No more Essentials... but not here

Just a quick note to comment on the news that after several months of speculation, Marvel has now announced that the Essential line is over, citing a belief that the material should now be in colour. It's a pity but, with the disappearance of new volumes since December, unsurprising.

There are various other ongoing reprint lines, most obiously the Epics, so in the long term we'll see where both collectors and this site go. However for now there are still Essential volumes left to cover and I'll be looking at as many of them as I can first.

Looking to the future...

Having now looked at all the Essential Spider-Man volumes that have been released so far, and all the guest appearances that have also been reprinted in the Essentials, it’s naturally time for a pause in this blog. But I promise this is only a pause and that when further volumes are released I’ll post my thoughts on them and on anything they miss out. And yes, that includes filling in gaps in the existing guest appearance posts. (I’ll both edit the original post to add my thoughts but also generate a new post so that long-time readers of this blog can see the additions.) I can’t say how long that will take although I’m not expecting a sudden rapid surge of Essential Sub-Mariner volumes that will take the series up to Spidey’s appearance in issue #69 anytime soon.

However it’s more reasonable to expect there will be future Essential volumes from the main Spider-Man series rather sooner. After all we’ve had them in most years since the Essential series began back in 1996, although checking the dates I was surprised to see there were none in 2008 or 2010, both years that saw lots of Essentials released, and rather less surprised to see none in 1999, 2001 or 2003, back in the earlier, leaner years. With no less than twenty-one volumes from four series (not counting the Spider-Woman or Punisher volumes reviewed here), there’s been on average more than one volume a year, a very healthy sign.

That said it would be helpful if the next few years could help bring the different titles to more or less the same point. As I noted in my review of Essential Web volume 2, it can be very confusing to be reading issues dealing with the aftermath of developments in other series that haven’t been reached yet, particularly when two entire issues of Web were devoted to wrapping up the loose ends from a major storyline that mainly ran in Amazing, whilst another major storyline is in part a sequel to an unreprinted issue of Marvel Team-Up. And it’s also a real shock that Essential Marvel Team-Up has only had three volumes so far, especially as the Thing’s equivalent title Marvel Two-in-One has been Essentialised in its entirety, and we’ve also had two volumes from Team-Up’s replacement title, Web.

Were I in charge of deciding which volumes to release next… the line would probably rapidly end in bankruptcy due to my decisions being heavily biased towards my personal preferences. (Away from Spider-Man there’d be quite a bit more Daredevil, Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer released but not too many X-everything books.) But I would certainly try to level the Spider-Man volumes so they wouldn’t be years apart. That would probably mean three more volumes of Team-Up, two of Amazing and one of Spectacular before I would release Essential Web 3, although I might be prepared to be a little flexible so that crossovers like “Inferno” and “Acts of Vengeance” don’t all appear in the same volumes in the same year (which might be the long term reason for the staggered releases). But certainly I’d want to get Team-Up completed as soon as possible, although there’s the other problem that a few individual issues may have to be omitted due to the rights on the guest stars. The most obvious ones are Red Sonja in #79 and King Kull in #112, both characters ultimately coming from the works of Robert E. Howard. #84 & #85 guest star Shang-Chi, the Master of Kung-Fu, and are possibly also a mess as although Shang-Chi himself is Marvel property, large elements of his backstory and supporting cast are drawn from the Fu Manchu novels by Sax Rohmer though I’m not sure if any of Rohmer’s creations are used in those issues and Marvel has Essentialised other appearances of Shang-Chi in the likes of Giant-Size Spider-Man and Marvel Two-in-One).

Looking beyond the imbalance amongst the current titles, there’s other material to collect in future volumes. In 1990 Spider-Man gained a fourth title, imaginatively entitled Spider-Man, and then in 1993 there was a fifth, Spider-Man Unlimited. As the 1990s went one there were ever more one shots and limited series, and also two interesting ongoing “past tales” series – Untold Tales of Spider-Man and Web-Spinners: Tales of Spider-Man which told stories from earlier periods of the webslinger’s history. It would be a pity to miss any of these out, though whether to include them with the best relevant ongoing series or to do some special grab bag collections is a decision to be taken later. I’ve already looked at the looming problems from the deluge of crossovers in a previous post so won’t repeat my thoughts here.

