MARVEL TREASURY EDITION

Marvels (Collected Editions)

by Alex Ross, Steve Darnall

Thirty years ago, Alex Ross had a vision for a new series showcasing Marvel's heroes in a way they'd never been seen before. The first realization of that idea became the blockbuster MARVELS - but now, Alex finally brings his original dream to life! MARVEL is an anthology of stories by unique, exceptional talents, many of whom are working with these characters for the very first time. They're linked together by an overarching story by Alex and writer Steve Darnall featuring the dread dream lord Nightmare, who threatens the entire Marvel Universe...and possibly beyond! Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men, the Thing, Doctor Doom, the Vision, Namor the Sub-Mariner, Warlock, Rocket Raccoon, the Golden Age Black Widow and many more Marvel mainstays star in unforgettable stories from a once-in-a-lifetime assemblage of talent - you'll savor every single page!

COLLECTING: MARVEL (2020) 1-6

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Superheroes, Comic Book, Graphic Novels Comics

216 pages, Paperback

First published May 25, 2021

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alex Ross' original concept for the now-legendary Marvels book was an anthology title with his favourite creators working on each section. For various reasons, that didn't happen, and Marvels became a book with one story written by Kurt Busiek and illustrated entirely by Ross.

This book, confusingly titled just Marvel is Ross' original concept finally brough to life. Like most anthology books, the quality of each story varies but, with Ross cherry-picking the creators, the standard of work is mostly very high. There's some truly beautiful artwork on display here and most of the stories are pretty good, too.

There's a couple of clunkers in here, so I can't give it the full 5 stars, but it's still a great book, particularly for those of us who are artistically inclined. Those of you who think any comicbook art that doesn't look like Jim Lee's is somehow 'wrong' might want to give this one a miss.

My next book: Mr. Messy

[Trike · Rating 2 out of 5]

A couple of the stories are good — the Vision one, and Nick Fury — but mostly this is meh. The art is nice, but the writing isn’t much to talk about.

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Durante as comemorações do aniversário de oitenta anos da editora Marvel, muitos especiais foram lançados, alguns deles capitaneados por Kurt Busiek e Alex Ross, responsáveis por um dos melhor quadrinhos-homenagens dos anos 1990 que foi Marvels. Busiek ficou responsável por Marvels, uma série comdiversos heróis da Marvel e também Retratos, que trazia pedaços da cronologia da Marvel contada por olhares de pessoas comuns. Este Marvel foi a homenagem que ficou a cargo de Alex Ross, com diversas pequenas histórias com desenhos incríveis feitas por diversos grandes nomes dos quadrinhos estadunidenses. As histórias são amarradas e intercaladas por um diálogo entre Pesadelo e o Doutor Estranho escrito e desenhado por Alex Ross. Contudo, todas as histórias não tem uma razão de ser nesse encadernado, não possuem um elemento em comum e muitas delas são de causar uma sensação de vergonha nos leitores. Infelizmente, apesar das belas artes, não recomendo a leitura desse encadernado pela falta de unidade entre as histórias-homenagens.

[Little Timmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall I was not impressed with this mini-series. The Alex Ross Dr Strange frame work story was of course the amazing thing he always does. However the other stories in each issue suffered from very poor art most of the time and marginal writing. There were a couple of gems but overall I was unhappy with them. Not recommended

[Connie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book via Kindle Unlimited.

Okay, hear me out.

This book, beautiful.

The artwork throughout this book is continuously great. This is basically an anthology of stories concerning Marvel characters I have experience with such as Spiderman, Vision, Nick Fury etc and some others that my knowledge is limited on, such as The Thing and Namor. The overarching tale in this anthology that connects each story together is that Dr Strange is being held in the Dream Realm by Nightmare who is essentially showing the reader these stories as dreams as he controls them. It's definitely an interesting concept, but I feel like it could have just held my attention a bit better. I found some of the stories to be duds compared to others and I would have liked to see some of the stories connecting a bit better to get a better understanding of these characters and the sides of their relationships we maybe don't see in the typical canon. Overall, I enjoyed it enough but I don't know if the story is worth some of the art.

