Marvel Comics blabbery

(I wish I could figure out a way to shoehorn my facilities with assembling IKEA furniture and parsing Marvel's publishing eccentricities into my resume somehow.)

Keep in mind that there's a gap between the volume you just bought and the one featuring Jessica's pregnancy but you won't have missed anything in between because the Marvel U was busy getting a hard refresh at the time and the storylines in all of the post-Secret Wars books jumped ahead 8-9 months into the future.

This is true -- though if you're looking to be a stone completist, there's a funny little 4-pg. Spider-Woman story at the end of ASM #1 (2015) (the post-SW relaunch issue) that teases the new series: https://www.amazon.com/Amazing-Spider-Man-Comic-No/dp/B01509IS3Q

...unless they thought to include that story in the "Baby Talk" volume (which would make sense) (which means they probably didn't do it!).

And they say modern comics are inaccessible to the casual reader!

And they're absolutely right!

Actually, that 4-pager WAS in Baby Talk, miraculously enough.

Nice, I’m glad!

Has anyone been reading the AMERICA series? If so how is it?

She punches Hitler at the end of the first issue - I didn’t read a second.

Read em all and loved em all. Heard it go canceled?

finally!

SPOILER: I'm bringing back Jonah's catchphrase "buy yourself some twist records" and also Peter's catchphrase "is what I like also" pic.twitter.com/ZBrcUUh6cs

— Chip Zdarsky (@zdarsky) March 6, 2018

xpost
Apparently so, RE: cancellation: https://www.polygon.com/comics/2017/12/22/16810138/marvel-exec-insists-wave-of-cancellations-not-motivated-by-books-diversity

Maybe I'll check out the TPB collections...

Also, if I may, a "cover connection":

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/cmx-images-prod/Item/529575/529575._SX1280_QL80_TTD_.jpg
https://thenextissuepodcast.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/lrvol1-24.jpg

That Jaime cover is pretty much the coolest thing ever drawn...

Squirrel Girl's lookin' scary mean there

and yeah it is. the poses are like perfect

I want to start reading Fantastic Four. But where? What are good arcs/eras/writers? I don't even know where to begin. Usually I get collections/trades from the library digital service –– what should I check out?

what sort of thing do you want to read, that you're looking to find in Fantastic Four?

The Jonathan Hickman run is probably the best thing he ever did at Marvel.

If you have a taste for silver age comics, checking out the early F4 is the place to start. Lots of the Marvel Universe started in that comic first. Visually those comics are great and they mostly hold up pretty well if you consider they were written for kids of that time.

John Byrne's long run on Fantastic Four is probably the best known outside Jack Kirby and Stan Lee.

I'm not sure how the essentials collections are as far as different versions, but it'd be a good start.

Essential Fantastic Four volume one through...I dunno, five? six? collects the entire Lee & Kirby run.

That Jaime cover is pretty much the coolest thing ever drawn...

The early FFs are - even by the standards of fly-by-night kids' comics more than sixty years old - pretty crude stuff, tho' obviously absolutely foundational, year zero, to marveldom ever after. Lee and especially Kirby were at career low points when they produced FF #1, and Jack certainly wasn't giving it his all on those early issues. Mostly lousy inking doesn't help - issue 5 is pleasingly inked by Joe Sinnott (who wouldn't ink another issue of the FF until #44), but the artwork doesn't really start to cook until Chic Stone takes over as inker from issue #28. From #44 on to almost the end of Kirby's run (say about issue #90, when Jack really wanted OUT), artwork/storylines are pretty sublime, as good as Silver Age superhero comics ever got. There's a really great Prisoner rip-off/Doctor Doom three parter in the #80s that is Kirby's last great hurrah. If you've never read these issues before, you are in for a treat.

