Our look at the comic origins of Marvel characters actually comes to a close with Iron Man, leaving only the Avengers origin left on my list before we start heading into actual story arcs. Iron Man was a character who didn’t really click with a lot of people until Mr. Downey Jr. came along, I enjoyed the early 90s cartoon and I liked playing as him in the CAPCOM vs. fighting games, but even I didn’t really find him all that interesting for a lot of his early stories. Does this revisit to his very early days change that? Erm, well… sort of! It’s a mix of dull and often racist stories and fun and hilariously weird ones.. Let’s take a look!
Continue readingMarvel Comics
Star Wars: The High Republic – Children of the Storm / The Hunted Review
The High Republic comics return in the shape of two connected story arcs: “Children of the Storm” and “The Hunted”. Weirdly the story then takes a break for a full cast audio drama before continuing next year, which is fine for me (a quick look on this blog will show I’m not averse to an audio drama!) but might be slightly alienating to a lot of the audience… Ah well, either way, let’s take a look at the first chunk of Phase III comics, shall we?
Continue readingX-Men – Origin (X-Men Issues 1-10) Review
Our next foray into Marvel comic origin issues is the X-Men, appearing here in their first ten issues. It’s funny given how big they became but the X-Men weren’t actually super popular in these early issues, it wasn’t really until the reboot in the mid-70s that it started picking up steam (stay tuned for that one later!) and then skyrocketed in the 80s. So is there any point to revisiting the less popular years? Let’s find out!
Continue readingThor: Origin (Journey into Mystery Issues 83 – 100) Review
For the longest time Thor was one of my least favourite Marvel characters as my only real exposure to him was when he was a simple hero type who speaks Shakespearian English, it took a while for the comics to find a way to make him “cool”, so to speak, or to add any real interesting layers to the character… or any kind of layers at all, really. For that reason I wasn’t really looking forward to these first fifteen or so Thor issues but brought and read the collection however many years ago for complitionist’s sake, and now I’m looking at them again for review’s sake! So let’s take a look and see if early Thor really is a drag or not…
Continue readingSpider-Man – Origin (Amazing Fantasy #15, Amazing Spider-Man Issues 1-10) Review
Our next look at Marvel comics is, really, the big one as Spider-Man is undoubtably Marvel’s most popular hero. That being said his original run of comics, the first 10 of which are collected in a trade paperback I have (along with his debut issue in “Amazing Fantasy”) are all full of 60s charm and villain backstories we’ve seen 100 times since, often with these villains themselves in adaptations. Hell, Spider-Man’s debut story has been adapted so many times now that it’s going to feel redundant talking about it! Still, this is a look at major Marvel comic stories and I can’t miss out Spider-Man’s debut, so let’s start with that issue…
Continue readingThe Incredible Hulk – Origin (The Incredible Hulk Issues 1-6) Review
Resuming our look at the Marvel comic universe from start to present (with many, many stories and issues missed for the sake of my sanity) it’s time to look at the debut of the Incredible Hulk, all… six issues of it. Yeah, Hulk didn’t really take off to start with and was cancelled, being moved into “Tales to Astonish” until eventually gaining popularity later. So it’s an odd thing to look at retrospectively, but to be fair to fans at the time, there isn’t much going on here… Let’s take a look!
Continue readingFantastic Four – Origin (Fantastic Four Issues 1-10) Review
Our next look at big Marvel comic releases in rough order is the chunk of comics that most point to as the start of the Marvel comic universe as we know it, with “Marvel’s first family” the Fantastic Four due to it coming out first (not including the 40s Captain America stuff I looked at last time, which wasn’t released by Marvel just absorbed by them later) What are they like? Well, they’re full of 60s comic cheese and lots of inner-monologuing, as you tend to get with, well, 60s comics. Is it still fun to read though, or is it just worth it for the historical significance?
Continue readingCaptain America: Origin Review
What is now worryingly a couple of years ago I said that I’d be doing an infrequent marathon through all my Marvel comic graphic novel collections as well as throwing in the odd highly regarded (or eventually modern) story via the Marvel Unlimited app, and guess what? It’s finally time to make a start, and where better than at the VERY start, I’m talking the 1940s! Yes, Captain America’s original four issues, which contain a couple of stories each, are first up given I’m going through them in original issue release order (as much as I can anyway) and they’re the four featured in the first “Golden Age Masterworks” collection. The next bunch are all origin stories in that they’re the first stories released for a character as well (I only brought a select few relevant Vol.1 Masterwork releases, so don’t panic, you’re not in for a long slog of 60s cheesiness!) and therefore they don’t have an over-arching title, so I’ve just put “Origins” for them, because that’s comic booky, right? Right! So let’s finally make a start then!
Continue readingStar Wars: The High Republic – There is No Fear / Heart of the Drengir Review
After enjoying the two High Republic books so much and with a subscription to Marvel Unlimited I’ve been reading each issue as they’ve appeared on the digital service. The first two story arcs make up the first eight issues and form a very satisfying whole that fills in a gap in between the first two books as well as showing us what some of the more higher profile Jedi from Book 1 were doing during Book 2. So… let’s take a look!
Continue readingStar Wars: Darth Vader – Into The Fire Review
The next little mini-story for the Darth Vader comics is once again an important bit of storytelling, though this time rather than reaching back to the prequels to shed a little bit of light on why Vader was beginning to soften, “Into The Fire” reaches forwards into the sequels and sheds some light of why Vader was so convinced it was too late for him to overcome the Emperor. The actual TPB is issues 6 – 11 but I’ll include 12, as while it’s advertised as a “War of the Bounty Hunters prelude” it’s really 90% an “Into the Fire” epilogue…
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