But as well as the continuing present day adventures of Spider-Man there are a few other series to consider. What If... is a concept of alternative history that Marvel has devoted several series to, with many issues focusing on alternative twists in Spider-Man’s life (and he’s also appeared in many other stories as well). It would be nice to see some Essential What If... volumes at some point. And then there are two reasonably well-known alternative futures. The 2099 line of comics is one of the best known and Spider-Man 2099 lasted forty-six issues, the longest of any of the books. There was even a one-shot in which Spider-Man met his present day counterpart. Later on the MC2 uiverse was spun out of a later issue of What If.... Set about a generation into the future of the current Marvel Universe, it featured the offspring of many of the heroes, including Spider-Girl, the daughter of the true Spider-Man. However as that series only began in 1998 it may be too recent to consider for the Essentials for a good while. The same applies to the present day alternate reality Ultimate Spider-Man from 2001.

I doubt that even in fifteen years time everything I’ve listed above will have been collected – that is if there are still trade paperbacks around then (I’ve long given up on believing any predictions about what will and won’t vanish with a particular technology emerging). But in the near future we should see some more volumes.

One of my favourite periods on Spider-Man is the Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz run on Amazing from #251 until #283 when an awful lot happened in rapid succession. It will be a joy to see this Essentialised and it’s due very soon. Further down the line there are other runs that are amongst the best, particularly those by creators like J.M. DeMatteis and Sal Buscema. And as astonishing as it seems, Essential Web is not that far off the period when it finally had a regular creative team. So there’s plenty to look forward to.

I’ll be aiming to keep up with the volumes as they come and share my thoughts here. I’ll also make some other posts on related points of interest. And in the meantime I’ll be posting my opinions on some related series. So one way or another this blog won’t be going away.

See you in due course!

Maximum Crossovers?

In my last couple of posts (for now) I’m going to look at the future of the Essential Spider-Man line. I’ll talk more about the general direction in my second post, but here I want to consider what could be a fairly major problem for future volumes – the proliferation of crossovers both within the Spider-Man titles and between them and the wider Marvel line. The issues Essentialised so far have generally preceded this development and consequently only included at most one or two extra issues. But the most recently published volume (Web 2) contains four additional issues in order to carry the full story “Kraven’s Last Hunt”. As the crossovers increase, how can the Essential volumes cope without producing volumes that only advance their own series by a few issues and contain tonnes of crossovers the reader will be buying in other volumes as well, but equally without running storylines that make no sense without issues in other volumes that may not be available on the shelf (or even published yet)?

It’s certainly a tricky dilemma, but in order to put it in context it probably helps to draw a list of the crossovers yet to come. In the interests of sanity this list only covers storylines that ran in more than one Spider-Man title. When only one of the titles crossed over with other Marvel titles (e.g. “Sabotage”, “Spirits of Venom”, “Infinity Crusade” or “Civil War”) then it’s not included. So here goes...

“The Wedding” – Amazing #290-292 & Annual #21 and Spectacular Annual #7.

“Mad Dog Ward” – Web #33, Amazing #295 and Spectacular #133.

“The Evolutionary War” – Amazing Annual #22, Spectacular Annual #8, and Web Annual #4, plus eight other annuals (or nine if you include Alf).

“Inferno” – Amazing #311-313, Spectacular #146-148, Web #47-48, plus lots and lots of other Marvel titles – one list I’ve seen has forty-two issues on it!

“Atlantis Attacks” – Amazing Annual #23, Spectacular Annual #9 and Web Annual #5, plus eleven other annuals.

“Acts of Vengeance” – Amazing #326-329, Spectacular #158-160 and Web #59-61, plus lots and lots and lots of other Marvel titles – if you thought “Inferno” was big, for “Acts of Vengeance” one list I’ve seen has a total of sixty-eight books on it!

