Marvel Double Shot #3

Review: The first tale, with its manga-inspired art from the people who gave us AVATAR THE LAST AIRBENDER and a lot of Marvel titles featuring Power Pack, takes on a very surprising topic, one you would think would be too much for the confines of a comic book, but this brief series has been known to address this topic before (issue #1, story 2). There the look at faith was a bit dark but here it’s a bit more positive. Reed Richards is not the stereotypical scientific atheist one would expect but a surprisingly tolerant fellow who has no trouble reconciling science and religion. He is starting from the standard humanistic account of the origins of religion, discounting several faiths’ claim to have received divine revelation (despite the strictly Christian title to the story), which means Reed’s beliefs don’t rise much higher than the merely human but the theology debate involved is more than this comic can accommodate, so I’ll just express my gratitude that the subject was treated with sincerity, humility, and toleration. Marvel is said to have changed a lot since this time.

The Ant-Man story, on the other hand, dispenses with any difficult questions and just goes for the funny, at which is succeeds admirably. Fathers worrying about their daughters growing up too quickly has long been a comedy staple and tossing a superhero into the mix just gives it a bit of a new patina. And it is funny.

Comments: Cover by Joe Jusko, with the Ant-Man drawn by Darwyn Cooke and Mike Manley. Title of the first story is a description of the Trinity in Christian theology. The second title is a play on the pop song, “Who Let the Dogs Out?” by the Baha Men, which is also sung in the story. Gurihiru contributed to the art on the first story.