Fans of Dan Slott’s She-Hulk series will be familiar with one of the book’s meta-conceits: that, in Jennifer Walters’ practice of “superhuman law”, back issues of Marvel comics are considered to be admissible evidence in court. As a consequence, long boxes of old comics fill shelf upon shelf at her law firm’s office. Stacks and stacks, libraries bursting, with boxes piled here and there, individual issues scattered around as late-night research is done…
Is this starting to sound familiar? Have I just described your garage, basement, den, living room? Are the comic boxes starting to encroach on your living space, drawing the ire of family, friends, significant other?
If so, maybe you’ve wondered about electronic storage for your collection: Comics on disk. You can get complete 40-year runs of The Fantastic Four and Spider-Man (with X-Men due shortly) on CD-Rom for $49.99 each—a great deal, IF you find it enjoyable to read comics that way… but you might regard fifty bucks as a chunk of change to drop just to “try out” such a concept.
Not to put too fine a point on it: what if it sucks?
Well, as it happens, you’ve got another, lower-priced option: Marvel, through Topics Entertainment, has put out a line of “sampler” discs, called the Snap! CD-Rom Comic Book Library. Each of the eight CD’s in the series has the first ten issues of one of Marvel’s key books (Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Avengers, etc.), in full color—for just $4.99 per disk, or 50 cents an issue.
Of course, back in the 60’s, no one was saving digital versions of comic books, so what you get on these disks are scans done years later. And, in this case, scans from Marvel’s Masterworks collections: in other words, they’re reprints of reprints (if you view the panels at less than full-size, you can see page numbers underneath the originals, corresponding to the reprint volumes), but clear and sharp for all of that. One caveat: the lower left panel of each page has a small Marvel copyright notice; I didn’t find them particularly intrusive. These sets are somewhat more stripped-down than those in the more expensive “complete” CD-Rom sets: no letters pages, no vintage ads, no special features (apart from the odd pinup page). Also, the choice of ten issues per series does mean that some of the sets end in mid-story. But what is there looks just great.
Once you pick up a disk or two, you’ll find a browser-based interface resembling Adobe’s “Acrobat Reader”. While not everyone’s enamored of that format, the files seem to load and open quickly and easily.
Upon inserting the disk into your computer, it will automatically start up and give you its very straightforward menu: click the character picture in the center to be taken to a cover index linking each of the issues contained on the disk. Down the right side of that first screen are links to some other features, only one of which seems to be currently supported: Character Bios, which excerpts bits from the Marvel Encyclopedia publications. (Unfortunately, the web links to “3 Free Comic Books” and “11 x 17 Cover Reprints” appear to be dead. An email to Marvel asking if these features are still available remains unanswered to this point).
One nice feature of the interface is the option to see the comics only in black and white, by clicking the “Display image background” option. (You can also select “Display image foreground”, which will give you just the blobs of color—not sure why you’d want to, but it’s definitely a feature you won’t get with comics on paper!). You can print out any of the pages, and judicious use of your “screen capture” capabilities would also let you use images from the disks as computer desktops, etc. The printouts are vivid and sharp, and bear comparison with any of Marvel’s published collections.
Reading the comics in this format can take some getting used to: most people won’t be able to adequately read the dialog when a page is viewed at full-size, so you’ll need to get comfortable using the Zoom tool (familiar from most Adobe programs) to get around. By the time you’ve gone through an issue or two, though, it will feel like a perfectly natural way to navigate the page. And anyone who finds square-bound trade collections harder to read than a set of floppies will find these disks a godsend: there is copious “white space” framing each page so that nothing is lost in the (nonexistent) seams (and it goes without saying that there’s no binding or glue to give way). While it lacks the easy portability of a comic on paper, there’s a lot to be said for having such clear reproductions readable at just about any size that suits you. I defer to no one in my love for the feeling of a book (comic or otherwise) in my hand, but I can’t deny that comics presented this way can really “jump out” at the reader, and provide an immersive experience, almost like that of a movie.
While most comics fans will probably already know which titles they’re interested in, let’s take a quick overview of the series:The Fantastic Four: This is where the “Marvel Age” begins: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby shaking up the world of superheroes, back in 1961. Given the number of different reprint collections available today (including the little $1.00 digests released earlier this year), most readers will have a pretty good idea of what the early FF looked like. If you’re not one of them, though, be warned: the “senses-shattering” epics that are this title’s permanent legacy are still a few years in the future: though Lee was already calling Jack Kirby “The King”, it would be another couple of years before he finished growing into the title.