“Spidey’s Totally Tiny Adventure” – Amazing Annual #24, Spectacular Annual #10 and Web Annual #6. Marvel switched away from running epics across all its annuals to running smaller crossovers.

“The Spider And The Ghost!” – Amazing Annual #25, Spectacular Annual #11 and Web Annual #7.

“The Hero Killers” – Amazing Annual #26, Spectacular Annual #12, Web Annual #8 and also New Warriors Annual #2.

“Maximum Carnage” – Spider-Man Unlimited #1-2, Web #101-103, Amazing #378-380, Spider-Man #35-37 and Spectacular #101-103. This is the one where things start to get tricky.

“Pursuit” – Spider-Man #45, Spectacular #211, Web #112 and Amazing #389.

“The Clone Saga” – This saw lots of individually named story arcs, and complicating things further there was a period when Amazing & Spectacular focused on Peter Parker/Spider-Man whilst Web & “adjectiveless” focused on Ben Reilly/Scarlet Spider. Then the books all fused together, telling a virtually weekly story. Then midway through Ben’s time as Spider-Man there was a move back towards keeping the titles reasonably separate subject to further crossovers. To save my sanity I’m going to list this as the whole lot:
Web #117-129, Amazing #394-418, Spider-Man #51-75, Spectacular #217-240, Unlimited #7-14, Web of Scarlet Spider #1-4, Amazing Scarlet Spider #1-2, Scarlet Spider #1-2, Spectacular Scarlet Spider #1-2, Scarlet Spider Unlimited #1 and Sensational #0-11; plus the limited series and one-shots: Jackal Files, Maximum Clonage Alpha, Maximum Clonage Omega, The Lost Years #0-3, The Parker Years, The Final Adventure #1-4, Redemption #1-4, The Osborn Journal and Dead Man’s Hand.
And if that isn’t enough, The Complete Clone Saga and The Complete Ben Reilly Epic collections of this period also include Spider-Man Team-Up 1-5, “Planet of the Symbiotes” in the 1995 annuals (see below), and various specials and issues of other series. Some of these issues can be trimmed off if focusing upon a single series but it would take an extended process to work out what should and shouldn’t be added to the general Essential volumes for each.

“Planet of the Symbiotes”/”Ghosts” – Amazing Super Special #1, Spider-Man Super Special #1, Venom Super Special #1, Spectacular Super Special 1, Web Super Special #1. These are basically annuals by another name and whilst taking place amidst the wider Clone Saga they form two distinctive crossovers in their own right. (Clones and symbiotes – what more could you ask for?)

“Onslaught” – Amazing #415 and Spider-Man #72. Another Marvel Universe wide crossover (and still during the Clone era) though Spider-Man managed to get away with a rather minimal contribution.

“Spider-Hunt” – Sensational #25, Amazing #432, Spider-Man #89 and Spectacular #255.

“Identity Crisis” – Sensational #27-28, Amazing #434-435, Spider-Man #91-92 and Spectacular #257-258 This one’s complicated by Peter Parker adopting four separate new identities and each title focusing upon a different one.

“The Gathering of Five” – Sensational #32-33, Amazing #440, Spider-Man #96 and Spectacular #262; and “The Final Chapter” – Amazing #441, Spider-Man #97-98 and Spectacular 263. Although they have separate names, these are basically one extended story which served to bring all the titles to a close before a major relaunch of the line.

Now we come to the relaunch era when the line was cut to two present day titles and the numbers were reset. Also with only two regular titles not all crossovers were explicitly branded. I’m broadly following SpiderFan.Org’s lead here.

‘Introducing Spider-Woman’ (I can’t remember if this has a formal title) – Amazing #5-6 and Peter Parker #5.

“Another Return of The Sinister Six” – Amazing #12 and Peter Parker #12.

“We’re All Doomed... Again!” – Amazing #16 and Peter Parker #16.

