Much in the way Watchmen deconstructed the superhero, Marvels deconstructed the Golden Age of the Marvel Universe, with the it gazing back at the 1940s through a modern lens and assessing what the colorful heroes meant for society and human achievement.

"Marvels is a story about how an ordinary man reacts to superhero activity around him — he himself is not a hero, he doesn’t save the day, but we witness how he reacts to others doing it and what it makes him think and feel about his world, himself and the heroes’ place in it," says Kurt Busiek.

It looked at the collateral impact (both physical and psychological) such heroes had … and it wasn't always for the better. Alex Ross' incredible art realized the Marvel characters in a way they'd never been seen before, allowing Marvels to take something old and make it seem new and for many fans, it helped them rethink the entire Marvel Universe. But Busiek says that wasn't his or Ross' intention.

"I just wanted to answer the question, 'What would it feel like to be there?' " he says. He wonders if things may have been different had they known it would go on to be an iconic piece of work.

"Had we known the kind of impact it was going to have, I expect that we’d have been a lot more nervous, and Marvel would have watched us more carefully, and it might not have come out the same at all. By doing it in obscurity, without expectations, we were freer to go where the story took us," says Busiek.