Marvel Universe Series IV Revisited, Part 16

October 2013
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

Posted on October 25, 2013 by Walt

I’ve commented mostly on the visual/art side of the cards in this set so far…I don’t care at all really about the “stats” given to the characters, and kind of had a blind eye to the lack of truly informative value of backgrounds for the characters…at least they had the first appearance listed, team affiliation, and a random factoid for context.

But with these 9 cards we actually get some real “meat” in the way of text with some detail about the “mysteries.”

These all were mysteries in 1993 when these cards were published. In the 20 years since then, I’m pretty well aware of the revealed origin of Wolverine (Origin); the background of Cable (Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, The Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, and much of Cable’s own series); that more was touched on with Ghost Rider in his series and the Midnight Sons stuff; we’ve had Onslaught as I believe the “official” revelation of the X-Traitor (Xavier himself), though the issue was brought up again in Messiah Complex with Bishop turned into a villain. I’m not sure if we’ve seen Doom’s face as yet.

I believe that the sixth member of the Infinity Watch was actually revealed in 1992 as Thanos, unless the Reality gem was passed to someone else after the Magus rather than given back to Thanos.

I remember being disappointed at the revelation of Spider-Man’s parents and the involvement of Norman Osborn. And while I believe I own the arc, I have yet to read the actual issues with Nightcrawler’s “true” origin, though I’m aware of it, as penned by Chuck Austen.

Other than the discrepancy on the Infinity Watch, these are–to me–some of the better cards in the set, simply for there being more TO them than the single-character cards.