BOOK REVIEW: MARVEL ESSENTIALS FANTASTIC FOUR VOLUME 1 By Stan Lee and Jack Kirby

With the COVID-19 pandemic, politics, and all the other problems facing us locally and globally, we all could certainly use a break with some escapist literature and without a doubt, two famous names within the history of the comic book industry are Stan “The Man” Lee (1922-2018) and Jack “King” Kirby (1917-1994). Together they created the foundation of what is known today as the Marvel Comics’ Universe.

In Marvel Essentials: Fantastic Four Volume 1 you can read (again or for the first time) the start of this fabled superhero quartet as it reprints the first twenty issues of the series and the 1963 Annual, covering everything from the Fantastic Four’s origin to their initial battles against such famous villains as The Skrull, the Puppet Master, the Red Ghost, and long time foe Doctor Doom!

The only drawback to the Essentials volumes are the cheaper paper creates the necessity to reprint everything in black and white, compared to the finer print in the hard cover editions of the company's Marvel Masterworks Archives. Yet this also gives the reader not only more material in one book, but a chance to see the original art more clearly to appreciate Kirby’s talent.