FRIDAY’S FORGOTTEN BOOKS #623: MARVEL: THE FIRST 80 YEARS

I grew up reading DC comic books in the 1950s and 1960s. My favorites were The Flash, Green Lantern, Adam Strange, and Bat-man. Then I discovered Marvel Comics and I loved Iron Man and Doctor Strange. I also enjoyed Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and Spider-man. Reading Marvel: The First 80 Years was a walk down Memory Lane for me. Plenty of colorful paintings from the years comics meant the most to me. I knew a lot about the early Marvel years, but I knew very little about what happened to Marvel after I stopped reading comics around 1970.

I found the descriptions of the artists, inkers, and writers who produced such legendary super heroes insightful.

If you’re a fan of comics, you’ll love this book. If you’re a Marvel Comics fan, this is a must-buy. If you just like wonderful artwork, this book will delight you! GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

The 1930s and 1940s — 14
The 1950s — 30
The 1960s — 42
the 1970s — 70
The 1980s — 92
The 1990s — 110
The 2000s — 132
The 2010s — 150

13 thoughts on “FRIDAY’S FORGOTTEN BOOKS #623: MARVEL: THE FIRST 80 YEARS

  1. wolf

    As I’ve written before I’ve never been a fan of super-beings.
    But I was a great fan of EC-Comics, the house from which MAD was started. I have a series of books as reprints – but they are are in Germany while we’re kind of imprisoned in Hungary because of Covid.
    What crazy times!
    At least we and you can say ByeDon!

    Reply
  2. Jeff Meyerson

    I grew up on DC Comics too. My brother was the one who discovered Marvel and I remember reading some of his. The artwork is the main draw for me.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Jeff, same here. The artwork reeled me in. Stan Lee specialized in “troubled” Super Heroes that generated a lot of readers for MARVEL.

      Reply
  3. Todd Mason

    Somewhat similarly to Steve, I stopped collecting comics magazines for the most part by the time I was eleven or twelve, except for giving MAD another year or so in the ’70s, with my first comic when I was about five in ’69 or so and the height of my enthusiasm being ca. 1974–I read comics from DC, Marvel, Charlton, Gold Key and anything else that looked interesting–never cottoned to Archie Comics, and was most drawn to horror comics (including some EC reprints but also other pre-Comics Code horror title)…about age 9, and I had begun reading a fair amount of short adult-targeted fiction, in horror, crime fiction, sf and occasionally other matter. But I kept reading newspaper comics, would continue to gather Jules Feiffer and Walt Kelly and Gary Trudeau books as I came across them, wasn’t too impressed with HEAVY METAL but did, as a college student, stumble across Pacific Comics adaptations of Michael Moorcock’s fiction and thought them rather good. LOVE AND ROCKETS, TWISTED SISTERS and other good next-wave adult-targeted comics came along not too much later. DC and Marvel would reprint their ’50s comics in the ’70s, and Charlton ran some short horror manga stories in translation in those years.

    Most of the Marvel heroes left me nonplussed, though I did like the anti-heroes such as Werewolf-by-Night and the Hulk and the Submariner. I even preferred the DC Challengers of the Unknown to most of the Marvel teams, since they (in what I could find) seemed to run up against more horror-oriented menaces…

    Reply
  4. Todd Mason

    In Ted White’s year as editor it did some interesting things, but I was barely aware of that till he was gone.

    And, as with Ben Bova at OMNI, there was only so much improvement to be allowed at either magazine…though it was an amusing coincidence that both White and Bova left their frustrating, straitened-budgeted editorships at, respectively, FANTASTIC and AMAZING and ANALOG to find themselves under a money shower…for a year for White and for about three or four for Bova.

    Reply
      1. george Post author

        Todd, I’m trying to cut back on buying, too (by using the Library more). However, I hope your comments to this blog don’t diminish!

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