History ComicBook / Marville

* CerebusSyndrome: It went from a "parody" of superhero comics with social satire, to a philosophical comic about life, the universe, and everything after the first two issues. Amusingly, in contrast to most examples of the trope, it results in the comic becoming even weirder and unintentionally funnier than when it was actually trying to be funny.

* AndNowForSomethingCompletelyDifferent: Marville #7 is... a submission guide for the then-upcoming Epic line of Marvel Comics. How anyone was supported to know this is unclear, since the cover is graced by the same ''Marville'' logo, the same ''Marville'' cover chick, and "EPIC" showing on the ''Series/WheelOfFortune'' board.

* AuthorTract: Let's see: Creator/TedTurner is a doofus, Spike Lee is [[ComicBook/TheKingpin the Kingpin of Crime]], Radio/RushLimbaugh is a fit superhero with tons of fans, intelligent design is real with the theory of evolution decried as short-sighted and stupid (not to mention Jack directly insults paleontologists), the original humans were white, there's lots of batshit insane pseudoscience to support the comic's ideas on evolution and intelligent design, and charity, racial sensitivity, vegetarianism, and political correctness are all mocked. Yeah, there's a certain political ideology being pushed here.

* BilingualBonus: ''Mishbucha'' is a Hebrew noun that means "family", [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext which means the dinosaurs are Jewish]].

* DontExplainTheJoke: Averted and ''in''verted. The first two issues open with an "Insider's Guide" page explaining who various celebrities and superheroes are, so as to ensure when those characters appear in the comic, the reader "gets" the jokes behind their antics. As you might expect, it doesn't work; even if the jokes ''were'' funny in the first place, the comic had explained them to you before the jokes even happened.

* LogicBomb: This comic tries to repeatedly state that there is no evolution... all while showing evolution happening around them.

** In the year 2002, the bank somehow recognizes Al's bank card from the future, including that he has an account that won't be activated for 3000 years. The [=AoL=] trial disk Ted Turner gives Al also works on 2002 computers.

** To tell when they get to the Jurassic Age, they scoop up some water and take it into the time machine with them, and set the time machine to fast forward, and inside the time machine they watch the water as the microorganisms in it evolve into a fish, an amphibian, and then a duckbilled dinosaur. Aside from the fact evolution does not work this way, why would the microorganisms evolve ''inside'' the time machine, but its other occupants don't? Also, the duckbill can talk in perfect English, because duckbills have very elaborate voiceboxes.

** Most of the digs at Creator/DCComics are rather mean-spirited.

** Ted Turner trying to convince bystanders to save the world from a meteor shower by Tomahawk Chopping the meteorites (as mentioned in the ColonyDrop example above). One man calls him out on his, but only because [[PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad it'd be offensive to Native Americans]].

* AuthorTract: Let's see: Creator/TedTurner is a doofus, Spike Lee is [[ComicBook/TheKingpin the Kingpin of Crime]], Radio/RushLimbaugh is a fit superhero with tons of fans, intelligent design is real with the theory of evolution decried as short-sighted and stupid (not to mention Jack directly insults paleontologists), the original humans were white, there's lots of batshit insane pseudoscience to support the comic's ideas on evolution and intelligent design, and charity, racial sensitivity, vegetarianism, and political correctness are all mocked. Yeah, there's a certain political ideology being pushed here -- it should not come as a great surprise to learn that Bill Jemas is a conservative and a Roman Catholic.

* GenreRoulette: ShallowParody > GoingCosmic [[ContemplateOurNavels Philosophizing]] > PreHistoria Adventure/Philosophizing > HowWeGotHere RecapEpisode finale with post-modern FramingDevice > [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers submission guide for now-defunct comic line]].

->"Before I can be a hero, I have to figure out what's right and what's wrong. We need to figure out the meaning of life. Where it all started and where we're all going."

A notorious [[ShallowParody "parody"]] comic created by Creator/MarvelComics editor and vice president [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Bill Jemas]], as a bet between him, Ron Zimmerman, and Creator/PeterDavid on who could make a better-selling comic. Known as the "U-Decide" event, Zimmerman's six-issue ''ComicBook/UltimateAdventures'' took a year and a half to come out. David's ''[[ComicBook/CaptainMarVell Captain Marvel]]'' title went on for twenty-five issues and was well-regarded. As for ''Marville'', well...

