Toby Whithouse, famous for School Reunion, The God Complex, A Town Called Mercy, and The Lie of the Land, has worked on a special tale for Marvel Comics #1000.
With Marvel kicking off the comic book universe we all know and love way back in October 1939 with Marvel Comics #1, featuring the original Human Torch, had that title continued publication rather than branching off into different series, Marvel posits that it would have hit #1000 this year.
DC has also celebrated milestones recently with Action Comics reaching its 1000th issue last summer and Detective Comics earlier this year. Marvel Comics #1000 will be an 80-paged giant, featuring one story on each page, to celebrate the 80 years Marvel has been in the business.
Toby Whithouse will be paired with Alan Davis, who in the UK is probably best known for his work on the Captain Britain series released back in the 1980s. He has also contributed heavily to the series, Excalibur, Uncanny X-Men, and The Avengers. No more is know about his contribution though with Marvel keeping this one under-wraps until its release in August.
But Marvel have also revealed some of the other creative teams working on the book including: Joe Hill and Mike Allred; J. Michael Straczynski and Ed McGuinness; Chip Zdarsky acting as writer and artist; Roy Thomas and Rod Reis; Kelly Thompson and Pepe Larraz; Matthew Rosenberg and Leinil Francis Yu; Jonathan Hickman and Dustin Weaver; Al Ewing and Mike Deodato Jr.; and Into the Spider-Verse writers and directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller with Javier Rodiguez.
Marvel Editor-in Chief, C.B. Cebulski said that they were keen to get contributors from outside of the normal comic book circles because their characters are mentioned a lot nowadays in other media and in so many different ways.
It seems this is Marvel’s way of giving back to those people and a thank-you for growing up on their comics. Doctor Who has never been shy about name-dropping or referencing comic-book creations. Inferno saw the Third Doctor mentioning DC’s Batman and Ace wore a Watchmen badge on her jacket as well as Batman earrings. In more recent times there was an entire Christmas Special, The Return of Doctor Mysterio, which was a love letter to all things comic books.
May 9th saw Whithouse announcing the news through Twitter saying: “Check out the hashtag, (as the young folk say) #MarvelComics. There’s heaps of us! Like I said, just a bit of fun. Bit of a dream come true though. And to collaborate, even a smidge, with Alan Davis is mindblowing!”
While it would be great to see Whithouse working more with Marvel, it seems for the time being that this will be his sole contribution to the publisher. However, as a comic book reader and collector, if he were to pen a series, I’d await it with open arms as I really like a lot of Whithouse’s contributions to Doctor Who.
In recent years though, Marvel has gone from strength-to-strength with no sign of slowing down anytime soon. Here’s to the next 80 years and many more after that!