[Scott Rhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alex Ross’s 2020 graphic novel series “Marvel” (not to be confused with his 1994 “Marvels”) is a brilliant example of comic book making. Indeed, it manages to be a clever bit of self-referential Pop Art, succeeding in doing what the Hernandez Brothers were doing in the ‘80s with “Love and Rockets”. Essentially, “Marvel” is a meta-project that examines what makes comic books such a unique, popular, and powerful artistic medium.

Some of the best comic book artists and writers were tasked with writing stories involving popular Marvel characters and telling a different type of superhero story. So, don’t read this expecting the stories to follow any particular “timeline” or past narrative arcs. Some of the stories aren’t even really meant to be understood in a logical sense.

What Ross et al have done with “Marvel” is demonstrate that, at the very least, comic books are still relevant. At most, “Marvel” is a comic book that would beautifully grace any art-lovers bookshelf.

[John Hartford · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a good read with some stellar art.

[Blindzider · Rating 3 out of 5]

Going into this, I didn't realize it was actually an anthology series, multiple stories by different artists and writers. Each is a story unto itself, plucking any Marvel characters from the universe and telling a tale. Every issue has a small bit of an overarching story that ties (very loosely) all of them together and that is what is painted by Alex Ross (who also does the covers.)

The rest are done by the varied artists chosen for the project. Some big names, some well-known indie names and some people I wasn't aware of. Like most anthologies though, you get varying degrees of entertainment, but overall I'd say these are better than most.

Issue 1:
Didn't care for "Spider-Man: Make my Day". There was just something about the dialogue that threw me off.

"The Boy...and the Brute" was a throwback to early Avengers story and has the same feeling as if it was written back then, which Busiek excels at. Knowing him it probably fits snugly between a couple issues. Enjoyed seeing Steve Rude's art again though.

Issue 2:
For some reason, Brereton's art has always been gratifying to me and seeing it here, with my favorite X-Team was a thrill. The story was pretty darn good too.

"Leave the Demon, Take the Cannoli" by The Goon's Eric Powell was a near-perfect Marvel Team-Up between the Thing and Spider-Man. The humor between the two was excellent.

I'm a lover of Paolo Rivera and his art. I feel he's very under-appreciated and recommend his Instagram account where he generously shows his art process. "The Vision: Unphased" is beautiful to look at and is a pretty good story too, his first published writing I believe.

Issue 3:
"Beginning" by Sienkiewicz was the most unique piece. A biography and an examination/history of art/comics all in one. Appearing in issue 3, I felt that the rest of the issue had some of the weakest entries of the entire series.

Issue 4:
While I appreciate Acuna's art, it just never felt like it fit in the Marvel Universe. This alternate universe story didn't really grab me either. "Where Monsters Smell!" was a fun homage to all of the early monster stories Marvel used to publish before superheroes. "I am a revoltin' development" was a chance for Alex Ross to write a story. A history/biography of Ben Grimm. It's average. Another relatively weak issue.

Issue 5:
More of an art showcase this issue, "A Day in the Mystical Life" features Wong and drawn by a favorite of mine Gene Ha. Doesn't quite give you the peek into Wong's life you might expect but a decent tale. Adam Hughes' "The Best of Us" featuring Nick Fury is another story that looks back at some history. "Wolverine" demonstrates Parrillo's painting which overshadows the Mark Waid story.

Issue 6:
Smallwood's "The One-Eyed Gambit" is a an homage to the 70's psychodelic/Steranko error of Nick Fury and SHIELD. The use of colors and panel layouts make this very eye-catching. Lastly, the series goes out on a high-note with a story written and drawn by Lee Bermejo featuring the Silver Surfer in a future/alternate universe. It is truly stunning to look at with a story that's just itching to tell you more.

Issue 6 wraps up the over-arching story by Ross, but unfortunately the last few panels are not painted by him. Not sure if that was by design or there was a deadline problem but it's very jarring and disappointing.

I'd put this closer to 3.5 stars, but a few ineffective stories keep it from 4 stars.

