The Super Hero’s Journey, a new graphic novel by award-winning syndicated cartoonist Patrick McDonnell, is a creative tribute to the still-potent power of classic Marvel superheroes and the artists—such legendary Marvel creators as Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko—that created them. Using a mixture of original panels from such classic Marvel comics series as the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Avengers, and the Watcher, alongside his own comical renditions of them, McDonnell has created a hybrid work of memoir and charming social introspection that invokes his childhood love of comics and Marvel’s original innovative, humane version of the superhero genre. In this 10-page excerpt, the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards teams with the Watcher to combat Dr. Doom and the dark influence of the Negative Zone—a parallel universe filled with scheming supervillains—via a futile journey through the humorous quirks of the Romantic Love Zone and the Commercial Zone. The Super Hero’s Journey by Patrick McDonnell is out now from Abrams ComicArts.