#OMEGA MY READING LIST SERIES#

Virtually all works of art are created within a web of context, allusion and semiotic interconnection. Higher, further, faster … and, finally, more diverse?

Movies ‘Black Panther’ and ‘Captain Marvel’ are paving the way for a more inclusive MCU. (Never mind the OG “greatest story ever told,” the Bible.) And what about Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s “ The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” which turns the entirety of pulp literature (and a good bit of regular old literature) into one massive story line? It dwarfs Marvel, not least because it includes it. Other contenders, like long-running soap operas, myth cycles and folk tales, aren’t even mentioned. Wolk dismisses it in an unconvincing footnote and rarely compares the two companies’ approaches. DC Comics got started a couple decades before Marvel, and so its continuity - the overarching chronology of its narrative - runs longer. It doesn’t help that Wolk’s evidence for the unique vastness of the oeuvre is not especially persuasive. But since the film version of this property stomps across global capitalism with the subtlety of the Hulk, you end up feeling “biggest” may just be shorthand for “most currently marketable.” His stance might be provocative if Marvel were a niche interest, a fresh lens through which to view culture or society. Those are basic questions, but Wolk can’t really answer them because his context is Marvel and only Marvel. The result is less a grand narrative than a hodgepodge of entertaining listicles - and a buyer’s guide.

#OMEGA MY READING LIST SERIES#

Instead, he picks up strands here and there, using each chapter to pick up particular characters or series or issues and explain how a knowledge of the whole can enrich an understanding of the parts. He doesn’t try to start at the beginning and explain everything. Wolf has embarked on a fun stunt and written a fun book. “All of the Marvels” is so busy exploring the tunnels and byways in his great pile of Marvel comics that he sometimes forgets other genres and ideas exist.īefore delving into those limitations, it’s worth acknowledging what is both a useful document and a worthy folly. The Watcher is under the misapprehension that the Marvel universe is all there is, and so, in a way, is Wolk. Yet the Watcher’s view too is limited - and not just because he winds up murdered, with his eyes torn out. If Wolk had to be a Marvel character, it would be the Watcher, who sees all. “Nobody,” he emphasizes, “is supposed to read the whole thing.” He did so to offer a holistic, amusing and unique perspective on the universe. Wolk is brave, but he’s also foolhardy, and he knows it. Wolk read every Marvel comic from 1961 through 2017 - some 27,000 issues in all - with the aim of constructing a unified critical narrative of the entire Marvel comics universe, from “Alpha Flight” to “ Omega the Unknown.” Incorporating Linda Carter: Night Nurse, the dread Dormammu and everyone in between, “ All of the Marvels” explores every Secret War and chronicles every super-villainous “bah!” What man - what monster! - dares to brave this onslaught of purple prose to draw forth an infinity gauntlet of insight? If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.ĭouglas Wolk’s new book is based on a solid gimmick.

Omega my reading list