Marvel Comics: The Poster Collection

Background

This over-sized poster book was published in 2014 by Insight Editions. It is 12" x 16" with a square-bound spine and contains 20 removable double-sided posters, or 40 posters in total assuming you count each one twice.

Story 'Spider-Man in Covers of AF #15, ASM #39, ASM #50, ASM #129 & Secret Wars #1'

The posters are top-quality, as each page is printed on glossy card stock (not paper). The posters feature superb color – glorious and bold, while still faithful to the original. The print format is high-resolution, but there's no sign of any loss of detail in this large format, and I would suspect that significant effort has gone into cleaning up these images.

Each poster features a thick black border to ensure that all of the colors "pop" nicely off the page. The result is an impressive collection of high-impact, much-loved classic images.

Spider-Man appears prominently, with covers of Amazing Fantasy #15, Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #39, Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #50, Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #129.

Then the Avengers get six classic covers (#4, #57, #87, #162, #175, #223), Captain America two (#1, #117), and one each for Daredevil #181, and Doctor Strange #10. The Fantastic Four get three covers (#1, #49, #57), then Guardians of the Galaxy #1 from 1990 (of course they have to be in there). There's a Giant-Size Avengers #4, the classic Giant-Size X-Men #1, then three Incredible Hulks (#1, the famous #181 Wolverine cover, and King-Sized Hulk Special #1).

Iron Man #128 (a brave choice, with Tony Stark as an unshaven alcoholic), Journey Into Mystery #83 (introducing Thor), Ghost Rider #5, Moon Knight #23 (the black and white cover), Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #4, Iron Man & Power Fist #50, Secret Wars #1 (that's the original Secret Wars from 1984 of course, no modern imitations).

Silver Surfer #4, Thor #337, Tales to Astonish #35 and #44 (in due deference to the upcoming Ant-Man movie), and Wolverine Limited Series #1. Finally we're into the X-Men with Uncanny #1, #101, #136, and #141. The final poster is a front/back-cover spread from "Avengers Kree-Skrull War Special Edition #2" which I presume was a reprinting of the classic tale.

General Comments

The selection of covers is generally quite understandable (with perhaps the exception of the Iron Man cover, which doesn't fit the heroic mold). Sure, there's due deference to the current crop of Marvel movies, with Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy obviously getting more air-time than they would have done five years earlier. But every poster book is a product of its time, and this one is no exception.

But there's no denying that the presentation and reproduction is top-rate – from selection to print stock to print quality and design.

Overall Rating

The biggest complaint that I have seen against this book is that each poster is double-sided so that when you put them on the wall you have to choose one side and lose the other. That's a tough call when the Spider-Man posters are all printed back-to-back.

Well, I guess that's true. But what's the alternative? If the book printed 20 single-sided posters, I'm sure there would be plenty of people complaining that the publishers could have printed them double-sided and given us a choice of what poster to display. There's just no pleasing some folks, right?

But putting aside the physical limitations of flat-plane topology, this poster book is just about as perfect as three-dimensional space allows it to be. I give it Four-and-a-Half Webs.