[boox909]

This newest offering arrived on the shelves today and I snatched it up because this is nice to see in principle; BUT, it proved to be a big monkey's paw upon further reading.

This book features entries for Namor, Human Torch, Toro, most of the folks who appeared in the still unfinished "The Twelve", and figures major and minor such as Dynaman, Angel, and Red Raven -- BUT no Captain America, no Bucky, no Blazing Skull, no Destroyer, etc., etc., -- it seems to be nothing more than a reminder that "Hey, we're letting ya'll know we own these properties; thanks."

If I had a choice regarding purchasing this all over again, I would have passed.

For the effort that was put into this to promote characters who could not hack it in the 1940s (and can't even pull a 12 issue mini-series in some cases), it is my opinion that the page count could have been doubled with a reasonable price tag of $6.99 (reasonable for us nerds who would still buy it at that price) with a solid expanded attempt to cover all of the Timely 'superheroes/mystery men/jungle bums/western hacks' into one respectable package.

Thanks Marvel -- House of Ideas indeed.

B. 


PS: Do not miss out on the following recommended 70th Anniversary Editions --


Daring Mystery Comics (featuring The Phantom Reporter) -- well worth the read!

All Select Comics (featuring The Blonde Phantom) -- surprisingly great story!

Young Allies Comics (featuring "grown up Bucky" Cap & a few surviving Young Allies) -- heart-breaking and very respectful (Roger Stern wrote it, 'nuff said)

[Yoc]

Young Allies Comics has been my fav so far though I haven't read them all yet.

Sorry abut the Handbook.  Seems to me they did a GoldenAge volume a year or two ago.
-Yoc

[phabox]

I enjoyed the All-Winners Comics Issue, always nice to read an 'untold' tale of the AW Squad.

-Nigel

[phabox]

Having got my first look at this Handbook I see that it is designed to cellibrate Marvel's 70th Aniversary year and for that reason has restricted its focus to characters that appeared only during its first year of publication.

So no Captain America, Destroyer, Miss America or any other Timely character that showed up after October 1940 or thereabouts.

-Nigel

[Ed Love]

I don't mind it being designed to celebrate the characters introduced 70 years ago but sadly they don't really follow through on that as it focuses more on current continuity, retcons and looks of characters than it does on the original information. There's no attempt at differentiating which information was true to the original stories and which is true to just the modern versions. Thus, there's no entry on Hurricane or Mercury but a 2 page entry on Makkari who is NOT a GA character but one retconned to taking their place. It's almost completely useless for true GA information except for characters that haven't been touched by modern creators. And, there's a lot of waste. Why two separate entries for Electro and his creator Zog? Does Ka-Zar's lion Zar need an entry to himself? Why oh why does Namor's dad even have an entry much less a whole page? Did he ever appear in any thing other than the origin story to warrant a separate entry beyond what's covered in Namor's? And Namor could easily have been two pages instead of 6. About a third of the book could have been trimmed to cover more of the villains or expand the scope of the book beyond just that first year. Add a few pages, and they could have gotten all the GA superheroes in there.

[phabox]

They should have turned this handbook over to people like us, we would have made a better job of it 

-Nigel

[Yoc]

The massive (and Very Expensive) Marvel Mystery Comics Omnibus is getting rave reviews on the Timely-Atlas Yahoo site where the hobby's most informed fans of Timely hang out.  I've seen side by side comparisons of certain pages that show this is nothing like the horrible Masterworks version.  It collects MARVEL COMICS #1 & MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS #2-12

[bchat]

They should have turned this handbook over to people like us, we would have made a better job of it

I would imagine that the Handbooks are meant to be read by the casual fan of The Marvel Universe (it's how every other Handbook has been handled), to help introduce them to the Golden Age characters as Marvel currently uses them. Any information that doesn't fit into what Marvel wants people to know would serve no purpose for the company.  Marvel may have also worked under the assumption that more "fans of the Marvel Universe" were going to buy it than "fans of Golden Age comics" in general would, and so wrote-up the entries accordingly.

[Ed Love]

It wouldn't have been hard for it to be for both audiences though, to present the original information and then a clear demarcation of what the modern history is such as a recap of the original Mercury and Hurricane stories then sum up with a simple: It has been recently revealed that the heroes Mercury and Hurricane were actually identities used by the Eternal Makkari. Or as with Mr. E, "It has been recently revealed that Mr. E is Jewish and changed his name from... "

OR to do two paragraphs, one tagged "golden-age history" and "modern history".

Instead we got a long Makkari entry where Hurricane and Mercury were barely footnotes. If Makkari qualified as a GA character, then every modern character retconned as being active at this time or before should qualify.

And, the Ka-Zar entry doesn't reference his modern history at all or how there could be two characters decades and continents apart could be named Ka-Zar. Be like finding an aborigine tribe that has never met those of European descent and one of them being named "Ed Love".

I found it to be very inconsistent/schizophrenic in what it wanted to be and so did both mediocre.

[darkmark]

The real problem is that Earth-Timely is different from Earth-Marvel and they don't want to acknowledge that.

[comicsnorth]

I actually find myself missing the "good old days" when Marvel's company line was that the bulk of its Golden Age comics stories were just comic book stories, some of them fictional accounts of characters that actually existed (like the Invaders & Liberty Legion), and some about characters that were apparently completely made up, like Ka-Zar.  Not that that helps with the amazing coincidence that young Kevin Plunder would decades later wind up in the Savage Land named after a semi-obscure fictional Jungle Lord. 

I don't mind Mercury & Hurricane being folded into Makkari, but it makes the current insistence that there were actually two Marvel Boys, both named Martin Burns and both deriving the bulk of their power/s from Hercules (without actually connecting either of them formally with the present-day Marvel version of Hercules) mildly irritating.

-comicsnorth

[narfstar]

I have not read new Marvels for a long time except Avengers Next series which is not part of their normal continuity