When a mysterious new villain threatens to destroy the world itself a hero from the past must rise once again to stop him. That’s the basis for The Blue Marvel in a nutshell. Like I said before it is somewhat interesting but sadly this series will go down as just another retcon story or worse yet a ‘Truth’ knock off.

Firstly, let me point out that its admirable when comics take on complex issues, and race is certainly one of them, but this book only flirts with the issue, it never really deals with it. Plus the story kind of gets in its own way from time to time which is unfortunate. The Blue Marvel character get’s a raw deal in the fact that he was operating as a hero in the early sixties, but when it was discovered that he was a black man, the president asked him to stop.

I had a huge problem with ‘Truth’ (the story of the Black Captain America) for a lot of the same reasons I have a problem with the Blue Marvel story in the sense that it makes a lot of assumptions and maybe a few accusations about human nature and the lessons we are learning even to this day.

I also have a bit of a problem with retconning characters into the story. You mean to tell me that when Galactus and the Silver Surfer showed up there was a Black Superman who could have stopped them? This guy sat on the sidelines during crisis after crisis and did nothing?!?! Those kinds of things have to be considered when you retcon a character. The idea of the Sentry was already pushing it but at least they had a nifty way of explaining his absence, this guy hit’s the showers because the president told him to? I just find that hard to digest, what kind of character are we dealing with here?

The Marvel Universe is not the real world, so certain things don’t work the same way or at least don’t follow the same logic. Black heroes from WWII were still treated as second class citizens upon returning home from war, and that seems to be the basis for this story in some way. The problem I have is that the Marvel Universe had a different take on the war when you throw the fantastic into the mix. Plus the expolsion of mutants and other super powered people popping up over the years, Blue Marvel sitting on the sidelines waiting for a phone call seems less and less plausible.

The sad thing is that the story isn’t bad, the premise just doesn’t make any sense.

The art didn’t help matters considering that they give you a fairly strict timeline for when the events in the book occur. The Blue Marvel hung em’ up in the sixties right, so why is his wife all young and hot looking still? Does she have super powers too? Its little things like that that take me completely out of the story.

The message of the book, which is racial tolerance, comes across as heavy handed at times as Blue Marvel battles Anti-Man at the climax of the story. Of course Anti-Man is this misguided nut job that has taken his beliefs to the extreme. There is no option for dialogue between the former best friends because one is, of course, crazy. Everybody knows that you can’t communicate with a crazy person so you might as well put them down like a dog right? I’m just tired of super heroes waxing philosophical while they cave each other’s heads in, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense.

I know that comics need action, all I’m saying is be smarter about it. Sometimes the action and the message should be mutually exclusive so that the message is actually heard and not muddied by the contradictory images.

I know I’m laying on the negativity plenty thick but this book struck a serious cord with me. Maybe if it was longer it could have been paced better and certain things could have been fleshed out. The first issue stipulates that this should have been a six book series but somehow an issue was subtracted from the series. I don’t know how much of an effect this had but something tells me that Blue Marvel needed that extra issue to better explain things and set up the dichotomy between he and Anti-Man.

My problem now is that you have Blue Marvel out there somewhere. This ultra powerful Superman type is just hanging around now. With Thor back and The Sentry in the mix is there really room for one more in the Marvel Universe? The Hulk can only run amok so many times a year after all, how many bad guys can Marvel come up with to sustain its stable of blockbusters?

Thor’s book is already suffering a little because Thor doesn’t have any heavy hitters to play with, Sentry doesn’t have an ongoing (thank god) title, let’s face it, super dudes don’t do so hot in the Marvel Universe. Heroes in the Marvel Universe are typically flawed, Blue Marvel’s flaw seems to be cowardice which really makes no sense considering the history they gave him.

The story would have made more sense if there was a danger to him becoming the Blue Marvel, the book tries to create one but what they came up with was weak. Suffice to say that the Civil Rights movement would have been a different story if Superman were black, but the book doesn’t address that idea, which again is why retcons are a risky proposition.

As an African American I’m really disappointed by Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel, like ‘Truth’ I ultimately feel like this was a chapter in comics that should have been left alone.

Crave Online Rating: 6 out of 10