''Essential Marvel'' was a
line
Line most often refers to:
* Line (geometry), object with zero thickness and curvature that stretches to infinity
* Telephone line, a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system
Line, lines, The Line, or LINE may also refer to:
Art ...
published by
Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics is an American comic book publisher and the flagship property of Marvel Entertainment, a divsion of The Walt Disney Company since September 1, 2009. Evolving from Timely Comics in 1939, ''Magazine Management/Atlas Comics'' in ...
from 1996 - 2013 that reprints vintage
comic book
A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...
material in
paperback
A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, ...
format. Each
black-and-white
Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey.
Media
The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...
volume reprints approximately 20-30 issues of a classic Marvel title (mostly from the
Silver Age or
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...
). Each ''Essential'' contains between 450 and 650 pages, printed on coarse,
matte
Matte may refer to:
Art
* paint with a non-glossy finish. See diffuse reflection.
* a framing element surrounding a painting or watercolor within the outer frame
Film
* Matte (filmmaking), filmmaking and video production technology
* Matte pa ...
-quality paper.
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. ( doing business as DC) is an American comic book publisher and the flagship unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery.
DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, with the ...
has a similar range of black-and-white reprint paperbacks, ''
Showcase Presents'' (in the same way, the ''
Marvel Masterworks
''Marvel Masterworks'' is an American collection of hardcover and trade paperback comic book reprints published by Marvel Comics, with the main goal of republishing classic ''Marvel Comics'' storylines in a hardcover, premium edition, often with ...
'' line is the equivalent of DC's ''
DC Archive Editions
''DC Archive Editions'' is a line of hardcover reprint runs of early, often rare comic book series, titles, and stories which ran from 1989-2014. They include more than 160 Golden Age and Silver Age comic properties currently owned by DC Comics, ...
'').
History
The ''Essential'' range launched in October 1996 with the joint release of ''Essential X-Men Vol. 1'', ''Essential Wolverine Vol. 1'' and ''Essential Spider-Man Vol. 1''. While ''Essential Spider-Man'' started with Spider-Man's first appearance in the Silver Age (collecting ''Amazing Fantasy'' #15 and ''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 ''Epic Collection
''Marvel Ultimate Collections''/''Complete Collections'', ''Complete Epics'' and ''Epic Collections'' are large, full-color Trade paperback (comics), trade paperback collections of previously published Marvel Comics, Marvel comics, typically cont ...
''.
Volumes
See also
* List of comic books on CD/DVD
Notes and references
External links
Marvel Essential.com
{{Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics lines
1997 comics debuts
Comic book collection books