I'll say this right away, I'm not as good with the Marvel Universe as I am with the DC Universe. DC is my neighborhood, it's where I live--up until the reboot, it still managed to keep that comfortable feeling and I always felt properly oriented. But that doesn't mean I hate Marvel. Quite the contrary, when I was a kid and just starting reading comics, most of the comics I read were Marvel stuff. While that was because my dad was buying the comics, and I was kinda beholden to his tastes . . . Marvel Comics were at what I still believe to be their creative zenith. At this period, just about every single Marvel Comic on the stands were incredible in one way or another. Heck, people who have been reading comic books as long as I have--or longer--still point to various stories from Marvel in the mid-to-late 70s to the mid-to-late 80s as being some of if not the
best superhero comics ever told. It's not that good comics didn't come out before or after, or that there aren't any better comics. Don't be ridiculous. It's just that there was such a concentration of really freakin' good superhero comics at the time, it's remembered really fondly by a lot of people. In my opinion, Marvel Comics as a whole has never been better. Sure, individual series may have reached higher points at other times, but as a whole? Mid-70s to late 80s Marvel. Which brings us to one of those comics from around that time period.
Secret Wars by Jim Shooter and various artists.
Comic books are a strange beast. For the longest time, superheroes weren't the major genre comics had. As time went on, other interests became more prominent, and so there were Westerns and there were Sci-Fi comics, and there were Romance comics, and (just before superheroes came back as the big thing in comics in the 60s) there were Monster comics, and so on and so forth. Even when Superheroes came back, there would occasionally be something called the "fad super" a traditional superhero who had some basic hook based around a silly fad, trying to capitalize on the fad's successes. Marvel's Dazzler (disco), or Ghost Rider (stunt-cycling and horror stories), or Rocket Racer and Night Thrasher (skateboarding), DC's Vibe (breakdancing), heck, even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (ninjas initially, but the "four word humanoid team" name thing that rode the wave of TMNT's success was a fad of its own that quickly descended into parody). As you can see, just because a super hero's concept is based around a cultural fad that often has vanished from the cultural consciousness even only a few years after its creation (or may already be on the downswing by the time comics get to it) doesn't mean the hero is a bad idea and will fade away. Strong writing can keep a character going long after his or her fad has died. And that brings us to America's Got Powers #1, by Jonathan Ross and Bryan Hitch.
