The TOP 13 MARVEL TREASURY FACSIMILE EDITIONS We’d Like to See — RANKED
The door is open with Star Wars… By ROB KELLY A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (the 1970s) Marvel Comics published treasury editions. While DC was first out of the gate with them, Marvel caught up quickly and, in a lot of ways, surpassed DC’s efforts. While DC basically rotated the same four or five characters to headline their treasuries (Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel/Shazam!, Tarzan, and… Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, with Wonder Woman not getting her own treasury until this month), Marvel was a lot more democratic: Lesser-knowns like the Defenders, Howard the Duck, and Shang-Chi all got oversize collections. They also created some truly fantastic supplementary material, when they had an extra page or two to fill. By the 1980s, the treasuries were dying out and Marvel relegated the format to licensed characters like G.I. Joe, the Smurfs, and Annie, the kinds of books more suited to be sold in department stores, aimed at a broader audience, not die-hard comics fans. So while the Marvel treasuries came in with a bang, they went out with a whimper. Other than a brief flirtation with the format in the 2010s, Marvel has resisted bringing the treasuries back, even after DC has seemingly had huge success doing so. 13th Dimension in particular has been beating the drum to get Marvel to change its mind, and I’ve tried my best to put the idea out into the ether on my podcast devoted to the format, TreasuryCast. But with the very welcome news — broken by 13th D — that Marvel is commemorating the 50th anniversary (OMG, am I old) of Star Wars with a treasury-size reprint of Marvel Special Edition Featuring Star Wars #1, it appears that the House of Ideas has finally seen the dollar sign-shaped light. And while us treasury comic fans are very, very grateful, all this means is that we want more, more, more! So in case Marvel needs some ideas, here are 13 MARVEL TREASURIES WE’D LIKE TO SEE — RANKED: — 13. Marvel Treasury Edition #1: Spider-Man (Reprint). Considering the last Spidey movie made, oh, 2 billion dollars, this is the obvious place to start, just like Marvel did back in 1974. — 12. Deadpool. I’m not even a Deadpool fan, but a collection from the thousands of merc stories to pick...
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