Marvel Heroes: Magic Pen Painting & Invisible Ink (Lee)

Background

Lee Publications are the producers of the famous "Yes & Know", "Invisible Ink" and "Magic Pen" books.

They've been making these books for at least a couple of decades, but they didn't get their hands on the Marvel characters until 2003. This 2-in-1 book is from 2006 and at 8" x 11" magazine profile, is double the normal size of their regular compact format.

Story Details

This book has 48 pages, and consists of a mix of grey "Magic Pen" (use the pen to show colours) pages and blue "Invisible Ink" (use the pen to show words, symbols or numbers) pages.

The Magic Pen pages are at the center of the book, and they all feature the origins of classic Marvel characters. The majority of the pages are "Invisible Ink" and they feature a wide range of different ideas. There are mazes to follow, codes to break, stories to complete, join-the-dots to reveal, differences to spot... all the standard things you find in activity books, but with the difference that the answers are just waiting to be revealed with the special (Green) pen.

General Comments

All the content for this book is brand new, it doesn't appear to recycle anything from the 2003 books. The difficulty level is pretty simple. Example crossword question: "Captain America's Costume is Red, White and ___"

Artwork is taken from a wide variety of sources. Spider-Man appears a fair few times, as you would expect from Marvel's flagship character.

Overall Rating

I have a real soft spot for these Magic Pen type books. And with a pre-marked cover price of US $3.49, this 48 page book was damn good value even back in 2006.

I have to give it four webs.