[Nicholas Dehler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The majority of the stories in here are decent enough, but aren’t anything I would go out of my way for. What really made me pull the rating up by the end of the book was A.) there are indeed a few excellent stories throughout. Personally my favorites were probably “a Clash at the Deepest Depths” (Namor), “the Best of Us” (Captain America), and “The Silver Glint of Space Reflections Gone” (Silver Surfer). Also “Leave the Demon, Take the Cannoli” was definitely memorable lol, and B.) the art in the book is just really magnificent. Each story had a different team and thus different art styles and the creatives really went in on the art. All were very good, some were genuinely breathtaking to look at. This book is worth buying just to flip through the art honestly but you might as well read the stories too, most of them are pretty good. I didn’t think the Nightmare interludes really added much, it could have just been an anthology without the gimmick, but it doesn’t really matter lol. Cool book and the quality of the artwork made me glad it is oversized

[☮ morgan ☮ · Rating 3 out of 5]

i liked seeing all of the different art styles

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this because I so enjoyed Alex Ross and Kurt Busiek's original. I do understand from learning more about Ross's original vision that this is the kind of book he wanted to make. An anthology with the best talents of the day working on their own individual stories and art.

While the artwork runs the spectrum in style and substance and is overall the most interesting thing of the book, the actual story and interlocking narrative is completely uninteresting to me. Which is not a problem the original Marvels had in my opinion.

This is definitely a project made with love and some individual vignettes are pretty great on their own, however this feels like a solo record made with amazing collaborators from one half of a great band.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun mixed-bag anthology by different artist-writers framed by an Alex Ross story of Dr. Strange vs. Nightmare. It ends with bright, casrtoony artwork by Mitch O'Connell that is very appealing but doesn't match the established tone of the story at all. It's a reqally good showcase for artists whose work I was mostly unfamiliar. The tone of these stories varies from the wildyly silly (The Thing and Spider-Man fighting over a canolli, the Golden Age Black Widow abducting the Red Skull and making him her husband at the end of World War II, to the poignant (the Golden Age Human Torch fighting the Silver Surfer to save a dead Earth from Galactus because it's his home--although I'm not sure that the android was ever established as being able to grow a beard). There is a lot of reflection on World War II in this volume. Some stories are pure parody, such as that with Dr. Droom and the Atlas Era monsters, while one has Nick Fury talking to a German little boy after V-E day while getting drunk in a tavern. Another Nick Fury story goes for psychedilc and then has an ending one can never see coming that seems to be an homage to how certain old comic sotries were written--Fury makes reference to repeated use of the number 202 drawing him back to Washington, DC, but none of those 202 mentions were visible to the reader. One of te best stories is Bill Sinkiwewicz's reflections on becoming a comics creator, as told by Uatu the Watcher. Another good story by Frank Espinosa and Sajan Saini is set early on during Peter and Mary Jane's marriage where she thinks he is spending too much money on web fluid components only to realize that she has made a huge mistake. Paolo Rivera's story of the Vision's reflections as he rescues a child from a collapsed building is also powerful. The mixture of spoofs, starightforward alternate reality stories, and poignant character studies doesn't always work, and the ending is about as "WTF just happened" as Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory, but overall, it's worth checking out.

[Doctor Doom · Rating 3 out of 5]

[2021 - I gave it 1 star and wrote a scathing review which I leave here for posterity.] I actually purchased this [as opposed to Prime Reading] thinking it would be like Marvels but this was a huge disappointment. There is very little Alex Ross artwork [again... Marvels] and the stories, like the artwork, are subpar. NOT recommended.

[2025] I'm upping it to 3 stars. The Alex Ross contribution is smaller than I prefer but when it is present it is vintage Ross. There are still some horrible stories [the Spider-man solo story comes to mind] with bad writing and worse art. But most of the stories are fairly decent as is most of the artwork. the filler art tying the stories together was usually decent but was very cartoonish at the end. It's hard to go from Ross to rubbish like that so maybe that accounts for the 1 star back in '21.

[Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very ambitious project. Some of the art is well done while other stories are lacking on anything really interesting or innovative. The stories are also fun but it's mostly just an anthology. If there's a story you like, you don't get to spend much time with it. I don't want Ross to stop doing things like this but I just wish it was more interconnected. Ultimately, it's something you can pass on without missing much.

