Marvel Premiere # 35
Writer: Roy Thomas
Penciller: Jim Craig
Inker: Dave Hunt
Letterer: John Constanza
Colorist: George Roussos
Cover Date: April 1977
Rating: 10/10
For this week’s installment, thanks to a special recommendation from a great friend I decided to go a little retro and take a look at an issue of Marvel Premiere (The tail-end of the indy reviews will be back next week) which showcases one of Marvel’s most unusual heroes ever to hit the scene- The 3-D Man!
This story explores the 3-D Man’s origin so I definitely like how the plot itself had a 1950s background as well as exploring the space race of that time and I’m just blown away by that because it made this story very eccentric seeing as how it’s from the 50s.
Chuck Chandler is a test-pilot for NASA and while he was piloting a rocket plane he was caught by a group of Skrulls and exploded him to some kind of weird radiation, and it’s not long before his brother Hal Chandler discovered that Chuck’s image is imprinted his a pair of glasses and that he’s now two-dimensional being after thinking that he was killed when his rocket crashed in the desert. Soon after, Hal also discovered that when he puts on the glasses, Chuck himself appears in the form of a three-dimensional existence, complete with a red and green bodysuit and that his strength and speed have been tripled. Soon, The 3-D Man continued to fight crime until the end of the fifties.
Roy Thomas is, without a doubt, one of the most legendary storytellers in comics, and during this time he displayed how much he respected a golden-age hero like 3-D Man and his world but at the same time balancing the story with action and suspense to perfection. And the use of The Skrulls is a great touch, further tying it to the Marvel Universe. Jim Craig’s artwork is solid but there are times where it comes across as too cartoonish with some facial expressions looking kind of odd, so I would like to say that the deadline approaching this story during this time may have played a part in it.
The 3-D Man is one of the most intriguing heroes to come out of Marvel during the 1970s and while I did enjoy his origin and the frequent appearance he made after this issue came out, maybe someday Marvel should consider bringing him back for a new generation of readers because seeing as how the whole 3-D crazed came back for movie theaters, then there’s definitely a place for the 3-D Man.
That’s it for me. Thanks for sticking along and I’ll be back to wrap up my tour of reviews of indy titles. See you next time.
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