I've resolved to experience the Marvel Age of Comics, as it happened.
I wasn't old enough to do that when it actually happened, beginning in late 1961. I didn't start reading Marvel Comics until about 1964 or 1965. I missed the earlier stories until the reprints in Marvel Tales and Marvel Collectors Item Classics.
Recently it occurred to me that with the many authentic reprints of those early stories in my collection in Essential or Omnibus form, I can read the super-hero stories in the order in which they were originally published, almost like I was there at the beginning!
I'm getting help from this website and this one. I don't know how accurate they are, but they should provide good guidelines for my reading excursion.
So far I've read the first two issues of Fantastic Four reprinted in the first FF Omnibus. Coming up soon will be Hulk, Ant-Man (in Tales to Astonish), Thor (in Journey Into Mystery) and Spider-Man (in Amazing Fantasy). I'm thinking this will be a lot of fun.
So, what are your comics-related resolutions this year?
Hoy
Replies
Mine is to update my blog more regularly. I'm going for twice a month, and right now I've got enough queued up to keep that resolution for a couple of months at least. You'll enjoy your chronological reread, I bet. I've been doing the same thing with Vertigo miniseries for the last year or so. My situation was similar to yours: I started reading Vertigo a few years after the imprint started, and read the miniseries in whatever order I was able to collect them.
Hoy, I have a typed-up index (by month) that I used when I did what you're doing.
It not only came in handy, what also helped was that there's about 4 magazines where the cover dates tend to be one month "off" until the end of 1972, where the dates "skipped" (even though the comics didn't) and they "caught up". What's amazing is the number of minor little inter-book continuity references that reading them with this in mind really helps to make more sense than they would otherwise.
Let me know, I could e-mail you a copy of what I've got.
Henry, can you clarify for us how the cover dates and the dates of publication varried? I had always assumed that they were about three months off... and were printed so that the average store clerk would leave the "October" books up on the stand through October. But I learned from a drug store clerk once that all she ever did was to replace ALL the Fantastic Four books off the spinner rack when the new shipment arrived. If a new month's worth of books didn't arrive, you were likely to find last month's setting on the spinner rack for even longer...
Henry R. Kujawa said:
That's basically it.
Except, THOR, DAREDEVIL, X-MEN and THE AVENGERS had cover date that were 2 months ahead instead 3. Maybe it's just WHEN during the month they came out, but the Bulllpen pages tended to have them this way as well. Some strange kind of overlap, or lack thereof...
An example is, if you have all the comics with a JAN cover date to read at once, for those 4 series, you should have the DEC books out instead.
This went up until the NOV'72 issues-- the month when all of Marvel went 25cents. All 4 series, the cover dates "skipped" a month (and so, caught up).
A simple, alternate way to read the books in chronologiucal order would be, just make sure you read those 4 series LAST for any given month.
Itr sounds (and looks) more confusing than it really is. But trust me, if you try reading every 60's Marvel, month by month, as they came out, a lot of "little" continuity things will just WORK better this way.
I don't know if I commented even once on your 60's Marvel thread on the old board, Henry, but I did follow it, and was impressed with those little continuity links that you wrote about. 60's Marvel was a strange and unprecedented experiment wasn't it? The thing was that I'm sure very few readers would have got all the comics in the right order to get the most out of that continuity work at the time. I wonder if even Kirby and Ditko read each others' comics, in order to synch them up? Obviously Stan gets some credit here. (Alas, Henry!) He obviously got a kick out of synching the comics up.
Still, even the people who got some or most of the comics would have realised that they were reading something that was part of a broader overall narrative.
For what its worth, Henry, and credit where it's due, your 60s Marvel project on the old board was a sort of inspiration for my own Morrison reading project. I was impressed that you stuck at it, whether people were commenting or not, and saw it through to the end. Some of my threads on Morrison comics have got good feedback and some barely any (Like a voice crying in the wilderness!), but I've tried to keep going forward.
Since I've started my Morrison project, I've realised that's its a mammoth task - years long so far!. My resolution is to finish it one way or another this year. But that's a story for another post.
It sounds like an enjoyable journey ahead of you, Hoy. Many comics might have tried to replicate what the early Marvels did in the decades since, but there is only one first time, and that was when Stan, Jack and Steve did it!