‘Green Goblin V revealed’ – Amazing #18 and Peter Parker#18.

“Maximum Security” – Amazing #23 and Peter Parker #23, plus lots of other Marvel titles. However if memory serves the two Spider-Man issues largely stand separately from one another.

“Revenge of The Green Goblin” – Revenge of the Green Goblin #1-3, Amazing #25 and Peter Parker #25.

‘The Return of Mary Jane’ – Amazing #29 & Annual 2001 and Peter Parker#29.

Then the original numbering was restored on Amazing, but in the same period the second (and briefly third) books went through other titles, some of them recycled.

“The Other” – Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #1-4, Marvel Knights: Spider-Man #19-22 and Amazing #525-528.

“One More Day” – Amazing #544-545, Friendly Neighborhood #24 and Sensational #41.

This list surprised me as I would have expected many more storylines running in multiple titles. But unless I’ve overlooked some the pattern is clear – after “Kraven’s Last Hunt” and Mad “Dog Ward”, the only crossovers between Spider-Man titles for the next five years were either in the annuals or part of wider mega crossovers with the Spider-Man titles opting to tell extended Spider-Man arcs within them. In general it should be relatively easy to carry on the separate volumes for Essentials until 1993, though it would probably help to make the volumes covering “Acts of Vengeance” extra large so the crossovers don’t slow the series down too much.

It was “Maximum Carnage” in 1993 which began the pattern for routine storylines across the multiple Spider-Man titles, and the following year this was tested with “Pursuit” before coming with a vengeance with the numerous storylines that made up “the Clone Saga” and at times saw the Spider-Man books effectively serving as one continuous story (the Superman books did this even more explicitly in this period). Following that there were a few crossovers in 1998 in the lead up to the relaunch. Then in the early relaunch years there were a handful of storylines told in both titles, perhaps due to sharing the writer, plus a couple of events. And then it dropped back to only the occasional crossover, largely as part of a big event. The switch to multiple issues of Amazing each month has (for now) seemingly ended Spider-Man crossovers.

The Essentials will have to do some real headscratching about how to incorporate “Maximum Carnage”, let alone “the Clone Saga”, when they get to those in due time. Since there are five other Essential series that are chronologically ahead of the Spider-Man titles it’s possible that how they handle similar crossovers may offer a solution. Here’s a quick rundown:

Essential Silver Surfer – Volume 2 gets up to issue #18 from 1988 of the Surfer’s 1980s/1990s series. The only crossover so far is “The Evolutionary War” and just the Surfer’s own annual is included.

Essential X-Men – Volume 10 gets up to issue #272 of the Uncanny X-Men (the titles of the X-Men books and the Essential series can really confuse). This time round there are rather more outside issues with crossovers and of those from 1986 onwards it runs through “Mutant Massacre” (also containing the New Mutants, X-Factor, Thor and Power Pack issues), “The Evolutionary War” (just the Uncanny X-Men annual), “Inferno” (also containing the X-Factor issues but none of the New Mutants, X-Terminators or any of the other books), “Atlantis Attacks” (just the Uncanny X-Men annual), “Acts of Vengeance” (just the Uncanny X-Men issues), “Days of Future Present” (also containing the Fantastic Four, New Mutants and X-Factor annuals) and “X-Tinction Agenda” (also containing the X-Factor and New Mutants issues).

Essential X-Factor – Volume 5, coming out soon, will take the series up to issue #70 from 1991. Again there are multiple crossovers in this run including “X-Factor” (which launched the series via the Avengers and Fantastic Four), “Mutant Massacre” (also containing the Thor and Power Pack issues but not the Uncanny X-Men or New Mutants ones), “Fall of the Mutants” (only the X-Factor issues), “The Evolutionary War” (just the X-Factor annual), “Inferno” (also containing two of the Uncanny X-Men issues but not the other two or any of the other books), “Atlantis Attacks” (just the X-Factor annual), “Acts of Vengeance” (just the X-Factor issue), “Days of Future Present” (also containing the Fantastic Four, New Mutants and Uncanny X-Men annuals), “X-Tinction Agenda” (also containing the Uncanny X-Men and New Mutants issues), “Kings of Pain” (also containing the New Mutants and Uncanny X-Men annuals but, on the information I have, not the New Warriors one) and “Muir Island Saga” (also containing the final Uncanny X-Men issue but not the previous two).

