Sean Howe

I have to admit it was quite a fun romp to re-live my comic book years reading what was going on in the "real world" of Marvel during the very many different storylines and titles. Being able to read of what the writers and editors were up to at the time some of my favourite comics were being published was an eye-opener. And oh how I enjoyed the trip down memory lane of watching the characters I grew up loving and seeing the stops and starts to get to where thy are today :)

Three stars is not enough but four is too high. I give this a 3.5… (més)

Really more of a history of Marvel-Comics-the-company than Marvel-Comics-the-group-of-people, which I think works for the book in some places (the summarization of the battle over creators' rights here is probably the best I've seen so far), and works against it in others (the last segment on Marvel in the late 90s through to the films, is incredibly dull). My biggest frustration is that it feels like it glosses over far more interesting stuff in favor of corporate trivia. (Two question I had hoped this would answer - how did Diamond capture the distribution market, and how did both John Romita Sr. and Jr. end up working for Marvel - are, in the case of the former, briefly mentioned, and in the latter, not really looked at at all, but you sure do get lists of every stupid editor, president, publisher, and CEO Marvel ever had.) Sean Howe's heart seems to be in the right place here, but I guess I was looking for something else.… (més)