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Those of you who have read my rants before know I
have a psychological addiction to the Marvel
Essentials line. How many Marvel Essentials do I
have? Forty two. (Damn it, there goes the previous
definition of the universe.)
I think the Essentials are a great idea. The black
and white format doesn't bother me. Who can complain
about the lack of color when they bring together
massive amounts of material often several arcs or even
entire runs of a book at an affordable price? Even
if some books are available in fifty cent and dollar
boxes you can't beat the $16 price tag for 20 to 25
issues. Unless you're at a show and grab it in the $5
trade box. Um . . . uh . . . Not that I have done this.
Especially uh . . . not for someone's Christmas presents.
Not a cheapskate at all.
Lately I have seen only one complaint about the
Essentials. Who decides what is and is not Essential
worthy? I know when the line was started it was
created with the purpose of taking series that have
either significance to the Marvel Universe or the
history of the medium and letting them see the light
of day again. Obvious the early adventures of the
Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Hulk, Thor and the rest
should be a no brainers. There were some great
surprises that crept through like Howard the Duck.
My problem is they released The Essential Dazzler.
That's right . . . Dazzler the disco dancing mutant whose
real claim to fame, being an X-Man, didn't occur till
after her own book died. A book that had guest
stars or well known villains in 17 out of the first 20
issues. Now, I admittedly paid $7.50 for this book.
It was like Marvel Team-Up only it had Spidey, The
X-Men, The Fantastic Four and even Galactus team-up
with a glow-in-the-dark bimbo on roller skates. Not
to say all the stories were horrible. I liked her
team-up with Spider-Woman. The issue where what
actually happened to her mother wasn't bad. I'd say a
quarter of the time they weren't even attempting to
phone it in.
What bothers me is that Marvel proclaimed this to be
Essential before: Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD, Not
Brand Eech!, Killraven, The Inhumans, Jack Kirby's
Eternals, Captain Britain, Millie the Model and
Spidey's Super Stories. Once Neil Gaiman's Eternals
came out Marvel quickly let the Kirby series out of
the vault. Still they are placing Dazzler's battle
with The Enchantress on the same cover status as the
split cover from "The Kree/Skrull War." Dazzler?
What? There just weren't enough issues of Hellcat or
Black Goliath to fill up a book?
I know you're thinking, "Jess, they made an Essential
Godzilla." Yes, the difference is that Godzilla was
fun. Silly and campy at times but you could tell that
the writer and artists were having fun with it. The
continuity meshing worked surprisingly well. So much
so that if you read the Essential Marvel Two-In-One
vol. 2 and the Essential Mrs. Marvel that other Marvel
writers actually referenced things the heroes did in a
licensed book. That was a first for Marvel. It later
became common place in books like Micronaughts and
Rom. The series also maintained the spirit of the
old Toho films but at the same time managed to surpass
any story Toho could ever come up with.
Marvel's other good reprint line, the Visionaries
takes another approach. They focus on writers whose
names are forever associated with that title it and
collect their runs, eight to ten issues at a time.
The first few choices made total sense: Peter David's
Hulk, John Byrne's Fantastic Four and Walter
Simonson's Thor. However I recently saw something
that didn't quite belong: Hulk Visionaries- John
Byrne. If I had to point out a weaknesses in Peter
David's Hulk it is that it took him a year to get to
tell the type of stories he wanted to because he felt
he had to spend the time to thoroughly clean up the
mess of the two creative teams before him. The book
basically had $%(! all over the wall before he fixed
it. I'm really not all that interested in finding
out how it got there. Not even from the five dollar
trade box. Not even if somebody paid me the five
bucks. The real shame is I've really liked much of
Byrne's other work. His 80s run on Superman was
outstanding. His art on X-Men is one of my favorite
runs on the book. I just feel putting his run on Hulk
in the same category with Peter David is like putting
one of those portraits of very large eyed Hispanic
kids that you see sold at the county fair and putting
them on display in Louvre.
'Nuff said
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