* AdaptationalVillainy: Batman, Iron Man, and Black Panther are considerably more dickish than their main counterparts.
* AllMenArePerverts: Guess how Al discovers he doesn't have X-Ray Vision.
* AllThereInTheManual: Subverted, if it's even [[AchievementsInIgnorance possible to do]]. Despite the redundant amount of "Previously On" prologues, they add nothing useful and frequently get things '''WRONG''' about the story.
* AndNowForSomethingCompletelyDifferent: Marville #7 is... a submission guide for the then-upcoming Epic line of Marvel Comics. How anyone is supported to know this is unclear, since the cover is graced by the same Marville logo, the same Marville cover chick, and "EPIC" showing on the ''Series/WheelOfFortune'' board.
* ApeShallNeverKillApe: Issue #4 makes the nonsensical claim that only humans kill their own species.

** Apart from all the various inaccuracies about dinosaurs, Jemas continually refers to the Jurassic Period as "Jurassic Park". This may be a joke... but it happens so much that Jemas may actually believe that's the real name.

* AuthorTract: Let's see: Ted Turner is a doofus, Spike Lee is the Kingpin of Crime, Radio/RushLimbaugh is a fit superhero with tons of fans, intelligent design is real with the theory of evolution decried as short-sighted and stupid (not to mention Jack directly insults paleontologists), the original humans were white, there's lots of batshit insane pseudoscience to support the comic's ideas on evolution and intelligent design, and charity, racial sensitivity, vegetarianism, and political correctness are all mocked. Yeah, there's a certain political ideology being pushed here -- it should not come as a great surprise to learn that Bill Jemas is a conservative and a Roman Catholic.

* CannotTellFictionFromReality: The deeper the reader goes into the story, the more obvious it becomes that Bill Jemas actually believes the science and religious arguments being presented, or he at least believes them enough to think they were worth publishing in a book that he genuinely thought would be seen as thought-provoking and insightful. This is despite the fact that, even limiting it to the latter half of the story where the series dives into the philosophy lecturing, we have talking dinosaurs, Wolverine as the first human being, the Jurassic Age is constantly referred to as "Jurassic Park", and the characters imply Tarzan is based on ancestral genetic memories of real events.

* DeathByOriginStory: {{Zig Zagg|ingTrope}}ed with Al's dog, [=AOLstro=]. At first, Al's failure to stop a bank robber appeared to have led to [=AOLstro=]'s death, but it turns out the robber slipped on [=AOLstro=]'s drool. Later, when Al and Mickey go to the movies, a mugger apparently shot [=AOLstro=] in an alley, but it turned out [=AOLstro=] knocked him out by farting.

* DontExplainTheJoke: Oh so horribly averted. The first two issues open with an "Insider's Guide" page explaining who various celebrities and superheroes are, so as to ensure when those characters appear in the comic, the reader "gets" the jokes behind their antics. As you might expect, it doesn't work; even if the jokes ''were'' funny in the first place, the comic had explained them to you before the jokes even happened.

** Issues #3-5 feature pseudoscience so absurd and stupid that even calling it pseudscience is a stretch of the term.
*** The characters repeatedly insist that God had to have created everything, or at least set it in motion, because the conditions for life to evolve on Earth are just right. Mickey points out that across billions of gallons of water across the entire planet across millions of years, sooner or later the right chemical reaction to form the first biological life would happen due to random chance. But given she is being presented as a StrawmanPolitical, the characters insist this is just too perfect to be random chance, it ''must'' be the work of God.
*** They watch a fish in a container of water evolve into an amphibian by spontaneously mutating feet from its fins. Putting aside how nonsensical that by itself is, the comic later uses this occurance to argue in favor of intelligent design, because if evolution ''was'' like the scientists said and animals only mutated in ways to help them survive, the fish wouldn't have evolved feet before there was land, therefore the fact that it did evolve feet is proof that God had "preprogrammed" their DNA to eventually evolve them from aquatic to amphibious life.
*** Given that Jack is God, the characters ask if he could save the dinsaurs from the upcoming exinction event and the deep cold it will create by helping them to evolve to be warm-blooded, like mammals. Jack explains that mammal spines are designed to move up and down while dinosaur spines move side-to-side, and this is necessary to provide the proper skeletal structure to support the organs necessary to maintain a warm-blooded metabolism.

