Sergio Aragones Massacres Marvel (Story 8)

Background

In 1996 Mad and Groo cartoonist Sergio Aragones (along with his scripter Mark Evanier took their turn at decimating the Marvel Universe (Fred Hembeck took a swipe at this nearly a decade earlier in Fred Hembeck Destroys the Marvel Universe) Anyway, like Hembeck's book this one was a series of in-jokes strung together to make a full comic (sort of like many Saturday Night Live sketches have been padded out to form feature-length movies).

This comic was done in a series of chapters spotlighting several of the Marvel heroes. Spidey only appeared in two of the chapters, hence only those chapters are being reviewed here.

Story 'Epilogue'

We've now come to the inevitable conclusion of this tale, Spider-Man is joined on some alien landscape with the Fantastic Four, Hulk, the Silver Surfer, the X-Men, Daredevil, and The Avengers, as well as the Seagoing Soarer who is arriving with more captured heroes. Then the Soarer sets the heroes on each other (merely by telling them that it is one of the rules of the Marvel Universe, that when two or more heroes are gathered in the same place, they must fight with each other.

It is here that we learn the Soarer's plan, he reveals that if all of the Marvel heroes are eliminated, then only his toys will be on the toy shelves, and only he will be around to help people. Then, through the magic of comics (hum, where have I heard that phrase before), Sergio himself becomes involved in the story, whereupon we learn that the Soarer is also Sergio. To rectify any problems he has caused, Sergio the cartoonist quickly draws a story with the Soarer in it so as to help him fulfill his dreams of becoming a real superhero.

Needless to say, the Soarer isn't happy with the way that Sergio draws, and (for some reason) melts a la the Wicked Witch in Wizard of Oz. The Hulk tosses Sergio away, and the heroes all go back to what they were doing befor getting involved in the story. All of which snaps us back to the Marvel offices where Sergio is drawing all of the late marvel books (he is, after all , the fastest cartoonist on the planet), and Evanier is dozing off. Next all of the missing Marvel employees come back from lunch to discover that Sergio has been mucking around in their universe, and toss both Aragones and Evanier out into the street, thus ending the story.

General Comments

This is a cute story that is pretty standard for an Aragones/Evanier collaboration. Full of in-jokes and sly references to both Marvel and real-world events. Nothing notable about it, but it is cute

Overall Rating

Sorry for the low rating, but I have long since grown tired of this lame Mad Magazine/Not Brand Echh style of storytelling.

Footnote

Personally, I liked Hembeck's stuff better, but that could just be me, and I'm not quite sure why Marvel would have attempted essentially the same story all over again less than 10 years after the first attempt essentially failed.