very true, it would be nice though if more classic stories that are really timeless and worththe read see print, a good example would be a essential phoenix saga.

Posted by mrkh90 on 2007-11-09 19:47:59
While you're not wrong, I still love having this stuff. It's fun junk at a cheap price.

The only problem I have with it is the bookstores that have nothing but Essentials and manga. I like Essentials, and I love manga! But I want to see the new American/British comics, too.

As for "Essential Phoenix Saga", I know that this material is available in the Essential X-Men books (I think that volumes 1 and 2 contain everything up to Jean's death) and that a recent volume of the John Byrne FF series has the complete resurrection tale.

Posted by wishlish on 2007-11-09 21:48:44
I think the Onslaught epic is coming out starting next month as a 4 graphic novel set just like the Age of Apocalypse did a few years ago. Its about time. You can't hardly find the single issues anywhere. Another story I would like to see reprinted in a graphic novel is the Twelve crossover. It was an enjoyable read and it stands up to anything out now. Anyone think any others that need to be reprinted.

Posted by don1968 on 2007-11-10 00:02:23
"...with rare exception, most of the run of MARVEL TEAM-UP is unspectacular.

...don't get me started on the misnomer of ESSENTIAL WEREWOLF BY NIGHT.

...it can be sort of brain-deadening to read a whole chunk of issues back-to-back-to-back."

I assume these will be pull quotes for the next printings? :p

Seriously though, I generally agree, but to me what is more frustrating is the amount of genuinely good stuff that HASN'T been reprinted in any significant form yet, in favor of this more, uh, questionable material. Starlin's Warlock, DeMatteis/Buscema Spectacular, DeZago/Wieringo Sensational, Gruenwald's Cap, Nicieza/Bagley New Warriors, and Spider-Man 2099, to name a few.

Posted by CylverSaber on 2007-11-10 08:53:17
although i agree with you in general about the Essentials, Marvel Team-Up does have that wonderful Claremonst/Byrne run in there which lifts the title up as a whole, I feel.



Posted by bomaya on 2007-11-10 09:16:46
The beauty of cheap hackwork.
I think cheap hackwork is kinda underrated.

Comics today are awesome. Longer, more involved stories. Beautiful colors. More detailed art. Heck, even the paper is sooo much better quality than older comics.

But all that comes with a price. Literally. Comics are $3.00 these days. Nobody throws away a $3.00 comic. Action comics #1 is a huge collectors item because they sold tons of comics (making it widely knows), but most of them were thrown away (making it rare). People used to throw away comics the same way they throw away newspapers. These days, if something is read by millions of people, then those millions of copies are kept forever. Nothing really becomes special because we hang onto everything we ever bought.

But it's not just a matter of collecting. In the first few years of Spider-Man, Stan Lee created the Lizard, Vulture, Doc Ock, Sandman, and Electro. How? By cranking out a lot of stuff, including the Prowler and several other characters who didn't become big. Doing a story a month, they could experiment a lot more than with the six issue story arcs that are so common today.

And sometimes happy accidents happened even when people weren't trying. Lobo, Wolverine, and Punisher weren't created to be big stars, they just struck a cord or were picked up and made better later.

And sometimes I just enjoyed the hackiness of a story. After several issues of seriousness, it was nice to get a one-off issue where Spidey fights... THE KANGAROO! It was stupid, it was light, but it was a fun variation. Now that comics are so expensive and the plots are so long, every story feels like an attempt at a big summer blockbuster. Those little fluff stories don't have a place anymore.

Overall, I think comics are better now than they were then. But there were some nice things about the occasional hack story that just entertained without trying to be something bigger.

Posted by CodeGuy on 2007-11-10 15:14:32
I happened to like "Werewolf By Night," but I get your point. The thing is though, you don't have to read them all back-to-back. When I read an Essential (or one of those similar trades put out by Brand Ecch), usually read one story a day out of it, maybe two. That breaks up the monotony of reading the same thing over and over.