** Wolverine recognizes the group when he meets them late in issue 5, but is confused when Al brings up that he doesn't age because of his healing factor and has no clue what he's talking about. How has Wolverine lived for tens of thousands of years without it clicking with him that he's immortal and he has a healing factor? The comic ''seems'' to imply that Wolverine is a LegacyCharacter who has been reincarnating through the years, since Jack claims Wolverine came to this tribe as a young man... but then how does he recognize the main characters?

* StrawmanPolitical: Mickey turns into one in Issues #3-5. While Al and Lucy buy into Jack's talk and eagerly ask questions, Mickey tends to be the skeptic and argue against the explanations presented. She is almost always proven wrong when events play out that show Jack's explanation is accurate, even though Jack's explanations only make sense in the InsaneTrollLogic world of the comic. On other occasions her counterarguments aren't refuted at all, they're just dropped. The only time she's shown to be correct in her beliefs is when they align with what Jack says.

* WholePlotReference: Issue #3–#6 is essentially a Marvel ''ComicBook/ChickTracts''.

** While Iron Man, Black Panther, Spider-Man, Punisher, and Matt Murdock appear as themselves [in appearance at least] in Issue 2, we also get an ersatz Batman who is never referred to by name, has an all-black costume with a yellow bat-symbol, and has three spikes on his cowl instead of two.

Has been SnarkBait to [[WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall a]] [[http://www.avclub.com/article/great-power-comes-bizarre-lack-responsibility-case-224482 few]] [[http://4thletter.net/2009/03/the-marville-horror-part-1-better-sales-through-self-immolation/ reviewers]].

* CannotTellFictionFromReality: The more you read the series, the more obvious it becomes that Bill Jemas actually believes the science and religious arguments being presented, or he at least believes them enough to think they were worth publishing in a book that he genuinely thought would be seen as thought-provoking and insightful. This is despite the fact that, even limiting it to the latter half of the story where the series dives into the philosophy lecturing, we have talking dinosaurs, Wolverine as the first human being, the Jurassic Age is constantly referred to as "Jurassic Park", and the characters imply Tarzan is based on ancestral genetic memories of real events.

* PlotHole: You can't go more than three steps without falling into one. Increasingly as the series continues, basic logic and reason break down, and things just happen, or don't happen, without explanation. As just one example, in Issue 4 the characters decide to use the time machine to go from the dawn of creation to the Jurassic Period, but Al says he can't set the time machine to go to a specific date, just to go forward or backward. So in order to figure out when they get to the right time, they scoop up some water and take it into the time machine with them, and set the time machine to fast forward, and inside the time machine they watch the water as the microorganisms in it evolve into a fish, an amphibian, and then a duckbilled dinosaur, which is able to speak English. The many, ''many'' problems with this sequence of events should be kinda obvious, and the talking dinosaur is not even the most glaring problem.

*** Scientists are decried as "not being very scientific" because they're never seen evolution happen, they've only glimpsed as a few hundred years before their time and presumed their findings are applicable to all of history.

** The comic tries to satirize Batman, Iron Man, and Black Panther by portraying them as a group of psychotic, murderous assholes who openly abuse the lower classes for fun - eg, the exact opposite of their real selves. What's more, Batman here is a CaptainErsatz who is never named in-story, so he doesn't even have a name in common.

* RecapEpisode[=/=]PostModernism: Issue #6 is Kal pitching the events of the earlier issues to an unnamed comic editor.

* TakeThatAudience: Kicks in as late as--get this--Issue #6. Worse, it's not as much as making fun of the audience, rather it's a savage indictment of American culture: the reasoning is that Al's pitch for "world peace" is rejected by the editor [[ArtistDisillusionment because audiences don't care about substance and just want more superhero comics]]. Eat your heart out, Creator/GrantMorrison. [[invoked]]

* WorldWarIII: [[spoiler:It is revealed in #5 that the reason that they are traveling through time is because Jack wants to show them how war works and due to their popularity and wealth from "fighting" crime they will prevent the upcoming World War. However, we never actually see them do this -- make of that what you will.]]
** [[spoiler:This becomes FridgeLogic almost immediately; despite Jack claiming the world is headed towards World War III, Al never mentions any war in the 3000 years between his time and the present, and very little suggests that there was any threat of war in the future either.]]