[Abhinav Vuppalapati · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have no clue what I read. It’s an anthology but I couldn’t process a thing as to what was going on, what the stories were about, I just enjoyed the art and turned the pages cause after a couple stories of not comprehending what’s going on with the story and with the pictures you just wanna give up

[tony dillard jr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many comic book collectors and fans consider Kingdom Come to be Alex Ross' best work. I like that possible future of the DC Universe. But it's not my favorite of his. I absolutely adore the Alex Ross/Kurt Busiek collaboration from 1994 known simply as Marvels. It follows the span of the Marvel Universe through the eyes of a human newspaper photographer trying to make sense of a world full of superheroes and villains.

So how in the world did I miss Ross' 2020-21 follow up, Marvel?

Well, for one thing, I'm sure it had something to do with the pandemic. As much 'free time' as I supposedly had as a teacher having to go virtual, I did very little reading. I did even much less comic book shopping. During the pandemic, I had to attend so many useless Zoom meetings that should have been emails because the high ups in my district were terrified of being accused of not doing anything by political detractors. Plus, my anxiety was at such an all-time high, I had trouble focusing on reading.

But once the pandemic was over and we all started exiting our homes like Punxsutawney Phil looking for his shadow, how did it still take me 4 years to discover this book? A very recent chance trip to Ollie's helped me to find this trade paperback for a very good deal. (If you're in the Durham NC area, there's still a couple dozen volumes of this book if you like to save money like I do.)

Marvel is what Alex Ross originally envisioned Marvels to be. It's an anthology unencumbered by the scope of current Marvel canon. An assortment of creators were to craft stories of their favorite characters in situations as realistic or far fetched as the imagination could reach. No timeline was off limits. Past, present, future or even alternate timeline was a possibility for the tales to be contained. Ultimately, Marvel Comics passed on this project, citing it to be an idea just too lofty for a relative newcomer in the comic book industry to tackle. So Ross put the idea back on the shelf, teamed up with Kurt Busiek and Marvel Comics history was made! (Made ironically by exploring Marvel Comics history.)

Jump forward to the approach of the 25th anniversary of Marvels. The House of Ideas approached Ross for a follow-up to the ground breaking mini. A couple of sequels, including a dark timeline 2-parter had already been done. Ross didn't really want to go back to that storyline. So he pulled deep into his portfolio and dusted off his original plans for Marvels. This time the editors whole-heartedly agreed to the miniseries.

The various stories that make up Marvel is framed with a Doctor Strange epic throughout the 6 issues of the mini. The demon Nightmare has placed the entire Marvel Universe into a deep sleep. His plan is to become the most powerful entity in the universe by drawing upon the hopes, fears and dreams of the heroes, villains and deities of the 616 Universe!

There's a ton of adventures in this book. Too many to give proper attention to. So I'll focus on just a trio of my favs.

Alan Weiss explores an early adventure of Prince Namor set in the early days of the second World War. He's asked to infiltrate a new underwater mega-structure to determine if its a refuge for the wealthy hoping to avoid the coming global holocaust or is secretly an Axis underwater base. It's a story that shows a much more swashbuckling Sub-Mariner as opposed to the snobbish ruler of Atlantis that we know of today. Very thrilling and completely unexpected.

Speaking of unexpected, in a futuristic story set after 'The War of the Worlds', we see the apocalyptic gladiator games that Killraven was forced to compete in would be like if they were populated by super-heroic survivors of the alien invasion of Earth. I won't spoil the surprise of who makes it to the games. But it's an idea that if Marvel ever decided to expand on, I would making it a part of my pull list in a heartbeat. Featuring dynamic story and artwork by Daniel Acuna.

My choice for third is a tie. That's because we get a pair of stories starring my favorite non-superhero member of the Marvel Universe: Nick Fury. Adam Hughes crafts a Sgt. Fury story set at the very tail end of WW2. Greg Smallwood designed a whirlwind look at the Steranko era of Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD. Both were bookend looks at a fantastic character that to choose one over the other would be like a father picking a favorite child.

