The third and final volume of Marvel Firsts The 1970s arrived yesterday. This intriguing series finishes up with another volume of curiosities. This one is filled with some of the bigger splashes of the later Bronze Age for Marvel and some of the oddities as well.
The highlights of this volume for me are the debut stories for Skull the Slayer, Ulysses Bloodstone, Starlord, and 3-D Man. I have all of these in the original, but seeing these offbeat stories in such a dandy looking format is keen. None of these characters really found much success, but the debuts for each is very sharp.
This volume also features a lot of Marvel's attempts to bring women to the fore with Ms.Marvel, Spider-Woman, and She-Hulk getting a showing.
Jack Kirby's dramatic return to Marvel is well documented with The Eternals, Machine Man, and Devil Dinosaur debuts. This isn't the same Kirby who left several years before, but Kirby is still the "King".
Both the Moon Knight and the Guardians of the Galaxy stories were slight disappointments alas since what is used are the first stories of their ongoing series and not the actual debut stories for the characters. For the Guardians that would've been in the late 60's and so not for this volume at all, but for Moon Knight, I've always rather liked his debut story from Marvel Spotlight and am a bit bummed it isn't included.
All in all another fun and interesting volume with several neat galleries of covers of other books which hit the stands during the last part of the decade. There are always things you forget about.
Here are the covers of the issues included in their chronological order, the order in which they appear in the book itself.
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ReplyDeleteI've been loving this series, and I understand a 1980's volume is in the offing. My birthday (46!) is in about three weeks, and I've hinted to my wife that if the boys are looking for something inexpensive to get the old man, this would fit the bill!
Thanks for your thoughts,
Doug
As well as these have been selling, I suspected the 80's were due. It'll be interesting to see what gets included when the era of the limited series gets cataloged.
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1976 was a huge year for me, Marvel-wise. I bought all four of those Number Ones in the local newsagent.
ReplyDeleteI got a thrill from seeing that Marvel Spotlight issue with (The) Moon Knight. I can instantly picture myself reading it outside my High School. The character made a big impression on me and, incredibly, about 35 years later, I've just finished reading his most recent series!