Also: "Marvel Two-In-One" is way cooler than "Marvel Team-Up!"

Posted by ljacone on 2007-11-12 08:06:28
So... why?
I guess the next question is - who makes the decision to reprint this stuff?

And, i guess, who's reading it?

Posted by NewChad on 2007-11-12 08:24:56
Oh, and which of his own work is Kurt worried about being reprinted? Now THAT I'd love to know...

Posted by NewChad on 2007-11-12 08:25:31
MBunge
Couldn't this exact same blog entry be written about most of the current Marvel comics being collected into the trade format? I'd argue that an awful lot of Marvel's current output isn't "objectively all that good", but we still get stuff like a hardcover collection of "The Other". I mean, seriously, a frickin' HARCOVER for "The Other"? Is anyone going to pull that off the shelf 10 years from now and think "Wow, that was even better than I remembered. I'm so glad I spent so much money for the hardcover so my kids can enjoy this comic masterpiece"?

Mike

Posted by on 2007-11-12 15:40:26
Lots of good material in the 70's
I started reading comics in '76-'77, so I can understand what you mean about nostalgia. I certainly look back on the books of that period with great affection, even the ones I didn't fully appreciate until later in life. There are books that might not seem worthy of being collected in Essentials, Trades, or Hardcovers, but I think almost every run has it's fans and deserves to be preserved and made available to nostalgia junkies and potential new fans alike.

Marvel's collected editions team is fantastic. The growing amount of classic material available, and the quality of both the restoration and collection format is very high, especially when compared to older collections. I'm a huge fan of the Masterworks, Omnibus, and the line of Classic color trades. So much of the 60's output has been collected. Moving more into the 70's and 80's material (as well as the 40's and 50's, which the Masterworks are doing) seems like a great idea to me. Is it all great material? No, but neither was a lot of the 60's material. Should it all be hardbound in formats like Masterworks, Premiere, and Omnibus? I can't be sure. There's certainly plenty of 70's material I'd buy in either hardbound or trade collections. I'm not an Essentials fan, only because I prefer color collections, but it does seem to be filling a niche.

Here's a bunch of 70's material I think holds up pretty well today:

- almost everything by Steve Gerber (Defenders, Son of Satan in Marvel Spotlight, Guardians of the Galaxy in Marvel Presents, and even some Marvel 2-in-1)
- Englehart, Brunner and Colan Dr. Strange
- Starlin's Warlock and Captain Marvel
- Avengers started the 70's strong through the Kree-Skrull War, and I think had more bright than dull spots throughout the decade, notably the Englehart/Perez Serpent Crown/Squadron Supreme story, the Korvac saga, the brief Stern/Byrne run, and the Michelinie/Perez run in the late 70's (ok, except the whole issue 200 thing - still, nice art, at least). The Avengers/Defenders War (great to have the new Premiere Hardcover collection) and the Celestial Madonna arcs are also fairly strong.
- Micheline/JRJr/Layton Iron Man (still severely under represented in collected form)
- Fantastic Four was all over the map in the 70's, but I think the story leading up to 200 was great.
- The Thing made almost every issue of Marvel Two-In-One enjoyable, even if the plots were sometimes weak. The Project Pegasus story and the great poker issue were also in '79.
- Tigra in Marvel Chillers (who had much more of a personality with Tony Isabella's writing)
- Don McGregor's wordy but intriguing Black Panther and Killraven
- Claremont (often with John Byrne) had a good run on Marvel Team-Up
- Jack Kirby 70's work (Eternals, 2001, Machine Man, Captain America, Black Panther, Devil Dinosaur) is visually stunning overall.
- Micronauts
- Englehart/Buscema Captain America
- Buscema's Weirdworld/Warriors of the Shadow Realm magazine story
- Claremont's make-over of Ms. Marvel
- X-Men

Nova, Spider-Woman, Invaders, Champions, Inhumans (some decent Perez art); much of Fantastic Four and What If?, Marvel Team-Up, Thor, Hulk, and Iron Man; yeah, probably just nostalgia. But I'll bet there are fans of them all who would buy collections. I picked up the first Invaders Classics trade, and it's fun. I'm appreciating Frank Robbin's art a lot more than I did when I was a kid, so bring on vol 2.