This collection was tons of fun. The unexpected ending was both bizarre and yet perfectly fitting. Marvel might have supposed to have been a celebration of 1994's Marvels but by story's end, it wound up being a love story to Timely, Atlas and Marvel Comics and the influence it has made on American pop culture history!

[Alex Sarll]

25 years after Busiek and Ross' Marvels, Marvel celebrated with the Busiek-led anthology Marvel Snapshots, and this Ross-led anthology, Marvel, containing short stories one could easily consider...snapshots? Indeed, the stories here could be argued to be more snapshot-y, given they're shorter. Oh, and one of them's written by Busiek. So that's all perfectly clear, right? And to think they say superhero comics are off-putting for new readers!

There's a framing story here, with Ross on art; I suppose that's another difference. The downside is, it's about cut-price dream-lord Nightmare, surely one of the shitter antagonists of Marvel's early years, though doubtless he'll still be gracing multiplex screens sooner or later. As for the stories proper...well, the first one is framed around Mary Jane nagging Spider-Man over how much he spends on web fluid, and even 25 years ago that would have been prone to coming across embarrassing and retrograde in a stand-up set, let alone an actual comic. And in general, there's a sense that many of the contributions are retro less in a charming way than in an 'even bad modern Marvel comics are better than this now' fashion, just really primitive and clunky without the oddball energy that sometimes justifies this sort of anthology. There are exceptions, thank heavens, in particular Bill Sienkiewicz presenting an artistic autobiography in the format of a TED talk by the Watcher – exactly the sort of thing you'd never find anywhere except this sort of collection. Greg Smallwood does a gorgeously pop Nick Fury, and Gene Ha and Zander Cannon turn in a deeply satisfying encounter between Wong and a tech bro intent on disrupting magic. But I'm not convinced there are enough of these little delights to make up for the overall lack of focus or oomph.

[Ozro Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marvels is an all-time great, and obviously Alex Ross himself needs no introduction. So even not knowing what this was, it was an instant buy.

The premise is simple enough: bring in A-list artists to tell stories in the Marvel Universe. For the most part, these are more classic Marvel tales - often taking place in direct relation to famous issues of the past - so there's a lot of nostalgia involved. But even with that, there's a ton of variety; no two stories feel the same.

And ultimately, everyone delivered on that promise. The art is phenomenal throughout. Some of the stories aren't much - there's a lot of meta jokes and goofiness - but the art carries this book, as you'd expect. Standouts include Bill Sienkiewicz's pseudo-autobiography featuring the Watcher, Daniel Acuña's Mad Max meets Marvel, and Alan Weiss's 1940's style take on Namor. Alex Ross also does an amazing job on the Dr Strange framing story, even though the narrative through-line is unnecessary.

A great read for classic Marvel fans and art lovers. But don't expect something as substantial as Marvels.

[Rex Hurst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nightmare has taken over the world, all of its inhabitants drift in dreams, and Stephen Strange is trapped, trying behind the scenes to stop him. This is the framing device for a series of non-canonical short stories set in the Marvel universe. All the big players are here, The Watcher, the X-Men, Captain America, Nick Fury, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four; plus a few obscure pop-ups - Doctor Droom (the original name for Dr. Druid, a host of monsters from the venerable When Monsters Attack title, the original cowboy Ghost Rider, the original Black Widow from the 1940s, among others.

Some people seem to have a problem with the inconsistency of the tales. While none of them are bad and I certainly enjoyed them all, the tone does shift rapidly. It goes from the deadly serious to the silly with the turn of a page. But that is the nature of anthologies. I certainly loved the art and the tales. It was exactly what I expected with a few fun surprises added in.

[Timothy Patrick Boyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

"PUT ENOUGH IDEAS TOGETHER AT ONCE... AND YOU CAN BUILD A UNIVERSE. YOU CAN CHANGE LIVES THROUGH INSPIRATION.

I really like how the framing device is utilized, throughout. What I don't like—what damn-near ruined the whole book for me—is just how insubstantial so many of these stories feel. Plus, I really wanted more Alex Ross. He's why I picked up this book in the first place. Yeah, maybe I should've paid more attention to what this book actually was. Oops. But despite the book not working all too well as a whole piece, for me, there are parts that shine... brightly.

