If you watch my YouTube or see me talk on social media, you know I don’t read a lot of modern comics, but spend most of my reading time on the silver age Marvel material.
Thankfully, Marvel has put these out in easy to digest collections of about 25 issues each in the form of the Epic Collections.
The books don’t all come out in order, so there’s no pressure to start from anywhere, but they focus on getting the Stan Lee stuff out and then interesting runs which haven’t been collected elsewhere. So you can get a wide breadth of reading of superhero material from when it was great, before EVENT FEVER took over everything and made a jumbled mess where the books can’t really tell their own stories that have any meaning anymore.
I’ve really enjoyed them so far, to the point where I only have 7 left to purchase to be 100% up to date on the line. Going through and reading has been a joy this last year so I just want to share a bit of the information.
Some of the books ARE out of print, which makes it a little difficult, but Marvel has stated that at least the Book 1s will always be reprinted, allowing folk to come in and check things out.
My highest recommendation so far:
- Stan Lee era Amazing Spider-Man (Vols 1-4 are out)
- Moon Knight (Vols 1-3 are out)
- Stan Lee era Thor (Vols 1-5 complete it)
- Stan Lee era Fantastic Four (Vols 1-4 are out)
- Iron Fist (One Volume is out)
Really good stuff and of course there’s a lot to explore and a lot for everyone.
If you like the old school vibe of comic and the way that individual issues told their own story while building something bigger, you’ll enjoy Flying Sparks. I aimed to recapture that feel of the silver age through the 1980s, and readers say I captured it. Start with issue 1 available on Amazon now.
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