A good book. It glossed over a few areas but was still quite well researched. It doesn't pull punches. It goes into creator rights and Marvel's bankruptcy (almost the end of them). Wish it head spent a little more time in each of the decades. ( )

Good background on the origins and growth of Marvel comics (my favorite as a kid and teen). ( )

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 ( )

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. ( )

As someone who didn't grow up reading comics but has spent twenty years as a sideline observer of the fandom, I found this is an excellent history of Marvel.

It is also a profoundly depressing book. The author clearly strove and I think largely succeeded at an even-handed approach, taking no sides to the extent that's possible. There were plenty of episodes where people just plain behaved badly, though, and there's not much to be done about that.

It's food for a great deal of thought on the history and future of publishing in general, the dangers of monopoly in any creative industry, and the difficulties inherent in cooperative creative work. I recommend it. ( )