Wednesday, May 4, 2011

1985 - The Marvel Saga


Lovely wrap-around cover to Marvel Saga #1 by Ron Frenz.

The Marvel Saga: The Official History of the Marvel Universe was a 25-issue miniseries that served as the Bible of Marvel Comics history. I devoured the over 900+ pages of this Saga as it helped me catch up and fill-in the blanks in Marvel Comics history. Writer and historian Peter Sanderson wove together panels and narrative to chronologically tell the Marvel Saga.

It still stands today as a great reference allowing you to see how all the different Marvel events and storylines fit together in proper order. Issue #25 ended covering the Fantastic Four’s first encounter with Galactus and the Silver Surfer. This series was recently reprinted in two volumes in the Marvel Essentials black-and-white format.

An example of the series’ style and narration:





"Rainbow Bridging" art sequence by Walt Simonson:


Bridging art sequence by Bill Sienkiewicz:



4 comments:

  1. Sorry, Daniel, but I somehow managed to delete your comment:

    Daniel H (http://openid.aol.com/livebackwards75) has left a new comment on your post "1985 - The Marvel Saga":

    Oh yeah this is how I like to remember the Marvel Universe. Fantastic Read. I got those essentials and while they are nice to have in 2 volumes the original issues are so much better because of the color and I had to hunt them down. Outstanding post

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  2. Shouldn't that be "Rainbow bridging art sequence by Walt Simonson"?

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  3. Hey Jason, that's a great suggestion! I'll steal that. :)

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  4. I didn't like the art that wasn't taken from actual issues. Also didn't like the jarring insertion of stuff like Elektra into the mid-'60s stories. Still mostly a fun comic book.

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