I am doing something similar, but I am only collecting Marvel from the 1960s to about 1992. That is the Marvel Universe that I love. Also buying all of the collected editions of the earlier Timely and Atlas stuff.
18:33 Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. I've read every X-Men issue a while ago, and trudging through the rough patches in the team's long history really turned out to be an essential part of the experience for me. Not only do you become bolder in your reading because you know you have seen everything from the beginning (like a minuscule but ever-present witness to that universe since its birth! Who wouldn't like to be that to our own universe? Well, you can experience a smidgen of that here), but also because knowing the lowest lows gives you valuable insight and perspective. Dare I say, you become a wiser comic book reader for it. And God forbid, perhaps even a wiser reader of those serious books without the nice pictures on them. Also, your sense of attachment and, consequently, your ability to enjoy the lives of those characters grows when you know you have been with them through thick and thin. Semper fidelis and all that. Of course, it's not as serious as perhaps this comment makes it out to be, but it is certainly gratifying to read the bad parts of a character's life and worth it for all sorts of tangential reasons. My most profound experience with that was reading the entirety of 1001 Nights. While I was reading it, I got a sense of being lost at points. It was a weird feeling to be drowning deep inside all those storytellers and their tales and be deeply bored by them in a number of places. But then, once you're done, that sense of bore you had attaches to the pleasure of having finished the journey, and it really brings a more profound and rich experience compared to just skipping the parts you didn't like, something I have done for many books and found later I shouldn't have. I hope I'm not being too cryptic here. Well, we're all readers in this corner of the internet, and I'm sure you all know more or less what I'm talking about.
It would be interesting to read all the Marvel comics in order of publication -- at least all the stories in the extended Marvel universe, so the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Daredevil, etc. etc., if not the Romance titles or Horror-oriented series (unless they were doing a crossover with, say, the Hulk, etc.). How many issues were published in, say, 1963? In 1964? How many crossover stories did they do with, say, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four? Did they have a 'master plan' as each year progressed, where they knew that Spidey might appear in an X-Men issue? or that the Thing might show up in an Avengers issue? Reading all of Thor is one thing, but in a way it's out-of-context to what was happening elsewhere in the Marvel Comics Universe involving the other major characters. I wonder if there's a website that has every issue listed in publication order -- i.e. all of the "Feb 1967" comics, etc. -- with synopses of the basic story, with the Who, What, Where and Why of each tale? How many thousands of issues are we talking about overall, from the original TIMELY comics until Today? Specialists in the RU-vid comics-fans scene might consider doing episodes regarding what happened in each Month-and-Year in Marvel. A daily podcast covering 1 month's worth of issues would take 12 episodes to cover a single year -- maybe 13, if we're to take account of the Annuals -- with the 60-odd years since the 1st issue of Fantastic Four requiring upwards of 800 episodes! At its height, how many Marvel comics were being published every month, I wonder? Jeez, but each episode would probably be several hours long, just to cover every comic published during any given month!
I've been doing the same for Incredible Hulk, currently rereading and loving the Peter David run. That is an amazing, incredible, fantastic epic collection! Daredevil is perhaps the comic book that has been the most consistent in terms of quality, for Marvel.
I've intended for a while to do a full Marvel re-read, starting with FF #1 and reading all the main books in order through around 1986, maybe 87 for a few of the books that hung on a bit longer. I lose interest in most Marvel stuff after around then.
Herakles! Oh, Herakles! Of many labours are glories 'tilled, but the first is where when not yet won? Serpentine with laurels nine, Aspiration's ambition delivers demand, 'Account in measure. Account in time. Account in course of measure and rhyme. ' Or, - haven't you got quite a lot on already?
FF is my favourite too, mainly due to Kirby's art. I'm collecting the Marvel Masterworks, and will read them once they have published up to 1996, which will probably be another decade.
