I started Essential Avengers #4 over the weekend. That era of Avengers is really fun for me. I hadn't read any of the stories other than the Kree-Skrull War before.

Once I finish this, I think I'll re-read Avengers Forever.

I've been having fun reading All of the Essentials in the order in which the issues came out. I'm currently up to Tales of Suspense #39 (Mar. 1963) The first Iron Man story!

All M*rv*l needs to do now is release an Essential Sgt. Fury volume and I'll have the early Silver Age stuff wrapped up!

I picked up Essential Iron Fist last weekend. Haven't started it yet, however.

Where is Essential Millie??

Essential Night Nurse anyone??

Hey I'd love to get that one too! And Essential Rawhide Kid, Essential Kid Colt Outlaw & even Essential Patsy Walker, but I'm trying to focus on the stuff that was (editorially anyway) the Marvel Universe of the time!

Yikes! That's gonna be a THIN volume!

Is anyone picking up Essential Super Villain Team-Up this week?

Distribution of this title was spotty when I was a kid, so I may pick it up just to finish piecing the story together.

I still have to pick up Essential Iron Fist and Essential Avengers #4... gonna have a big backlog of Essential reading. ( hmmm... still need to finish reading that Essential Human Torch and Essential Tomb of Dracula ... )

Comics by mail order monthly, arrive on a Thursday, I'm usually done by the following Tuesday but this month was a big month, took 2 weeks (and I'm still in the text pieces in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 2), but I've switched over to Dark Tower book 6, what with book 7 out in a couple of weeks.

I am. I don't think that this was a series crying for a reprint edition, but...it has Doctor Doom, Namor and a few other cool characters, so what the Hell.

I'm also awaiting the new FANTASTIC FOUR MASTERWORKS edition. That hasn't shipped yet, has it? (Please don't tell me I missed it.)

Like Frank, I dream of owning all of Silver Age Marvel. I'd definitely love to see ESSENTIAL RAWHIDE KID and ESSENTIAL KID COLT, OUTLAW. I might even buy ESSENTIAL MILLIE THE MODEL! Ya never know.

Bob - the new FF mastwerworks shipped this week.

Just got it, in fact. It's in my grubby little hands!

I now own hard cover color reprints of the first seventy-one issues of FANTASTIC FOUR! Really, though, the first sixty-seven issues are the important ones. It's been noted many times that few new characters appeared after issue #67 (#66-67 was the "Him" Saga. This introduced the character who would later be called Adam Warlock.). A common theory is that Kirby was sick of Lee taking credit for his creations. Who knows? In any case, after #67, the Lee/Kirby run, while still producing some good stories, mainly did a lot of recycling - constantly falling back on the same stock supporting characters (The Inhumans, Silver Surfer, Dr. Doom, Galactus, Skrulls, etc.) and situations.

The ever-vital first sixty-seven issues of the FF are now mine. MINE!!

BWAAA-HHAAA-HHHHAAAA!!!!

(Okay. They're just reprints...but they're awful PURTY reprints!)

What I've heard is that Lee so heavily re-wrote the "HIM" issues and had altered the story so radically from what Kirby had wanted, that after that he effectively "gave up" on Marvel and, in his spare time, started working on what would eventually become the "Fourth World".

As far as books go, I just recently bought "I May Be Wrong
But I Doubt it" by Charles Barkley.






Seriously.