Untold Tales of the New Universe

Untold Tales of the New Universe #1-5

by Fred Van Lente, Jeff Parker, Tony Bedard

Five startling stories of the New Universe from the days of the '80s - featuring NIGHTMASK, STAR BRAND, PSI-FORCE, JUSTICE and DP7! Plus: bonus stories featuring Mark Hazzard, MERC; Kickers Inc.; and Spitfire..

Collects: Untold Tales Of The New Universe: Nightmask, Star Brand, Psi-Force, Justice And Dp7; And Stories From Amazing Fantasy #18-19 And New Avengers #16.

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels

128 pages, Paperback

First published July 26, 2006

About the author

Fred Van Lente is the New York Times-bestselling author of comics as varied as Archer & Armstrong (Harvey Award nominee, Best Series), Taskmaster, MODOK's 11, Amazing Spider-Man, Conan the Avenger, Weird Detective, and Cowboys & Aliens (upon which the 2011 movie was based), as well as the novels Ten Dead Comedians and The Con Artist.

Van Lente also specializes in entertaining readers with offbeat histories with the help of his incredibly talented artists. He has written the multiple-award winning Action Philosophers!, The Comic Book History of Comics, Action Presidents! (all drawn by Ryan Dunlavey), and The Comic Book Story of Basketball with Joe Cooper (Ten Speed September 2020).

He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Crystal Skillman, and some mostly ungrateful cats.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a surprisingly solid return to (and end of) Marvel's fascinating but failed 80s experiment, New Universe. The basic idea behind this imprint was the addition of super powers to a real world like our own. Heroes and villains and everyone in between often had prosaic things on their mind. Some grueling, like Blur losing his parents; others quite everyday, like DP7's constant worries about finding food to eat with no money in their wallets; others rather amusing, like Star Brand - mightier than Superman - mainly wanting to score with a sexy divorcee and mother of two. This was an imprint with a comic featuring a super-powered therapist who helped people conquer their inner demons by entering their dreams and another comic featuring a bunch of professional football players with time on their hands. It was an interesting experiment that lost focus quickly, and soon lost readers as well.

Untold Tales is many things. As mentioned, it ties up some loose ends and answers some unanswered questions and fills in some yawning gaps. It is also a meta commentary on those actual comics, what they meant and what they tried to accomplish. And some of it is a fun send-up of the worst of the 80s, in particular the fashions. I loved the dark irony delivered by one of these 80s characters, a deluded CIA agent trying to recruit the Psi-Force kids: "The agency showed us how to use our gifts. We ran covert ops around the world and kept the nation's enemies in check. In Iraq I helped our ally Saddam Hussein wage war on Iran. In Afghanistan, I fought alongside Mujahedeen freedom fighers. These are hard men, but true friends of America, committed to a better world. All of you can play a part in our struggle, too!"

The cheekiest story was a brief one about Marc Hazzard, mercenary, sent to target and engage a Latin American dictator... in order to serve him divorce papers. I actually bought this collection because I loved the first couple arcs of Marc Gruenwald's DP7, but their story was rather a disappointment: reconfiguring the 7 as a modern Old West legend for Native Americans, writer C.B. Cebulski does not seem to realize how condescending he comes across towards both DP7 and Native Americans. The best story is the first, featuring the tragic, insanely over-powered Star Brand. It was heaps of fun seeing writer Jeff Parker mock some of the worst elements of that comic while still retaining affection for the horny, often broke, often inane car mechanic who has the power to destroy and remake worlds. His interactions with a trans-dimensional researcher were cute and amusing. I enjoyed how she nonchalantly points out how his money problems are easily solved by simply drilling for diamonds, and then off to the Riviera they go. I also like how she tried to explain to her supervisor why she's sleeping with him by blaming his "amplified pheromones".

The art is in the modern vein - blocky, colorful, dynamic - and it works fine. Also includes a very handy guide and timeline to the New Universe.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of done-in-one stories set in Marvel’s ‘New Universe’, created two decades after said universe ceased publication. They’re mainly so-so, although the Nightmask story must have been gratefully received by fans of the original title (I’m sure there were a couple) as it resolved a twenty year cliffhanger ending. The one standout tale was the Justice issue written by Peter David; it was worth reading just for that one.

[Rick · Rating 2 out of 5]

A long time ago, in a universe not all that different from our own there was a bright white flash in the sky and a whole bunch of people were never quite the same again.
That’s basically how the whole thing started in Marvel’s (failed?) experiment at a second attempt at world building. The White Event. The New Universe. Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly capture the imaginations of comic book readers.
This volume revisits that New Universe and offers a 21st century look at what things might have been like, back in the abysmal days of the mid 1980s. Like all anthologies, these a lot of varying qualities to these stories. These some good, some not so good and some downright silly.

[Cody · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wasn't sure what I was getting myself into when I first picked this up, but I ended up enjoying! It's a collection of a handful of 80s comics Marvel was running where they wrote new stories to fill in some gaps of the old comics. I fell into the stories pretty easily (I think it was about 5 different, separate ones in all).
Makes me want to check out a couple of their older comics like Justice and DP5.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was quite fun, rebooting Marvel Comic's NEW UNIVERSE experiment from the late 1980s. The artwork and storytelling is a bit spotty, yet on the whole a worthy effort. Ultimately, the New Universe ended up a bit unattended by readers, and failed. The idea, however, was intriguing; an entirely new universe, outside the Marvel continuity, with new characters designed to live real lives in a universe where all events have real and lasting consequences. While strong efforts were made to maintain this, the New Universe remained outside of Marvel continuity-despite Quasar from the regular Marvel universe showing up.All-in-all, the original stories were quite fun. This book well-represents the flavor of the runs of the 80s comics.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's nice to see those old characters and places which have been gone for so long, but there's nothing particularly special among these tales, nor did they particularly capture the strengths of the universe: its real-time basis and its ability to really throw twists and turns.