For the first time, a novelization of Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross' bestselling and now classic miniseries from 1994—Marvels, offering an thrilling all-new interpretation of one of the most famous stories in Marvel Comics history.
Welcome to New York. Here, burning figures roam the streets, men in brightly colored costumes scale the glass and concrete walls, creatures from space threaten to devour our world . . . and everyone else is going about their lives.
This is the Marvel Universe, where the ordinary and fantastic interact daily. This is the world of Marvels—one of the most important and bestselling stories in Marvel Comics history, which Stan Lee described in his introduction to the first collected edition as "innovative, brilliantly conceived, and skillfully executed."
Over 30 years later, Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross' groundbreaking comic book series Marvels gets a long-awaited novelization by Steve Darnall, author of Uncle Sam and Ross's writing partner on the original proposal.
Marvels was a landmark series when it was first published—peeling back the curtain on Marvel's history. It's a story told from the perspective of an everyman character—news photographer Phil Sheldon—who chronicles a world full of costumed superhumans, providing an on-the-ground view of events in the Marvel Universe as they unfold. Darnall's prose perfectly captures the magic of Busiek and Ross' original story, offering insights and background previously untold in the comic book.
Tying the story together in a stunning package is an all-new painted cover, four all-new color illustrations, and four all-new black-and-white illustrations by Alex Ross, as well as an all-new afterword by Ross.
Praise
“Marvels is a giant leap forward, bringing us to a new plateau in the evolution of illustrated literature . . . these tales are a glowing tribute to what has gone before, and an inspiring presage of what is yet to come. [Busiek and Ross] have taken comics to the next level of entertainment by adding a dimension and a reality that have seldom, if ever, been seen in the medium. I’ve read these stories over and over, each time finding something new and surprising.”
—Stan Lee, from his introduction to the 1994 paperback
“There have been many milestones in the history of Marvel Comics, and I’ve been here for a few of them. Now all of you can be here to look back through these pages, and mark a new turning point. You can remember that you were there when Marvels came out.”
—John Romita Sr., from his afterword to the 1994 paperback
“Marvels (the graphic novel) and Marvels (the novelization of the graphic novel) are both filled with people who do incredible things. I’m currently most impressed with the incredible thing Steve Darnall did, adapting the graphic novel into prose, keeping so much of the brilliance of Kurt Busiek’s writing and Alex Ross’ visual imagery. Each book is a must-have if you loved the other.”
—Mark Evanier, Kirby: King of Comics
“With the novelization of Marvels, Steve Darnall has pulled off something I would have thought impossible. He has made a coherent, fast-moving narrative out of the first forty years of the Marvel Comics Universe—and told the story in the voice of a non-super eyewitness, a New York newspaperman who gives us a human perspective on what it would be like to work and raise kids in a world filled with Avengers and X-Men. Marvels: The Novelization filters a modern mythology through the lens of a very mortal man. It is a mark of Darnall’s skill that, in the end, we care more about Phil Sheldon and his family than we do about Spider-Man and the Hulk.”
—Bill Flanagan, author of Fifty in Reverse and A&R: A Novel