* WritersCannotDoMath: Bill Jemas ''can'' do math, but doesn't understand what it means. Al claims that the 200 million dollars in his savings account earns 6% interest, which means he has $230,000 a week for spending money. That's actually fairly accurate if one presumes his interest is compounded annually; 6% of 200 million is 12 million, which divides out to a little over $230,000 a week. The problem is that because the interest is compounded annually, that's when Al is going to earn his interest, not weekly. If he waits a full year to earn his interest, he'll earn enough ''then'' to be able to spend $230,000 a week for the rest of his life while continuing to accrue interest each year after. Until then, spending money like he claims he can will result in less money he's earning interest on when his compounding period ends and he'll make less money than he thinks he will, leading to diminishing returns.

* CannotTellFictionFromReality: The more you read the series, the more obvious it becomes that the religious debate part of this comic is not a parody; Bill Jemas fully believes all of what is being said. This including many debunked theories such as [[NinetyPercentOfYourBrain humans only using 10% brain power]], ApeShallNeverKillApe, and so on. Also much of the debate hangs on Wolverine being the first human being, who mutated from an ''otter''; backing up real-world debates about evolution and stuff by using comic book characters as evidence (and making them as weird as possible in the process...)

*** As they watch a fish evolve into an ambphibian by spontaneously mutating feet from its fins. Putting aside how nonsensical that by itself is, the comic later uses this occurance to argue in favor of intelligent design, because if evolution ''was'' like the scientists said and animals only mutated in ways to help them survive, the fish wouldn't have evolved feet before there was land, therefore the fact that it did evolve feet is proof that God had "preprogrammed" their DNA to eventually evolve them from aquatic to amphibious life.

** ''Many'' of the religious debates.

* StrawmanPolitical: Mickey turns into one in Issues #3-5. While Al and Lucy buy into Jack's talk and eagerly ask questions, Mickey tends to be the skeptic and argue against the explanations presented. She is almost always proven wrong when events play out that show Jack's explanation is accurate, even though Jack's explanations only make sense in the InsaneTrollLogic world of the comic.

* AuthorTract: The entire comic can be seen as one, ''especially'' in light of the open letter at the end of Issue #6.

* PlotHole: You can't go more than three steps without falling into one. Around issues #3-#5, the Time Machine's mechanics become a little confusing and inconsistent. The characters decide to use a bag, some water, and a pre-historic life form to check what year they're arriving at, but it's never explained how ''they're'' not aging along with it, either, and a panel ago, there's a window on the time machine, rendering their "biological clock" a little pointless. Also, they claim that the time machine does not move from the location they started from, but Al was sent into the middle of the street when he first arrived in the past and then the time machine was sent back to his living room in issue 2. And let's not forget the time machine's presence is confusing, since the first issue has Ted Turner directly state that the time machine is in the future and he has no way to send it back to Al. Also, they mention they can't set the time machine to go to a specific date, just set it fast forward, which doesn't gel with Ted Turner's uses of it where he ''did'' send Al, and others, back to a specific date.

* StrawmanPolitical: Let's see: Ted Turner is a doofus, Spike Lee is the Kingpin of Crime, Radio/RushLimbaugh is a fit superhero with tons of fans, intelligent design is real with the theory of evolution decried as short-sighted and stupid (not to mention Jack directly insults paleontologists), the original humans were white, there's lots of batshit insane pseudoscience to support the comic's ideas on evolution and intelligent design, and charity, racial sensitivity, vegetarianism, and political correctness are all mocked. Yeah, there's a certain political ideology being pushed here.

* BehindTheBlack: Issue #2 attempts this when the cast and SpiderMan track down the Kingpin of Crime's lair to an abandoned bowling alley. Lucy asks him if this is really the place, and the next panel pulls out to reveal a gigantic skyscraper behind the bowling alley with "KINGPIN ENTERPRISES" on the side. It had the ''potential'' to work, had the previous panel not showed the roof of the bowling alley and above, showing that there was nothing behind it until the next panel.

