I fell in love with Marvel Comics in the early 1990’s right before a bunch of young hot-shot artists broke off to form a little creator owned publishing company called Image.
These were simpler times when comic book fans demanded little more than excessive splash pages, ridiculous action poses, colossal gravity defying boobies and chrome plated hologram covers. In these days, it was perfectly acceptable for a super-hero or even an entire super-hero team (as was often the case with Cyber Force) to crash through a brick wall, verbally formulate a plan of attack, toss around some witty banter and/or catch phrases then offer up words or caution or promise of victory to their opponents all before hitting the ground and pounding some ass.
If this type of nostalgia appeals to you, American Dream might just be your cup o’ tea.
This series takes place in the Earth-982 universe, if anyone is nerdy enough to know what that means. Basically it’s a dimension of the Marvel Universe that never evolved past the mid 90’s and all the classic (Earth-616) character we know and love are for the most part, old and useless while many of their children are functioning Super Hero’s.
All that history aside, American Dream (1 of 5 I believe) was a simple strait forward and enjoyable read, written by 1990’s superstar Tom DeFalco, the certified Marvel historian who in recent years has been responsible for editing many of those rad Marvel Encyclopedias that come out every holiday season.
American Dream gets high marks from me for reminding me what it was like to pick up scattered issues of Infinity Gauntlet or B-list comics like Guardians of the Galaxy in dollar store grab bags. That’s the shit what done got me hooked in the first place even if it doesn’t quite hold up against The Ultimates.
Anyway, how do we rate stuff on Big Shiny Robot? Stars? 1 to 10? Thumbs up/down?
3 stars out of 4, maybe a 6.75 of 10 – Mostly for nostalgia and respect for Tom DeFalco’s source book chops. A fun read, but I honestly don’t give a crap about 982 continuity.