Always a collector?

OK so I said I?d take it easy on buying CGC books in 2011, but I didn?t say I?d stop collecting comics! Just found and bought two Marvel Masterworks hardcover books that collect a lot of my favorite X-men appearances! SO cool!! I have reader copies of all these already, but the collected editions will look great on my bookshelf and provide me with a resource for quick reference and frequent re-reading!

Marvel Masterworks Volume 7 features Amazing Adventures #11 on the cover and collects the following?Amazing Adventures #11-17, Amazing Spider-man #92, Marvel Team-up #4 and the Incredible Hulk #150 and #161. My favorite writer of the Bronze Age, Steve Englehart, wrote a cool Introduction in 2008. I won?t give you all the details, but I will share the first paragraph with you?

?Once upon a time, The X-men didn?t sell. Let?s see if I can make that statement comprehensible. In 1963, Marvel introduced two new super-teams, both written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby. One was The Avengers, which featured all the popular heroes Marvel had already established. The other was The X-men, which featured five teenagers no one had ever heard of, led by a cripple, who fought villains no one had ever heard of, like Magneto and the Scarlet Witch. Oddly enough, The Avengers sold quite well, and with its sixth issue went from bi-monthly to monthly. The X-men did not sell quite well, and when its ?twin? went monthly and it didn?t, it solidified itself in readers? minds as a second-rate title.?

I guess I understand, but isn?t it funny how things turned out?

Marvel Masterworks Volume 8 features Avengers #110 on the cover and collects the following?The Avengers #110-111, Captain America #172-175, Incredible Hulk #172, #180-181, Marvel Team-Up #23, #38, The Defenders #15-16 and Giant-Size Fantastic Four #4. Steve wrote the Preface for this one (Roy Thomas wrote the Introduction) in 2009. This just solidifies why Steve is my favorite writer of the Bronze Age?the man kept the X-men alive and in the spotlight when they didn?t have their own title! Take a look at the first couple paragraphs from this one?

?Once upon a time, the X-men had lost their title, but I wanted to resurrect them. The first book I ever did was Amazing Adventures, featuring the Beast on his own, and I made sure to get the other X-ers in there. Then, when the Beast was cancelled, I worked the team into my other books over the next few years. What I didn?t realize, until Masterworks editor Corey Sedlmeier pointed it out, was that I was essentially their ?sole standard-bearer?. That really does come as news to me. I liked them and wanted to keep them in the public eye, but since I was ?featuring? them, I never thought of them the way I thought of the Avengers, the Hulk, or Captain America. Those guys had titles, and I wrote those titles. The X-men beyond the Beast were community property. I assumed the community was using them too, but I guess not like I was.

I just liked them, so I used them, to help tell stories about the main characters in my books. I could do this because the Marvel Universe was a coherent entity, so the X-men continued to exist in it even if they had no comic to call their own.?

Thank you Steve! Something else I learned from reading this, but should have guessed, is that Steve wrote the plot for Incredible Hulk #172 (even though it was un-credited) to wrap up the Juggernaut portion of the storyline he started in Amazing Adventures #16. I love that he didn?t just leave the story hanging when Amazing Adventures got cancelled. He previously wrapped up the Beast part of that story in Incredible Hulk #161, featured in Marvel Masterworks Volume 7 above. Again, thank you Steve, you are appreciated more than you know!

Til next time?

***