Marvel Heroes: Greatest Battles (DK)

Background

This is another book in the "DK Readers" series. These books are carefully matched to target reading ability. This one is "Level 4" (Proficient Reader). It was published in 2008, at the same time as a companion to the Level 3 book Marvel Heroes: Amazing Powers (DK).

The book is 48 pages, 6" x 9" with glossy card covers.

Story Details

This book attempts to cover some of the greatest Hero vs. Villain battles of the Marvel Universe. Spider-Man naturally features in many of them. In fact, he gets four pages all to himself, which gives the writer lots of time to cover Spider-Man's greatest battles. Specifically... umm... Maximum Carnage. Is that it?

Oh dear, oh dear!

Spider-Man also appears in the chapters about Secret Wars, House of M and Civil War.

That's kind of an odd selection, really. I can understand Secret Wars, that did certainly feature some "Great" battles. But House of M is a long and slightly confusing series and I can't really agree that it deserves to be among the Top 10 greatest Marvel battles of all time.

Similarly for Civil War. The Civil War story line was quite subtle in general, raising challenging questions about individual choices and obligations to society. It was about the balance of personal freedom, versus the right for society to protect itself. It was hardly a slug-fest, and again, I find its inclusion in this book to be a bizarre choice.

General Comments

Despite the additional text permitted by the higher lexile rating on this book, it still offers only a very superficial coverage of the stories it attempts to summarize. Furthermore, those stories aren't particularly well chosen, in my humble opinion.

Overall Rating

Well produced, and cheap at the price for $3.99 RRP.

This book may well appeal to young Marvel fans. But to be brutally honest, I believe it had the potential to be more thorough and more factual.

Two webs.