Flashback Month—Welcome to the Past!

Welcome to Flashback Month—an editorial gimmick where every Marvel ongoing series issue for the month of July featured a one-shot story taking place prior to the Fantastic Four getting their powers in Fantastic Four #1.  To commemorate the event, and screw with the order of everyone’s collections, Marvel numbered all the issues for this month –1; the 90s were a weird time for comic numbering gimmicks: number one issues were still being advertised as collector’s items, and many publishers started putting out things like issue zeroes and number one half issues.  So there you have it, an entire month of issues that were supposed to be viewed as collector’s items.

Of course, as you can tell from these two books, one of the main problems was that all of the issues interrupted regular stories in books, no matter what stage they were at.  Another significant problem was that most writers were severely limited by events and characters as they existed prior to the majority of continuity.  What ended up happening was a lot of sub-par issues.  A lot of them took place during either WWII or explored the childhoods of main characters; there were tons of Nick Fury, Wolverine, and pre-pubescent Peter Parker cameos.  At the same time artists were instructed to draw in a less detailed throwback style to give the issues the 1960’s comic era look, and they were even told to keep the panel layouts simpler.

The main problem with Flashback month as a whole is that it tried to establish the look and continuity of pre-Fantastic Four Marvel, but not the tone.  The Silver Age of comics was continuity-lite; each issue was about a new outlandish villain or hero that stretched the boundaries of absurdity and imagination.  Yes these issues were mostly self-contained stories, and most of the villains were based off a random idea or concept the writer had read or heard about, but they were always about a villain wiping the floor with the heroes until the very end where they rallied and won the day, with Marvel setting itself apart for including characterization and drama with the characters’ personal lives.  Stories about Havok, Warpath, or Spider-Man as little boys foiling established villains probably wouldn’t have flown in the era they are meant to reflect.  While the art, especially the covers, is pretty neat to look at, none of these stories felt exciting enough or absurd enough to belong to the Silver Age of comics, and that was its downfall.