Rating:  -
I love graphic novels as much as the next collector and have just about everything listed by Amazon. Not exactly everything, but a great percentage. This graphic novels should actually be rated and listed the same as regular novels, because the dynamics of their stories, not just the fantastic artwork, takes you away to places that novels, such as STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, CHILDHOOD'S END, FOUNDATION, RINGWORLD, STAR TREK novels, DARKEYE: CYBER HUNTER and so forth, take you. All are extremely imaginative and have visually-gratifying narrative/dialogue not too far removed from graphic novels such as this or any other. Broaden your minds, but hang on to the graphic novels as well!
Rating: -
I was watching a Stan Lee interview on TV. And saw in the back ground some comics with the word's ESSENTIAL. So I looked them up on Amazon.com.
Way cool! In the early 60's as a kid I was a chronic comic book reader. Into the 70's discovering Rock 'N' Roll I tended to drift away from them. Sold them all to the local "used book" store, to stock up on Deep Purple,Alice Cooper,Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath lp's. Tryin' figure?
When I read they were only in Black and White, no color. I'd get a couple to check them out, know what I mean?
20 issues for under $, not bad for a check out,lol.
Half way into the first story, you don't even notice the color being there or not. Remember, your imagination is what powered these story's in the first place,right?
So now I've gotten THOR,X-MEN,HULK,DR.STRANGE,IRON MAN,AVENGERS,SILVER SURFER and SPIDERMAN. Vol.1's of course.
I intend to get alot more in the future.
But the bottom line is this. If you want to follow the all important story's as they intertwine with each other. You need to start right here, right now! THE FANTASTIC FOUR are the greatest fighting team of all time!!
I'm watching to see what issue THE THING first said "It's Clobbering Time!"
**Side note** I looked up the value of the comics I had. And I could buy my house twice!
So I only gave this 4 stars because lack of color. But the price makes up for it. So it is 5 star's.
Would have been interesting if they left the advertising in for some laugh's. But they didn't so it is packed with the adventure you crave and lust for.
These are my new collection now. So please don't buy any,okay }:-)
I don't want them to run out or raise the price,do to supply and demand };-)
There I go sounding like Dr. Doom, I'm sorry,lmao!!
Go ahead and get them, okay? Great x-mas or Father's daygift for Dad if he's in his 40's+
Rating:  -
You're broke and you love superheroes. Well, you're in luck because you've just hit the jackpot!
It's argueable that better superhero stories have been written, but nothing can compare with the Kirby and Lee creation and subsequent run of Marvel's Fantastic Four. The writing is simplistic, but it gets better as the series goes on. This cheap print of the first 20 issues is just the tip of the iceberg. Volumes 2 and 3 just keep getting better and better.
This trade is not meant to be a collector's item and it makes no attempt to be the definitive edition of the Fantastic Four's first adventures. It simply is what it is, a amazingly cheap way to read the first adventures of the Marvel's First Family.
Rating:  -
One of the poorest and most insulting product decisions ever made in the history of comic book reprints was Marvel's inexplicable cheapskate-ism with this extensive series of colorless repressings of the great, old Marvel titles from the early 'Sixties superhero revival. Yeah, it's great to have the stories back in print, but good lord, what were they thinking? Don't fool yourself: reading old Marvel comics in black & white is not really the same thing as reading old Marvel comics. The original colors were so vibrant and unrestrained! The books were so much fun to look at and so sensuous to behold! By contrast, this is like reading those shabby Mexican or UK pulps from the 1970s that treated the same material with such blatant disregard. Hopefully folks in the know will still buy the infinitely nicer, full-color "Marvel Masterworks" reprints instead & let Marvel know that quality and respect for the material does matter. Meanwhile, it makes me sad to imagine kids today growing up thinking that this is how these books were meant to be read. Bleahh.
Rating: -
From a historical standpoint the first twenty issues of "The Fantastic Four" are important because they were Stan Lee's first steps in creating the Marvel Universe. Before there was Spider-Man, the Avengers, the Incredible Hulk, and everybody else, there was the Thing, Mr. Fantastic, Human Torch, and Invisible Girl. I love how the cover of issue #1 proclaims that these four characters are "together for the first time in one mighty magazine," which is interesting since none of them had appeared individually in any magazine, monthly or otherwise (since Johnny Storm is not the original Human Torch).
The whole point of "The Fantastic Four" was that Stan Lee was revitalizing the sorry state of superhero comic books in the early Sixties. While testing an experimental space craft Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, and Sue and Johnny Storm are exposed to a bombardment of mysterious cosmic rays. When they return to earth they discover that they have gained fantastic abilities, which they will use to fight evil. When compared to the competition at that particular point in time, these comics are pretty good, but I cannot help but compare them to the glory days of the Fantastic Four starting around year four when Galactus, the Silver Surfer, and the Inhumans first pop up. Lee's writing certainly improved over time, but not as much as Jack Kirby's artwork. Even within this collection, which covers the first twenty issues of "The Fantastic Four" along with the first annual, you can see a significant improvement in Kirby's artwork (just pay attention to how the Thing is drawn over this period), which I think goes beyond the work of Dick Ayers as the main inker on those later comics (Note: For FF#13 you have the rare combination of pencils by Kirby being inked by Steve Ditko).
It is the character of the Thing that was the key to creating the most dysfunctional group of superheroes (before the X-Men reformed with Wolverine anyway). The pathos of a man turned into a monster, and being unaware of his fate unlike the Hulk, was another to overcome the elasticity of Mr. Fantastic, which is one of the lamest super powers, even if Reed Richards is a lot smarter than Plastic Man. Resurrecting the Human Torch as a hotheaded teenager was a good move, especially since it led to bringing back Namor the Sub-Mariner as well, but it was soon clear that Sue Storm's invisibility was no big deal and her powers were augmented with force fields.
My memory of these early issues was that there were a lot of hokey villains, but in rereading these stories I am more impressed with the gallery of super villains Lee and Kirby created in these early years. Doctor Doom is, of course, the biggest and baddest of them all, and Lee returns to him and Namor repeatedly because they are clearly heads and shoulders about the others. The Super Skrull is a good second-level supervillian and I have to admit that the Miracle Man, the Red Ghost, the Impossible Man, the Molecule Man, the Mad Thinker and, yes, even the Mole Man, were not as bad as I first thought. However, the Puppet Master is just too freaky looking for me to accept; good thing Alicia makes her first appearance in that story as well.
So I started out convinced that I was going to give the Volume 1 of "The Essential Fantastic Four" four stars, but when I went over these early issues again they were better than that; once you add in the historic significance of these comics you really have to give it five stars. But, when it comes to Lee and Kirby's work on the Fantastic Four, the best is yet to come, True Believers! (Final Note: Hey, kids! Can you spot Adlai Stevenson in one of these comics? Would it help if you knew that he was the Democratic nominee for President in both 1952 and 1956 and was the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. during the Kennedy administration? And they say comic books are not educational...)
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