Marvels is a four-issue comic book limited series written by Kurt Busiek, painted by Alex Ross and edited by Marcus McLaurin, and published by Marvel Comics in 1994. The series examines the Marvel Universe, the collective setting of most of Marvel's superhero series, from the perspective of an Everyman, news photographer Phil Sheldon. The street-level series portrayed ordinary life in a world full of costumed supermen, with each issue featuring events well-known to readers of Marvel comics as well as a variety of minute details and retelling the most infamous events in the Marvel Universe. Marvels was an extraordinary success, winning multiple awards and launching the significant careers of Busiek and Ross, who would both return to the "everyday life in a superhero universe" theme in the Homage Comics series Astro City. In 1995, Marvels was compiled into a graphic novel that featured a Marvels #0 told from the perspective of the 1940s original Human Torch, describing his creation by scientist Phineas Thomas Horton. Marvel later published similar limited series under the "Marvels" header, with other writers and painters, though none of these titles were as successful as the original. In 1995, Marvel released a dark parody of sorts. Ruins by writer Warren Ellis and painters Cliff and Terese Nielsen, was a two-issue parallel world series in which Sheldon explored a Marvel Universe that had gone terribly wrong.
