Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel #1-5

Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel #1-5

Originally released in 2008

Written by Kevin Grevioux

Art by Mat Broome and Roberto Castro

While this is a comic that I've read before, Blue Marvel is a character that doesn't get used as often as it seems like he could/should. (beyond his introduction, it feels like Al Ewing is the only writer who uses him)  The premise of the character is "what if a black version of Superman existed during the civil rights movement?"  After an accident that caused an anti-matter explosion, Adam Brashear became a living anti-matter reactor, while his best friend Connor Sims became a being of anti-matter known as Anti-Man.  As Connor got the worst of the explosion, his body and mind became unstable, and his ideals of racial equality were twisted into homicidal frustration at humanity for not meeting his ideals forty-plus years later.

During his apparently final battle with Connor, Adam managed to damage him enough that Connor disappeared and was seemingly destroyed, but Adam's costume was damaged in the fighting, revealing the colour of his skin to the world.  This doesn't go over well, to put it mildly.  Marvel's major series, like Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men existed in the early sixties, when many of the flashbacks take place, and while they address racism and are whole-heartedly against it (the X-Men are something of an allegory for the civil rights movement, while the Avengers dedicated a story arc to the team fighting the Sons of the Serpent, an openly xenophobic group and a stand-in for the KKK), they don't show the impact as thoroughly as they do here. (which is understandable - this comic and Marvel's Silver Age output are aimed at different audiences, and in the Silver Age, Marvel was limited by the Comics Code Authority in terms of what they could include)

Here, they make no effort to hide that members of the United States government are openly racist (thankfully, they stop short of actually saying racial slurs, though they throw around outdated, albeit period-accurate, terminology).  The president of the time is John F. Kennedy, and while he isn't villainized (if anything, he wishes that steps could have been taken to make it so this didn't need to happen), he feels like it's necessary to force Blue Marvel into retirement to prevent further unrest from both white and black Americans. (white Americans hurl slurs at Blue Marvel that would "make a Klansman blush", even in the northern states, while black Americans consider him to be a traitor for not taking violent action against the U.S. government)

Blue Marvel spends a lot of his time in the present agonizing about if his choice to go along with the retirement order was right.  If he had acted openly, he could have served as an inspiration, but he could have also inadvertently caused further violence. (much like the movie Wonder Woman 1984, some later comics get around this by establishing that he had globe-trotting adventures in secret, though as a super scientist rather than a superhero)  He also discovers that his wife was a federal agent who, for the first few years of their relationship, was reporting on his actions. (this leads to a few cliché lines of dialogue, such as "was it all a lie?")

In the present day, Anti-Man returns, and the Mighty Avengers (a line-up of heavy-hitters who supported the registration during Civil War, including the likes of Iron Man, Ms. Marvel, and the Sentry) don't stand a chance against him, leading to them seeking out Blue Marvel before Anti-Man returns and destroys the world.  The writing can be a bit unsubtle at times, but it didn't feel preachy, though the art can be a bit inconsistent at times.  Still, in a comic that came out shortly after Civil War, it's nice to see Reed Richards portrayed as compassionate and empathetic rather than robotic and emotionless like he was during Civil War.

Blue Marvel's made a few appearances since then, mainly in team books - a later team of Mighty Avengers led by Luke Cage, the cosmic problem solvers known as the Ultimates (unrelated to the Ultimate Marvel universe's equivalent of the Avengers), and one of the newest incarnations of the Defenders.  He's consistently treated as one of the big guns and the big brains of the Marvel universe, handling multiverse-level problems, but he doesn't seem to get many appearances, which is a shame.  Admittedly, "racism is bad" is a rather obvious moral, but this story goes into how that impacted every aspect of Adam's life, and the sad thing is that it still feels like something that needs to be said even now.