''Essential Marvel'' was a line published by

Marvel Comics Marvel Comics is a New York City–based comic book publishing, publisher, a property of the Walt Disney Company since December 31, 2009, and a subsidiary of Disney Publishing Worldwide since March 2023. Marvel was founded in 1939 by Martin G ...

from 1996–2013 that reprinted vintage

comic book A comic book, comic-magazine, or simply comic is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panel (comics), panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by descriptive prose and wri ...

material in

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format. Each

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volume reprints approximately 20–30 issues of a classic Marvel title (mostly from the

Silver Age The Ages of Man are the historical stages of human existence according to Greek mythology and its subsequent interpretatio romana, Roman interpretation. Both Hesiod and Ovid offered accounts of the successive ages of humanity, which tend to pr ...

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

). Each ''Essential'' contains between 450 and 650 pages, printed on coarse, matte-quality paper.

DC Comics DC Comics (originally DC Comics, Inc., and also known simply as DC) is an American comic book publisher owned by DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. DC is an initialism for "Detective Comics", an American comic book seri ...

had a similar range of black-and-white reprint paperbacks, ''

Showcase Presents ''Showcase Presents'' is a line (comics), line of black-and-white paperback books that were published by DC Comics (from 2005 - 2016) at an average rate of two per month. Much like Marvel Comics' ''Essential Marvel'' volumes, each book usually incl ...

'' (in the same way, the '' Marvel Masterworks'' line is the equivalent of DC's '' DC Archive Editions'') that ran from 2005-2016.

History

The ''Essential'' range launched in October 1996 with the joint release of ''Essential X-Men Vol. 1'', ''Essential Wolverine Vol. 1'' and ''Essential The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1''. While ''Essential The Amazing Spider-Man'' started with Spider-Man's first appearance in the Silver Age (collecting ''Amazing Fantasy'' #15 and ''The Amazing Spider-Man'' #1-20), Marvel chose to skip ahead to ''Giant-Size X-Men'' #1 and ''Uncanny X-Men'' #94-119, the relaunch of the title that sparked the X-Men's popularity in the late 1970s and 1980s. The decision to skip the original X-Men in favor of starting with the more well-known "All-New, All-Different" X-Men was controversial, though Marvel ultimately went back and began a new collection of ''Essential'' volumes, titled ''Essential Classic X-Men'', to collect the earliest X-Men stories (originally titled ''Essential Uncanny X-Men'' in the first volume). A new

trade dress Trade dress is the characteristics of the visual appearance of a product or its packaging (or even the design of a building) that signify the source of the product to consumers. Trade dress is an aspect of trademark law, which is a form of intelle ...

for the line was introduced in 2001. All the older volumes (excluding ''Essential Conan Vol. 1'') were eventually reprinted with the new design. The new printings also corrected printing mistakes from previous volumes (such as the fact that both ''Essential X-Men Vol. 1'' and ''Vol. 2'' both have missing pages from their earlier printings) and reshuffled content to put volume breaks in more logical places, continuity-wise. From May 2005 onward, many of the volumes were reprinted for a third time, with different cover artwork. Initially, the ''Essential'' line used newly produced artwork, but these new printings used art from the material they reprinted; the legal indicia in each volume listed them as "Second Edition, First Printing". In 2008, the line's trade dress was revised and given a new look, again initially on older volumes that were going back to press for new printings. Marvel came under criticism"Censored Essentials?"
The Groovy Age of Horror, September 14, 2006 for censoring some of the ''Essential'' books, specifically ''Essential Tomb of Dracula Vol. 3'' and ''Vol. 4'', in which digital editing was used to remove or obscure brief nudity. Both volumes contained reprints of Dracula stories originally published by Marvel in magazine format, which permitted the use of nudity in artwork. The last volumes were published in December 2013, with the line being cancelled and replaced with the '' Marvel Epic Collection''.

Volumes

Notes and references

External links

Marvel Essential.com
{{Marvel Comics Marvel Comics lines 1997 comics debuts Comic book collection books

History

Volumes

See also

Notes and references

External links