Forgotten Series: Conspiracy
October 22, 2007
Conspiracy, Abnett and Kordey’s two-issue series from 1998, feels a lot like the neglected young sibling of Marvels and Ruins. Like those two books, it is a fully painted look back at the history of Marvel’s characters. While Marvels plays it straight and Ruins is the world’s most depressing What If?, Conspiracy imagines what a world including superheroes, giant monsters, and a spy agency as insanely powerful as SHIELD might really be like.
It’s easy to imagine that if superpowered beings started popping up in our world, governments would suppress the truth of the situation to the point of near-total obfuscation, but our best spook agencies haven’t got a thing on Nick Fury’s boys. If SHIELD wants something buried, they bury it. Unfortunately for all involved, Daily Bugle reporter Mark Ewing finds one hell of a treasure map. A superhuman fight crashes through the Bugle’s offices, exposing a package of information hidden in the walls years ago by disappeared Bugle reporter Cliff Garner, a man who may or may not have been absolutely crazy. Ewing is leaning towards believing the former, when the conspiracy genre’s requisite unknown whistle-blower corners him on the streets, hinting at a truth behind Garner’s words.
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His reporter’s curiosity obviously gets the best of him, and sends him down the path towards the dark secrets of Control. On the way he finds a paranoid and possibly murderous former general, a rogue LMD, Mandroids, Dum Dum Dugan, flying cars, even an Earth-base once belonging to Thanos. It’s all rendered beautifully by Kordey, and Abnett’s script fits the tone well.
Every few years someone drops a sinister conspiratorial plot thread into Marvel’s books to give them a shot of flavor, from Cap’s fight with the Secret Empire to the earliest hints of Xavier’s dark side to Millar’s (sadly dropped) plot point in which Norman Osbourne worked with large corporations when they secretly bankrolled rogues galleries. These stories keep popping up because they fit well with the tone of the Marvel Universe, and among all of them Conspiracy holds up as one of the most well-thought-out. The only immediate quality issue is the length – though it was originally slated to be longer, Conspiracy was given only two issues, and it’s obviously rushed in a few parts. Still, it’s a book well worth checking out if you’re looking for an interesting take on Marvel’s history.