Essential Punisher – With volume 4 again coming out soon the series is up to #59 from 1992. Once the Punisher’s own ongoing series is reached at the start of volume 2, the only crossover issue from another series included is Daredevil #257 which is half of a two-parter. Otherwise it just has the Punisher’s own issues of “The Evolutionary War”, “Atlantis Attacks”, “Acts of Vengeance” and various shorter annual crossovers that didn’t involve Spider-Man titles. Also note it doesn't include issues of Punisher War Journal or Punisher War Zone, but I’m not sure how many crossovers there were between the Punisher’s three titles.

Essential Wolverine – Volume 6, coming out soon, will take the series up to #128 from 1998. So far the series has only had a single outside issue (Uncanny X-Men #332) despite running through several crossovers including “Acts of Vengeance”, “Fatal Attractions”, “Phalanx Covenant”, “Onslaught” and “Operation: Zero Tolerance” though notably the “Age of Apocalypse” issues are absent, however as the book was temporarily notionally renamed and renumbered then one can claim exemption as not part of the actual series.

Well... The experience of Essential Punisher and Essential Wolverine would suggest that it’s relatively easy to get through many wider crossovers by just reprinting the issues the title character was in. The Essential X-Men and Essential X-Factor experiences suggests that not all crossovers are equal and in some cases it’s possible to limit the number of additional issues that are brought in to complete the story. Again there’s an obvious difference between books starring separate, albeit related, teams (Essential X-Men has not quite reached the launch of the second X-Men title) and books starring the same character but they offer hope. It also seems clear that with the smaller annual crossovers it’s advisable to run all the parts in each relevant Essential (though space can be saved by not reprinting their back-up features). All five series are in agreement that the epic annual crossovers can be limited to the individual annuals for each series (although for Atlantis Attacks the Spectacular and Daredevil annuals are closely tied together so may been an exception). One concern is how the crossovers can slow down the pace of reprinting the main title. Essential X-Men volume 10 has just eight of the regular issues and one of the regular annuals, and almost half the volume given over to completing the “Days of Future Present” and “X-Tinction Agenda” crossovers.

More intriguingly the experience of Essential Wolverine in completely side-stepping the “Weapon X” title that appeared during the “Age of Apocalypse” suggests that the Spider-Man Essentials could potentially get away with not carrying all the “Scarlet Spider” books in each volume – maybe instead they could be a standalone affair or even help fill up the end of Essential Web? Of course that’s some way off, and there’s the previous deluge of Clone Saga material to tackle first.

But for the next few years worth of issues it should be relatively easy. For “Inferno” and “Acts of Vengeance” decisions will have to be taken on which issues can appear just in their own titles and which ones need to also appear in other books, but it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. “Mad Dog Ward” must appear in all three series. Each of the smaller annual crossovers will probably have to appear in each volume, whilst the Evolutionary War and Atlantis Attacks annuals can be confined to their own series. And both of the Wedding annuals should probably appear in both Essential Amazing and Essential Spectacular, though I note the Spectacular annual, featuring the honeymoon, was omitted from The Wedding tradepaperback, an omission that may be repeated. But otherwise there’s at least three more volumes for each Spider-Man series (and at least one for the adjectiveless) before the crossover problem will hit on a regular basis. And hopefully by then Essential X-Men will be deep into the two-titles era and can offer more precedents.

Marvel's Essential series – an introduction

If you're already familiar with Marvel's Essential reprint trade paperbacks then this post is probably best skipped. However if not, here's the low-down on the main points about the series in so far as they apply to the Spider-Man titles I'll be reviewing. For those who want even more information about the series in general I'd advise reading the Wikipedia article: Essential Marvel.

