters are bland and do the usual superhero things, minus any dialogue, and the whole book is tied up neatly with an admittedly kind of cool ending. Overall it's quite a bland and unexciting read with some, at times fantastic art, other times too inky and scratchy as to be annoying. The superhero storyline is never really pulled off and the real world story not nearly interesting enough to hold up the book - "1985" is far from Millar's best and by no means an essential read for comics fans.
What do You think about Marvel 1985 Premiere HC (2009)?
Comic book heroes from the past collide with our world for an exciting story.
—bronte
