A young boy, disenfranchised by his parents' divorce and unwilling to accept his new stepfather, immerses himself in the Marvel Comics universe. One might be forgiven, then, for blaming an overactive imagination for his claims to have seen actual Marvel villains hanging around a creepy old house in the nearby woods.

But it turns out they're real. Toby Goodman, who lives in a "real" world without superheroes, is suddenly faced with a grim reality when these supervillains suddenly appear. Because while some of them might seem a bit silly in a world where the likes of Spider-Man, Captain America and Thor are on hand to stop them, they're pretty unbeatable here.

The story is pretty good, if rushed, and Toby's interactions with his father manage to be somewhat sweet without being cloying.

My big problem with 1985 -- the seemingly arbitrary year in which the story is set -- is the violence. Marvel villains tend to be somewhat bloodless in practice; they might be killers, but it's not a major focus of their stories. But once set loose in our world -- or, at least, Toby's small hometown -- they unleash a pretty hideous torrent of evil, and they begin systematically murdering people in his community without any more reason than they can.

With the sheer amount of violent death in these pages, the chipper conclusion -- of course it involves the arrival of happy-go-lucky Marvel heroes, through Toby's heroic intervention -- seems out of place. Writer Mark Millar, who is certainly no stranger to dark material -- seems unsure of his balance in an otherwise strong tale.