Caution: Geekdom Ahead

There are two things that set Marvel Comics apart from other publishers in the early days. One is their commitment to superheroes that are essentially flawed. Spider-Man is considered a criminal, the Hulk is hounded across the country, and even Thor can't get the girl. The other unique part to Marvel was their idea to mix all of their superhero characters together into a cohesive universe, so that they could interact, team up, fight each other, and trade villains.

It was a good marketing strategy. Now Dr. Doom, of Fantastic Four fame, could pop over to Spider-Man for a month and give him a little publicity. Or you can put the superheroes together in one comic, like The Avengers.

The problem with this universe today is that, with so many writers and so many Marvel comics coming out in one month, Marvel needs teams of people just to figure out where all the characters are. (And they do -- not that some characters don't slip through their fingers; Wolverine always seems ubiquitous.) But in the beginning, there was one writer -- Stan Lee -- and a limited number of artists -- primarily Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. So it was pretty frigging ambitious to not only create all these disparate characters, but merge them into different stories as well.

The fun part of reading old Marvel Comics (putting aside the problems and benefits of modern ones) is seeing how the storylines merge together. It's why comics are really the only camp-tastic works of fiction I can enjoy.

With that preamble out of the way, I've just read Essential Marvel Saga, Vol. I -- the first half of a twenty-five issue series published in the 1980s that summarized most Marvel Comics up to that point. Except it's not just a summary -- oh, no. Marvel reprinted many panels, and often entire pages, of the early comics within this series, so it's a bit like reading the CliffsNotes versions of Marvel. In addition, the editors included characters' backstories that were only revealed in later issues. This is a particular draw for the X-Men, whose origin stories are spread pretty far throughout the early Marvel comics. (And it's the only way to get the X-Men reader base in early, because X-Men #1 was published pretty far into the early Marvel era. Bear in mind that this is a large reader base that they want to get hooked.)

So how's the quality? I got exactly what I wanted out of this series. I didn't really want to spend hundreds of dollars tracking down all the Essential Marvel paperbacks to read all the early stories; here, I've gone through a few years' worth of comics in twelve issues. I'm missing a lot of material, but the early comics were fairly repetitive anyway.

And I really prefer the early Marvel comics to the modern ones. Today, the editors and writers are constantly worried about making world-changing events, when really all I want are some good superhero fights with some relatable characters. This is a good way to get me to find out what early comics I want to seek out, if any. Sure, I'm getting spoiled on a few notes, but hey -- it's comics that are 40 years old, so I'll probably already know the outcome.

Actually, I found that, having read the early issues of Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and Thor, I had covered a lot of what's mentioned in here. I hadn't read the X-Men origins (but those are hard to find), and I hadn't read Ant-Man, Hulk, or Iron Man. Or the Avengers & X-Men, when I got to those at the end. But I found this to be a superior way to read Fantastic Four and such; I loved Spider-Man, but the others were a bit too pedestrian for my tastes, to read quite so regularly. This is a good middle ground.

Long review. So! Should you read Marvel Saga? Only if you're a real geek like me, and if you like the crossover aspect to Marvel Comics. (Some don't.) If you'd rather read these characters' individual stories, seek out their books instead -- especially in the early issues of Marvel Saga, close to the entire issue is republished. For the rest of us, it's fun escapist reading -- it's nice to remember a time when Stan Lee wrote the best comics in the world.