I should really READ some of the Essentials I got but only skimmed through like Iron Man and Daredevil. I read the Thor volumes but got more involved with the Tales of Asgard than the main stories, though I liked the Absorbing Man and Hercules arcs.
I should really READ some of the Essentials I got but only skimmed through like Iron Man and Daredevil.
My resolution is something similar: I'm going to buy only the comics I really want to read. Some of the monthly comics I buy keep falling to the bottom of the pile, while some of the collections I get have me skimming over pages by the halfway point.
But rather than feel like I should read them better, I feel like I should not buy those that seem like they should be of interest but really aren't (at least to me). If nothing else, I've got no place to put them and nothing to do with TPBs I don't want to read a second time. I get a lot of them for 5 bucks at the cons, but that's not good enough.
Fortunately, this past week of vacation gave me a good chance to catch up pretty well. I've got three collections on hand (Best of Crime Doesn't Pay, the first Archie Marries TPB and the Essential Doc Savage), that are so different and of such quality that it won't be a problem. I want to be sure I sustain that while trimming my monthly list.
None of them, I note, are SA. That's because so much SA has been reprinted already, although a few interesting books are coming, so I'm sure I'll have some to buy in the coming months no matter how much I cut back.
I like your idea, Hoy, but I think it's going to pale in comparison to what was going on then. You know a lot of what comes next, so you lose that suspense, and you can't discuss them or wonder about the outcomes with your pals (or trade for books you've never seen before).
It'd still be interesting to get a feel of what was coming out at the same time. That's probably a better way to read them than all at once in the collections.
-- MSA
You're right, the experience can't be the same because I'm aware of what came after, but I'm picking up on some little things I hadn't noticed before while reading them out of order the first time as reprints or back issues. For example, Henry Pym and Reed Richards both mentioned unstable molecules used for their costumes in comics published the same month.
I've cut my new comics back drastically in the past few months. All DC Universe titles came to a stop with the New 52, although I may pick up some as collections (discounted) later. I gave up on most Marvels many years ago, although Journey Into Mystery is at the top of my reading list right now. Very few titles from other companies catch my interest these days, but I do highly recommend Sergio Aragones' FUNNIES from Bongo. I also enjoy the Kirby Genesis titles and the Godzilla titles, but those are kind of eclectic. Because of various holidays and vacations in December, I picked up a whole month's worth of pull titles at my local comic shop and was able to read them all in a couple of days.
So I find myself spending most of my reading time with reprints and items from my collection. The Marvel Age project is just a way I came up with to keep it interesting.
Hoy
I agree on the Sergio book, and I also get Bongo's FUTURAMA and SIMPSON's SUPER-SPECTACULAR. I'm also trying ACTION and ALL-STAR WESTERN in the new 52, and they're pretty good so far. Waid's DAREDEVIL also is very good (and in fact was just named the best comic of 2011 by Comic Book Resources).
I'm also really liking the new DARK HORSE PRESENTS anthology, much more than I expected. A number of the ongoing series are fun, and it's got standalone stories like Concrete and Mr. Monster that take me back to the good old days. There's also a Hellboy story coming soon. It's 8 bucks, but it's 80 pages (issue #3 was 104), which is a good value as long as I like most of it, and I find I do.
LOVE & CAPES is my favorite comic, but it runs in spurts. A TPB of the most recent mini-series should be out soon if it's not already. I'm also liking the DOCTOR WHO comic. I don't usually go in for licensed comics, but it's very well done, with different artists doing the interpretations, some better than others, but the dialogue is pretty accurate and funny. I also like the new REED GUNTHER from Image, as well as INVINCIBLE.
I've been ordering new comics since my shop shut down last year (he kept his subscription list and is continuing it so I joined), so I get my comics every month in one batch. It does give me a good feel for which ones I *really* like, because some of them are still there when the next batch arrives. Those may be getting the axe.
Sadly. BATMAN: BRAVE & BOLD is getting cut because it's being cancelled. As usual.
-- MSA
The only New Year's resolution I ever make any more is to travel, somewhere, before the year is done. But for a comics-related resolution, I want to finish 100 Bullets. I've got the first 11 of the 13 trades, so I'm pretty close to the finish line, except I have a tendency to read and re-read them over and over again because they're just so good.
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
-
5
of 6 Next