After Kirby, FF remained Marvel's 'flagship' book (but not most popular - that was Spidey of course) so the company's top talent - John Romita, John Buscema lusciously inked by Sinnott - were assigned to the art. Polished tho' this stuff was, neither of these artists, or new writers Archie Goodwin and Roy Thomas, could come close to matching Kirby's intensity and cosmic inventiveness, the driving force behind the FF's glory years.

I do really like Roy Thomas' second stint as FF writer, later on in the 1970s, mostly drawn by a young George Perez and tidied up by good old Joe Sinnott, still - you get a great Hulk story, a great issue where they try to recruit new members, some good cosmic monkey stuff.

^Those are issues are roughly #164 to #175 - I'd forgotten, there's also a really fantastic Puppet Master-Luke Cage story in #170. Caveat: all 70s Marvels have much higher word counts than the Marvel comics of today, and Roy Thomas was one of the biggest gasbags.

I enjoyed Simonson's FF run - dinosaurs, robot Stalin in a mech suit

Noted. I started reading essentials collection from number one, and ... yeah, they were pretty sloggy. I’m trying to get a sense of the important stories / relationships, and also trying to have fun figuring out exactly why they’re gone from the canon now.

The reveal of the Hate-Monger's identity (either at the end of the first or the beginning of the second Essential volume) was where I was like, yeah, okay, yes, totally on board now.

I love the issue where Dr. Doom steals the Baxter building. I'd love to see a Bruce Timm version of F4 cartoon of that issue.

I can't tell if this story is badly written or I'm too tired to follow it properly, but either way, oy: https://www.thedailybeast.com/picked-apart-by-vultures-the-last-days-of-stan-lee

there is some ridiculous amazon/comixology sale right now with digital tpbs priced at a buck
https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=15280919011

recs?

Whoa! Thanks for this. I picked up 5 things (including the complete “Vision” series), then got tired of scrolling thru the pages (and figure I’ve got enough to last me a while!)

there are a few masterworks ones in there, although some have the bad recoloring problem. but this might be the first time I've seen them really throw in a lot of Atlas-era stuff

Vision for sure

I obviously bought the Atlas collection with GOOM on the cover, because... GOOM

I grabbed the complete Vision - for 69p, it seemed wrong not to, plus all those nine-panel-pages are perfect for phone reading.

Nothing else really inspired me but I picked up a couple of Epic Collections because they're so BIG - the Nocenti/Daredevil collection, and one from the unloved late period of PAD's Hulk run. I realised I miss reading weird, B grade, journeyman superhero comics - which was most of my comics reading when I was a kid.

Nocenti DD and David Hulk are both golden. Good choices. Nocenti remains one of the weirdest voices to ever grace mainstream comics imo.

I went on a nostalgia run - New Defenders, Longshot, Wolverine/Nick Fury Scorpio Connection, Excalibur's Cross-Time Caper - and picked up the Nick Fury Marvel Masterworks (coloring be damned).

Is that Black Bolt thing good?

It's okay but I didn't love it. Fine for a dollar though.

"I'd buy that for a dollar!" (sorry)

apropos of nothing here's a giant list of Marvel crossovers/'events'

A pair of old polls on that very subject:

The Greatest Marvel Universe Event!
The Greatest Marvel Universe Event (X-Edition)!

pic.twitter.com/k2TD5D1mNP

— Al Ewing Writes Comics And Tells You About Them (@Al_Ewing) March 28, 2018

Amadeus Cho already on the chopping block, huh

I haven't kept up, is he still on Planet Hulk 2.0?

I'm reading the "Vision" collection, but not really digging it... I think its particular brand of literary pretension is not my preferred brand of literary pretension (or something).

On another note, I just read TALES TO ASTONISH #44 – first appearance of The Wasp – it’s pretty fantastic (both Kirby’s art and the scripting).

Psersevere till the end, it’s only short and very worth it, honest

OK, will do!

There are like a half dozen collections of Fantastic Four material solicited for July, and all of the True Believer one-off reprints are also FF-related. Your guess is as good as mine as to what that portends. My money is on a surprise summer theatrical release of the Corman film.