The artwork in some of these is just stunning! Both X-Men stories are gorgeous, and I especially love how both focus on just how essential a member of the X-Men Wolverine really is. The art in that first Spidey story really embraces the whole dream motif in a creative, visually arresting manner. And that final Silver Surfer story?!? Wow!! Every single frame quite literally took my breath away.

5.5/10

[Bob Dawson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good, deep stories, others....not so much

The beginning stories were good, and held some real emotional depth. It wanted from there. There was a fairly milquetoast story holding all the separate short stories together, but some of the short stories still didn't make sense in that context. Without any context of who is dreaming, many of the dreams lose the power of storytelling. Some stories are still good, but there is a lot of storytelling opportunity lost. Kind of a disappointment. And pinky a couple were drawn by Alex Ross, unfortunately.

[Vincent · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was only OK.

I enjoyed some of the individual stories well enough, but others I either didn't get the humour or didn't have a deep enough Marvel background knowledge to fully appreciate (maybe).

But what I really didn't get was the Alex Ross framing story. From the introduction, I thought this was going to be some long standing passion project for Ross, but it's really just an anthology with juuuuust enough Alex Ross to sell it (and I continue to be annoyed at the way Ross seems to choose super-beefy, body builders for all his models).

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love to read, but have never liked short stories as much as novels. That’s just a preference, not me saying any format is better than any other. The reason I favor a longer format is because a really good short story feels like it’s just getting started.

This collection has some dream artists filling the pages. Many of which would be a welcome addition to any ongoing Marvel series. My favorites include Hilary Barta, Steve Rude, Frank Espinosa, Dan Brereton, Greg Smallwood, and Daniel Acuna.

[catnipthief · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an anthology, the quality of the stories are a bit unbalanced, some of them were good fun, but nothing more, and all in all, I wasn't drawn into it. For some level, this is a personal thing for me, as I'm not a big fan of Marvel-stuff in general, unless it's Deadpool or The Punisher. But this cavalcade of a lot of different artworks were amazing, each and every one of them were equally breath-taking, so if you're into comics for the visuals, if you're into vintage feel, a bit of campyness, this is for you.

[Drake Zappa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most phenomenal collection of stories I've had the joy of reading through! This book encapsulates the Marvel Universe so unbelievably well. Its such a privilege to have so many amazing creators in one beautiful book! Massive thanks to Alex Ross for finally putting this book together after years of work pushing for it to be made!
There is truly a story for every kind of person in here and its a true celebration of what Marvel Comics is.

[David Eve · Rating 4 out of 5]

A motley collection of stories with a Nightmare backdrop!

There are a series of stories featuring various iconic characters that feature as dreams in the backdrop of Nightmares capture of Dr. Strange. Some of the tales are insubstantial snippets while others are fully fleshed out with a myriad of different graphic styles leading to a beautiful cacophony of stories that resemble dreams. An enjoyable read.

[Steve White · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read Marvels I was expecting more of the same but what this is is an anthology with various writes and authors (including those behind Marvels).

There’s some great art, several fun styles. The stories are tidy little affairs. They’re pretty breezy, low stakes adventures.

But if you want to see some top flights artists and writers have some fun, check it out.

[Stefano Amadei · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sinceramente pensavo che una cosa che si è atteso di poter er così tanto tempo fosse un po' più bellina... Insomma mi ha un po' deluso, soprattutto per il tipo di disegni vecchio stile a volte troppo confusionario. Alex ha voluto strafare e per me scimmiottare Kirby non ha dato i risultati separati! Peccato!

[Cody Sheets · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably 3 1/2 stars. This has some amazing art in parts and a few fun stories but unfortunately more duds than hits. The Nick Fury story was my favorite with a few other good ones such as the short Wolverine part. Several of the stories are only a few pages and really function more as vignettes. Overall I think this worked better in theory than execution.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed collection of loosely connected tales, with some serious highlights provided by Alex Ross (who conceived of the collection and oversees its narrative) and Bill Sienkiewicz (who provides a tale of Uatu the Watcher that's a treatise on the genesis of artistic creativity at its essence).

This book is a visual masterpiece, and while the stories vary in quality, it's an overall joy to read.