* CannotTellFictionFromReality: It is revealed that the religious debate part of this comic is not a parody; Bill Jemas fully believes all of what is being said. This including many debunked theories such as [[NinetyPercentOfYourBrain humans only using 10% brain power]], ApeShallNeverKillApe, and so on. Also much of the debate hangs on Wolverine being the first human being, who mutated from an ''otter''; backing up real-world debates about evolution and stuff by using comic book characters as evidence (and making them as weird as possible in the process...)

A notorious [[ShallowParody "parody"]] comic created by Creator/MarvelComics editor [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Bill Jemas]], as a bet between him, Ron Zimmerman and Creator/PeterDavid on who could make a better-selling comic. Known as the "U-Decide" event, Zimmerman's six-issue ''ComicBook/UltimateAdventures'' took a year and a half to come out. David's ''[[Comicbook/CaptainMarVell Captain Marvel]]'' title went on for twenty-five issues and was well-regarded. As for ''Marville'', well...

Kal-AOL Turner, son of Ted Turner from the year 5002, is transported into the present day. Believing himself to be a superhero, Kal-AOL meets up with Mickey (who nicknames him "Al") and Lucy. And crosses paths with Creator/SpikeLee and Radio/RushLimbaugh. The first books are also filled with attempts at parody and [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical topical humor]].

* ArtisticLicensePaleontology: Apart from all the various inaccuracies about dinosaurs, Jemas continually refers to the Jurassic Period as "Jurassic Park". This may be a joke... but it happens so much that Jemas may actually believe that's the real name.

* SomewhereAPalaeontologistIsCrying: Or laughing. Hadrosaurs and velociraptors, aside from being drawn in an anatomically inaccurate way, are shown living at the same time as one another in the Jurassic period, which is untrue. Even more inaccurately, they are said to be inhabiting what will eventually become the northern United States, even though no dinosaurs were ever discovered to have inhabited that particular area. Furthermore, otters are shown living in the late Cretaceous period (in reality, they didn't show up until well after the dinosaurs went extinct), Al refers to pterosaurs as dinosaurs that live in the water, and Jack explains that dinosaurs can't be warm-blooded because of their spine movements.

** Wolverine's portrayal in issue five is also this; the characters repeatedly call him Wolverine, and he spouts off some of Logan's catchphrases, but he doesn't look or act like Wolverine at all, and he has a completely different backstory (being the first human and having evolved from an otter - i.e. NOT Wolverine), making the resemblance an InformedAttribute at best.

* SomewhereAPalaeontologistIsCrying: Or laughing. Hadrosaurs and velociraptors, aside from being drawn in an anatomically inaccurate way, are shown living at the same time as one another in the Jurassic period, which is untrue. Furthermore, otters are shown living in the late Cretaceous period (in reality, they didn't show up until well after the dinosaurs went extinct), Al refers to pterosaurs as dinosaurs that live in the water, and Jack explains that dinosaurs can't be warm-blooded because of their spine movements.

* WritingAroundTheTrademarks:

* AFormYouAreComfortableWith: God is seen by Mickey and Al in different forms, before eventually settling on a young African American.

* GenreRoulette: ShallowParody > GoingCosmic [[ContemplateOurNavels Philosophizing]] > PreHistoria Adventure/Philosophizing

* InNameOnly: Issue #7 has nothing to do with the rest of the series, and is instead an advertisement and pamphlet explaining "Epic Comics" and its intention.

* MagicalNegro: In the form of Jack, aka God.

* PreHistoria: Issues #3 to #5.

* [[RichBitch Rich Jerk]]: ComicBook/IronMan, Franchise/{{Batman}} and ComicBook/BlackPanther cameo just to be portrayed as this, not to mention Ted Turner and the protagonist of the series, Al.

* SkinnyDipping: Issue #3 has everyone doing that in ''prehistoric Earth''.
* SomewhereAPalaeontologistIsCrying: Or laughing. Jewish Hadrosaurs (a.k.a. Duckbills) who can talk and live in the Jurassic Era, er, Park.

* WolverinePublicity: Wolverine shows up in Issue #5, and is on the main cover of Issue #6, even though he has no part in Issue 6 at all.