Every schoolchild recognises their protagonists: the Avengers, the X-Men, your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. The superhero comics that Marvel has published since 1961 make up the biggest self-contained work of fiction ever created: over half a million pages and counting. Eighteen of the 100 highest-grossing movies of all time are based on it. And not even the people telling the story have read the whole thing – nobody’s supposed to.

But Douglas Wolk did. In All Of The Marvels, a critic and superfan takes on the epic to end all epics. What he finds is a magic mirror of the past 60 years, from the atomic terrors of the Cold War to the political divides of our present. Wolk teases out Marvel’s mixture of progressive visions and painful stereotypes, its regrettable moments as well as its flights of luminous creativity. The result is an irresistible travel guide to the magic mountain at the heart of popular culture.

I recieved a review copy through Netgalley

I can’t quite get my head around how many comics Douglas Wolk read to put himself into the position where he could write a book called “All of the Marvels”. Six decades of comics, over half a million pages (presumably not the classic adverts from the 1970s where you could buy x-ray glasses) and tens of thousands of individual comic books. I am more than a little bit jealous to be honest as there are so many classic storylines I still hope to find time to read one day.

Why am I reviewing a book about a man reading comic books? Because I love comics. More accurately I love Marvel Comics and I wish more people would read them too. I wondered how a book addressing all the Marvel comics would discuss the huge volume of stories, the vast array of characters and whether it would inspire new readers to pick up some comics to try them too.

I also wondered how this book would read…where do you start discussing that vast body of work and which characters do you focus on? Well it didn’t read quite how I had expected and the focus sometimes surprised me but it works. Douglas Wolk does not take a chronological approach to the comics and I was secretly pleased by this as I suspect I may have jumped to “my era” of reading which was the 80s/90s. Instead there is an early focus on Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. The stories they crafted, how they worked together, other artists and writing teams that contributed and how some of the most famous characters came to the news-stands.

There was a section about the Shang-Chi comics and the martial arts books from the 1970s when Bruce Lee movies were doing well in cinemas and Western audiences were keen to discover more. He discusses how some writers dominated a particular title and then how the title declined or lost focus when the writing teams changed. It’s fascinating to see how one man (and for years it was mainly men) can make or break a character and define how we see them now. This focus on writers allows a shift through different characters over a long time period but don’t expect a Spider-Man chapter, an Iron Man chapter then a Hulk chapter as the narrative is much more fluid and conversational.

Naturally some characters will dominate Marvel’s history but Douglas Wolk does mix up the focus and I found myself deep in passages discussing characters I don’t really know and the author made me want to read those comicbooks.

Will All of the Marvels appeal to new readers? I think perhaps not as I came to this book with a bit of knowledge of Marvel and their big name artists/authors and this really helped me relate to what I was reading here. But I also found I was learning about the team behind the scenes as well as the teams on the pages. I also wanted to read many, many more books which I hadn’t really considered prior to Wolk’s

It’s a huge undertaking to cover so much material and there is the risk your favourite story or hero may not get many mentions. However, All of the Marvels is a fascinating analysis and recounting of some of the most famous stories in comicbook history. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I am sure many Marvel finds will find it equally absorbing but non fans may struggle to fully engage.

All of the Marvels is published in Hardback, Audiobook and digital format. You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B093J5Z88L/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0