Marvel: Strange Tales vols. 1 & 2

Despite being supposedly something of a comic fan I've actually read very few actual Marvel comics, and I haven't ever consistently read a monthly title. I think that in reality this is because I'm not really a comic fan, I just happen to think that comics are as valid as any other narrative format so I don't instantly discount them. Second to this, I'm mainly involved in the small press side of things so a lot of what I read comes through that. Finally, when it comes to superheroes I tend to find the comics too soapy to bother with - I'm more interested in the films and cartoons and when I do read collections it's predominantly of DC characters.

Not being a fan, however, doesn't mean that I don't know how comics work, or the themes and characters and tropes that run through them. I have read enough comics to appreciate the heavy-duty deconstruction in works such as Grant Morrison's Animal Man and Doom Patrol runs, Paul Grist's Jack Staff or the monolithic Watchmen quite as well as the fact that they are good stories well told, which utilise the unique aspects of the form. And at this point I often find myself more interested in books which play around with the characters rather than ones which play them straight; I don't have a big enough emotional investment in the characters to make the time spent following yet another Spider-Man reboot a worthwhile endeavor.

What this ends up meaning is that when I do read superhero comics nowadays they tend to be of the indie variety; but the problem is that most indie superheroes are just re-skinned versions of already well-known characters, or fairly bad attempts at parody. There are occasional gems, but most of the most interesting work in indie comics is going on outside of superhero comics. But it doesn't mean that people don't still want to have a go at those characters - they're icons, and for so many people they were right there in the first comics that they read. (For a full disclosure, I ought to add that I, as part of Underfire Comics, co-wrote a giant, meta-textual 10-issue superhero graphic novel that was also about a comic company going into administration and the creators destroying their creations that in the end was never drawn, although an offshoot is in the works here.)

Which brings us to Marvel's Strange Tales, where, with remarkable nonchalance, the company most famous for stiffing character's creators for their IP, allows indie comics free reign. It is, as with most anthologies, a little hit and miss, but it is worth the misses for the hits. More than anything it highlights how much better, and more interesting, the art is in the indie scene. Other than that, there's not much clever I can say - there are too many people coming from too many angles for any sort of easy generalisations or pat thematic comments, it's just some good comics fun.