Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Essential Marvel Saga volume 1

Essential Marvel Saga, Vol. 1Essential Marvel Saga, Vol. 1 by Peter Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Essential Marvel Saga volume 1 contains Marvel Saga 1-12.

Back before my wife was my wife, she had a lot of questions about the characters she was seeing in the Marvel movies. Eventually, I bought her this. To this day, I don't think she's picked it up but I tried.

Marvel Saga is an abridged version of the first few years of Marvel's Silver age, told more or less chronologically. Most of the art is panels taken from the silver age books themselves, although art from some later retcons/reveals is also used, as well as new material by Ron Frenz.

The book breezes through the birth of Galactus and the creation of the Eternals and the Deviants by the Celestials, the rise of the Kree and Skrull, the fall of Atlantis, and the gunfighters of the old west in just a couple pages.

The meat of the book starts with the Fantastic Four, of course, and the formation of Alpha Flight, which I did not know was concurrent with the Fantastic Four's origin. Imagine a silver age Alpha Flight comic. Anyway, the book continues to hit all the high notes from this part of the silver age, like the origins of The Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, the X-Men, Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, and The Avengers. The book ends with a recap of Captain America's origin and his joining the Avengers. No Daredevil just yet, he must show up in volume 2.

I read a couple issues of this as a kid and loved it. As an adult, I enjoyed it. When the time it was released, it was as it said it was: The History of the Marvel Universe. By only hitting the high notes and working some of the later stuff into it, it avoids messy stuff like Reed Richards and Ben Grimm serving in World War II together and things of that nature. Pre-Internet, it was also a great way for a kid to learn what happened in comics decades before he or she was born. I know I didn't know of Cap's Kooky Quartet or the Frightful Four before I picked it up back in the day.

While unavoidably dated, Essential Marvel Saga was still enjoyable. I think Marvel should do something similar every ten years or so as a service to new readers. Also, Sue Storm should have ended up with Namor. Three out of five stars.

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