And while I haven't read them, Tomb of Dracula, Shang-Chi: Master of Kung-Fu, Conan, Iron Fist, and Howard the Duck seem to be held in pretty high regard. Ploog's art, at the least, seems to draw praise for Werewolf by Night.


Posted by frank-gem on 2007-11-12 15:57:30
Everyone i come across who knows something about Rom says it is a crime that it has not been reprinted in Essential form. i also think that the New Mutants series and the Micronauts need to be put into essential form.

Posted by comixkid2099 on 2007-11-13 20:56:54
Marvel Essentials
I love the idea of the Marvel Essental lines.
They make older, hard to find series archs easily availible and afordable to the people.
But they should have color too.
And before you suggest the Marvel Masterworks series, I'm not shelling out 50 dollars or more of my hard-earned mony just for a trade (no matter how good it is).
My local newspaper recently started having their comic strips done in color every day, and if they can afford to do that, so can Marvel.
They don't have to use more expensive kinds of paper in their Marvel Essentials series to add color to them.

Posted by Aarcee on 2007-11-14 17:27:33
So i take you don't like Werewolf by Night?
That's fine. I happened to really enjoy the 70s werewolf and still really like the character.

I do understand what you mean about some of the Essentials (sorry I bought a few of them myself), but I do really appreciate having the chance own some of these older comics for a cheaper price.

I hope Marvel continues to offer these lower priced collection in some form.

$3.00 a comic is getting to be way too steep for me. And since the arcs are collected so quickly these days...I can no longer justify buying individual issues except for the 2 titles I'm stuck on.



Posted by coldwarmyth on 2007-11-14 21:46:06
art/beauty is in the...
eye of the beholder. So your post Tom B. is crap. I really can't believe you posted that message. So you don't care for Werewolf By Night or similar runs, who cares, maybe some people REALLY enjoy werewolf comics. But you had to post a comment about 'crap'. Where do you get the right to criticize some one's work that you weren't around to edit? If I was an artist on one of these 'crap' runs I would be highly offend! Thanks for your personal opinion, next keep such remarks to yourself.

Posted by connorgt on 2007-11-16 01:47:13
Sales Dept.
Great selling point. It's a good thing your in editing and not in sales for Marvel. Now I know what not to look at or even buy.
Thanks

P.S. Are you sure you work for Marvel?


Posted by quantumfield on 2007-11-19 09:43:48
I Love Them.
I happen to think that the "Essentials" and other collections of classic comics are convienient (sorry if I spelled that wronge). I am sorta new to comics but I am nat clueless as to whats going on all thanks to the Essentials. At one time I attempted to read a comic of the Avengers and was like: "ummm... whats going on?" So I tried to get my backround Knowledge by going to a comic shop and asking for an old Avengers book.It was funny because they showed me an old Stan Lee and Jack Kirby issue that was like, 100 bucks. So I was like: "Ummmmm, got anything cheaper?" And they showed me an Avengers Essential Vol.1. So I read it and was interested read more Avenger Essentials and eventualy got to the point where I was, well, Addicted2comix.(wich is my user name.) I read other Essentials for Spider Man, Fantastic Four, Man-Thing, X-Men, even, I hate to say it, Howard the Duck. And so I was informed enough to start reading "modern day comics". So I guess you can say that I wouldn't be a Marvel fan if it wern't for Essentials. All in all, I think that the books are a great reference point for new readers. But you have a point, Tom. There are some pointless books like werewolf by night.

Posted by Addicted2comiX on 2007-11-20 11:31:36