The books reprint a large number of classic comics, nearly always in the original order, in black and white on cheap paper. (I believe the format originated in Japan for manga.) With about five hundred pages in each volume they represent some of the best value for classic comics – providing you don't mind black & white which in my opinion doesn't affect readability. The series began in 1996 and Marvel have since published about eighty different volumes, ranging from mainstream series such as the Fantastic Four and the X-Men to obscure ones such as Killraven and Tales of the Zombie. (DC have since followed the lead and produced an equivalent series entitled Showcase Presents.)

In general each volume reprints some twenty or so issues (the precise number depends on the original page counts) from a Marvel comic series, including relevant annuals and some of the short-lived companion series (such as the Giant-Size series that briefly ran in the mid-1970s). In order to maintain story cohesion the volumes sometimes include additional material such as the issues of other comics that set-up a character and/or team before they got their own title. Furthermore over the years there have been many crossovers between different Marvel titles and sometimes you need to read issues of two titles to understand what's going on. Often the direct crossover issues are included in both titles' Essential volumes.

As the series has been around for sixteen years there have been a number of modifications over the years. The cover design has changed at least twice, with many earlier volumes reprinted with the new designs. Also some original editions of earlier volumes either omitted material (such as the short-lived Spectacular Spider-Man magazine from 1968) or placed annuals and specials in an awkward place in the run. Later editions of these volumes have sought to correct the earlier mistakes by adding and re-ordering; however sometimes this means particular issues are moved from one volume to another. In general I'll be reviewing from the original volumes but will point out where modifications have subsequently been made. A more minor point of confusion can be the volume titles. The series initially titled "Essential Spider-Man" reprints Amazing Spider-Man, not the series launched in 1990 with just "Spider-Man" as the title (until #75). The later volumes and subsequent editions have modified this a little by using the full series name. (And this is far less confusing than the names used for the various X-Men volumes but fortunately that’s beyond the scope of this post.)

The Essential volumes don't come out at a strict frequency and sometimes readers have had to wait a few years before the next volume for a particular title. Spider-Man has been quite lucky in this regard with on average at least one volume from any of his titles coming out each year. A minor problem with the multiple titles is that sometimes the volumes covering one title can get ahead of others. At the time of writing the Amazing volumes (including the next scheduled to be out soon) are up to issue #248. However Marvel Team-Up is lagging behind, having only reached #75 which came out the same month as Amazing #186. Spectacular Spider-Man has reached #114, parallel to Amazing #276. Web of Spider-Man (which actually replaced Marvel Team-Up after 150 issues) is up to #32, the contemporary of Amazing #294 & Spectacular #132.

Marvel doesn't always own the rights to reprint absolutely all of its old comics. Over the years it has licensed many characters from novels, television, toys and other media, with time limits on how long it can print comics featuring them for. Once the contracts expire it is no longer possible to reprint their appearances without fresh negotiations (which can be too expensive for a series like this) and sometimes the characters are now licensed to other comic companies and so completely off limits. This only affects a handful of Spider-Man comics, mainly odd issues of Marvel Team-Up and Giant-Size Spider-Man. However where possible I may take a brief side-step to look at omitted material.

Finally there have been problems with the source material. Marvel has unfortunately not retained all the original film separations for all its comics. Back in the early 1990s many classic 1960s stories had separations recreated for the more expensive Masterworks series of reprints and these often mean good quality black & white prints are available. However there are many issues that have neither original separations not later recreations on file, and some others where the only available separations are from reprints that edited out pages, and consequently the missing material has had to be reproduced from the finished comics themselves, including the colour overlays now rendered as intrusive greys. Fortunately nearly all the Spider-Man issues reprinted so far have been lucky to have either original or recreation separations available and it's not as noticeable as in some other Essential runs.

Despite all the above factors, the Essential series are one of the best & most affordable ways to enjoy many Marvel series. Which is why I like them so much.