Cross the rainbow bridge of Asgard where the booming heavens roar you'll behold in breathless wonder Micheal Vaughan and the Pharoh Rodger. Together they have a fantastic plan.
Thor was already on shakey ground near the end of its original run. I think Warren Ellis who was writing the title at that point had a plan but he seems to have been replaced by the very under-recognised William Messner-Loeb who had to just hold the book's storylines in stasis until the Heroes Reborn fiasco. And although not to everyone's taste, Mike Deodato Jnr.'s art also appealed to me. I realised only last week that I have really missed reading FF over the last few years so I bought the first Ryan North collection and am looking forward to it. The title is definitely one of my 5 favourite Marvel series. Word has it that Roger had your bookshelves reinforced with adamantium as the only way to support all the weight of those Epic Collections and Omnibuses (Omnibi?). Reading is never wasting time. Writing and reading are part of what makes us human.
I am tempted to attempt reading all the silver age Marvel comics in printed order. For example, all of the issues on the newstands in Jan. 1963, then Feb. 1863. But I would start with Nov. 1961, the first issue of Fantastic Four. The question is, do I try to read all the western titles as well? And all the whacky sci-fi stuff? Or just contain it to superheroes? I wish I could encompass everything, DC, Dell, Harvey, Marvel, Charlton, etc. But I’d be dead before I could finish! Good luck on your mission!
Next month Marvel is releasing August 1961 in paperback, which has Fantastic Four 1 and all the other Marvel comics that were on the news stand that month. Now that this is in paperback at a cheaper price, perhaps Marvel may want to keep releasing them in order for a few years.
Hello Michael Hello. This is one of the very best videos . why don't you write the book on Marvel Comics, or Comics at large? I listened carefully to every word you spoke and played back large portions to make sure I got it right. Thank you so much Michael. Marvel is just great. Their Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane, Punisher, Ghost Rider, and Defenders are my favorites plus the titles you discussed. Roy Thomas and Jim Shooter were ingenious. Thanks again
When you show only the first volume covers, it looks like comic book bliss. As Dave and Patrick mention, probably because of the interweaving histories, it would help to read them all simultaneously as they came out, month by month, like in the recent Omnibus anthologies. For instance, Captain America was brought back in the Avengers months before his Tales of Suspense series started (and even earlier in Strange Tales, a fake Captain America appeared in the Torch series as a trial run.) The Hulk's nomadic stories through various Marvel titles, before he came back in a series of his own, are really unique to comics. If you actually read all of Marvel starting from August 1961, you'd get all of the other stuff that fed into the superhero books. Romance and humor and horror became part of the superhero stew. The sullen teenage Rawhide Kid, unfairly persecuted as an outlaw, is a prototype for Spider-Man. I think your method is a lot more enjoyable, though. If you read all the comics simultaneously, you'd probably want to check into a hospital before you even got to the 80's.
Applause Applause Applause! I came to Marvel Comics just the month after Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish split into their four separate titles, around February 1968. In those days, I could tool around on my bike in Anaheim, and parts of East LA with my pal Herbie where a lot of liquor stores never sent the unsold comics back to the distributor, so I was able to fill in about 6 months worth of old back issues from their racks. Those were truly golden days in my past. You are dredging up a lot of beautiful memories for me with your Master Plan. And though you haven't mentioned it yet, I just KNOW you are saving the best for last, and I can't wait! Deathlok! It will be glorious!
That's a great collection of Marvel's Epics! They do an outstanding job on their reprint line. I have four volumes of the Conan omnibuses, and they are well done, though a little heavy compared to the epic books. 😆
Excelsior! This has to be the most ambitious reading project since Phil Connors, in an early draft of _Groundhog Day,_ read every book in the Punxsutawney Public Library at one page per day. I estimate it took forty thousand years by the time Phil was through the first pass.
There is an Iron Man Heroes Reborn book. It's Thor that doesn't (his series becomes Journey Into Mystery) and his Heroes Return series is the last to launch.