What is in evidence from the first, and makes the book still a compelling read, is the “What the hell” attitude that Lee brings to the stories (and that permeates so many of the titles on these disks). With little hope of success, and ready to call it quits in the comic business, Lee’s wife encouraged him to try writing something that actually entertained him. And, thus, the Fantastic Four, a (mostly) grown-up family of the sort we’d now call “dysfunctional”: superheroes by accident, arguing, breaking-up, going bankrupt, being declared “public enemies” (all within the first few months!)… along with such oddities as time-traveling pirate battles, the Sub-Mariner heading a movie studio, and Lee and Kirby themselves appearing in the story. And while Subby was a character inherited from the Timely line of the 40’s, these first issues also introduce the FF’s incomparable stable of foes: The Mole Man, The Skrulls, The Puppet Master… and almost inarguably the greatest comic villain of them all: Doctor Doom. If you don’t already know the early days of the FF, I can imagine no better way to discover them.
Spider-Man: To go from the rough energy of The Fantastic Four to the first issues of Spider-Man presents an interesting contrast: artist Steve Ditko’s long, lean, angular style is about as different from Kirby’s manic vigor as you could imagine. Where Kirby’s best early work seems to burst off the page, already too big for conventional comic panels to contain, Ditko hews carefully to the era’s conventions of page layout. Within the panels, though, there’s an unsettling quality about early Spider-Man: while his super-heroics take place in New York City, much of the story is set in the suburbia he calls home, which Ditko renders with some of the same off-kilter vibe as David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.
Ditko was also a master of the reaction shot, and can tell us more about a character’s mood and motivation by their body language than just about any of his contemporaries: fact is, even today, you could almost pass off Ditko’s work from the 60’s as that of a slightly subversive new “indie” creator. It’s formal and often a bit stiff, but plays very much by its own rules, for all its conventional structure. It’s easy to forget, too, that when he first appeared, Spider-Man really did look a bit creepy for a superhero. It’s not surprising that John Romita Sr’s version of Spider-Man became the “template” for the character in the decades to follow: Ditko’s version was just too gangly and distinctive to become a trademark. And Lee’s conception of Spider-Man jells quickly (much more so than, say, The Thing, who took a few months to really find his voice): in less than a year, Spider-Man rose to be as entertaining a superhero as comics had ever seen.
Captain America: Kirby fans waiting to see him unleashed will find much to cheer about in the Captain America set. There’s less actual content, since Cap was sharing Tales of Suspense with Iron Man in those days, so the stories are only 11 pages each. But they pick up Jack Kirby three years on from Fantastic Four #1, and no reader could feel shortchanged: it’s panel after panel of Kirby madness, with all the “Bwow!”’s and “Kapanng!”’s you could ask for. Zemo’s here, and the Red Skull, Sharon Carter and Bucky. We also get Lee-Kirby’s retelling of Cap’s origin, along with some nice contemporary and WWII-era adventures.
X-Men: There’s an interesting “ringer” in the set: the X-Men disk does not have the first ten issues of the original 1963 series; instead, it features the 1975 re-launch, including Giant-Size X-Men #1, and X-Men #94-102 (there’s an amusing note on the back, regarding what constitutes a “debut issue”: “Only Wolverine, Night Crawler [sic], Colossus, and Storm made their debuts in Giant-Size X-Men Issue #1″. Uh huh… poor Thunderbird—dissed again). And while it’s reasonable to sneer at Marvel’s “Get Wolverine on the cover by any means necessary” approach, there’s no question that it’s this version of the X-Men that had the greatest impact on superhero comics. Later artists like Byrne, Lee, and Liefeld broke new ground, and got the big reps, but Dave Cockrum is the guy who visually revamped the series, and his work here shows that the “old school” was not without its virtues for these characters. And for all that he’s often reviled today, Chris Claremont’s superhero soap opera here feels fresh and involving.
Daredevil: While it took a while for Marvel to figure out just what to do with this character, the art in the early issues is very strong, with contributions from the legendary Wally Wood, along with Bill Everett, Joe Orlando, and others. Plus, you get all six issues of that priceless yellow costume.
The rest of the disks pretty much fall in line: The Avengers brings more Kirby goodness. So does The Hulk, but in those days, ol’ Greenskin (like Cap) was sharing a book, so the ten stories are not all full-length. The same is true for Iron Man, but without Kirby to recommend it (Journeyman Don Heck is the principal artist here). Considering that the entire set of disks can be had for under $40, it’s really not a bad investment even if you do go on to buy the complete versions later.
The Snap! Comic Book Library is available at many large computer retailers (including CompUSA and Micro Center). There are also a number of online retailers carrying it (just google “Snap! Comic Book Library”).
- Jeb Delia is a longtime resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, who has probably been reading comics, listening to music, and going to the movies longer than you've been alive. Having sold his soul long ago, he writes and designs advertising and marketing for a living. In his so-called "free" time, he produces stage plays. His daughter now off at college, he and his comely wife are rediscovering why they got married in the first place... and wondering where all the money's suddenly gone.