In addition to the existing chapters about Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer and Spider-Man, we now have an Incredible Hulk chapter in the “History of the Marvel Universe” series. Sadly, due to the loss of license reported here, some of the chapters I had planned to write (and looked forward to researching) won’t happen, as I simply won’t have access to the source material. I still plan to write an Iron Man column in time for the movie, followed by the Avengers, Captain America, Ghost Rider and the Uncanny X-Men, but new names won’t be added to the list.
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With the third film coming to DVD and Blu-Ray this Tuesday, we’ve got the Spider-Man chapter of the “History of the Marvel Universe” series on tap today. I’ll take this opportunity to rave about GIT Corp’s DVD-ROM collections of Marvel Comics, which make this series of columns possible on my budget. (The bulk of the research was completed by reading this set. Similar sets will be used to research the forthcoming Hulk and Iron Man columns.)
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The plan for these columns has changed a bit since the Fantastic Four chapter went up. For starters, instead of a five column limit, I’ll be writing columns that relate to all titles I can write them for. As the columns are primarily meant to help those wishing to learn more about the characters, driven by an impetus sparked by a recent and enjoyable movie, release dates will be timed with the movies. (The Spider-Man column should be published just before Spider-Man 3 hits home video later this month, for instance.) Also, the arbitrary “10 issue” limit has been lifted.
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A friend of mine who is more familiar with summer blockbusters than comics asked me for my choices for the main comics to read to establish a sense of the history of the Marvel Universe. It occurred to me that this might be of interest to others, as well. As a result, his answer appears here, in the first of a five part series (that will probably take a year or two to finish; there’s a lot I still haven’t read.) May 31, 2009 UPDATE: The series is now going to be more than five parts, and will likely be coming out erratically. All now have the “HistoryMU” tag; if you click on that down at the bottom of the article, you’ll see everything to date.
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