Secret Origins

The Mighty Avengers vs The 1970s leads Bloomsbury's new Marvel Age Of Comics line

- WORDS: STEPHEN JEWELL

DESCRIBING IT AS “THE BOOK I've always wanted to write,” Paul Cornell traces The Mighty Avengers vs The 1970s – his contribution to Bloomsbury Books’ new Marvel Age Of Comics series - to first discovering Earth’s Mightiest Heroes through a British reprint in 1973 before purchasing an issue of their original US title a few months later.

“The differences between the two opened up a whole world of exciting questions and that’s what addicted me to the Marvel Universe,” he explains. “What I’m trying to do with this book is critique superhero comics on their own terms, and write a fun, accessible book about the challenges facing writers working under enormous pressure in a shared universe.”