Friday 24 September 2010

New Beginnings - 1 Month 2 Live

Occasionally, comic publishers like to do five week events in the longer months. A small miniseries, sometimes with a lasting impact.

These have often varied in quality, including Marvel's Maximum Security event in 2000 and the Amalgam crossover titles.

Marvel's newest offering concerns one Dennis Sykes – an ordinary man and a good husband; a man just trying to do his best with what life has dealt him with. He is struggling to be a father to his orphaned niece, is finding his job is making him the man that he never believed he would follow – his father.


I feel Dennis is a very suitable window into the world of Marvel, a guy that any one of us could know or even be. He wants to break out, make a change, and stand up for himself for all the times when he never did.

In doing so his life takes a rather dramatic change.

He is defended and taken into care by a few familiar faces, during which time our protagonist is told that he has terminal cancer and only 1 Month 2 Live!

Once again he makes a stand and decides to not allow this to stop him living his life and make the most of the time he has left. He quits his job and goes home to try and build on his relationship with his niece/new daughter, during which time he discovers that cancer was not the only thing that the ‘accident’ gave him!


With his new found powers he decides to amend a few injustices in his life and in doing so makes a few Spider-Man-like errors. These make him come to the conclusion that there are better ways for him to use his powers and time left.

The closing pages of this first issue show that nothing in life is straight forward and easy, you have to keep tending to wounds that run deep and build on bridges that you have already set upon.

It ends with a nice little teaser that indicates Dennis’s adventure is not over yet.

Stefan Harkins is also known as Harry Stamper. Amongst other things.

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