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Marvel Year By Year A Visual History New Edition
Deep dive into the full story of Marvel Comics in a single, beautifully illustrated volume.
Created in full collaboration with Marvel, this fan-favorite title, last published in 2017, now covers more than 80 years of Marvel history, from the company's first incarnation as Timely Comics to the multimedia giant it is today.
Packed with artwork from the original comics, this chronological account traces the careers of Marvel Super Heroes such as The Avengers, Spider-Man, Black Panther, Iron Man, Black Widow, and Guardians of the Galaxy, and the writers and artists who developed them. It also charts the real-life events that shaped the times and details Marvel landmarks in publishing, movies, and TV.
Explore the pages of this magnificent Marvel book to discover:
- Timeless art from the original comic books on every page that brings the text vividly to life.
- Easy to navigate, chronological presentation of key events, plus an extensive index.
- Written by leading Marvel historians: Tom DeFalco, Peter Sanderson, Tom Brevoort, Matthew K. Manning, and Stephen (Win) Wiacek.
This latest edition to DK's best-selling encyclopedic Marvel publications offers an unparalleled breadth and depth of information about the company and its vast creations, bringing the Marvel story fully up-to-date with information on all the company's achievements. The format is accessible and easy-to-navigate, showcasing chronological presentations of Marvel milestones alongside real-life events, as well as an extensive index.
A must-have volume for all Marvel fans from age 12 to adult, whether for readers interested in popular culture and comic books, or fans of Marvel comics and movies seeking to broaden their knowledge and deepen their understanding of the company's history, impact, trends, and huge output.
Created in full collaboration with Marvel, this fan-favorite title, last published in 2017, now covers more than 80 years of Marvel history, from the company's first incarnation as Timely Comics to the multimedia giant it is today.
Packed with artwork from the original comics, this chronological account traces the careers of Marvel Super Heroes such as The Avengers, Spider-Man, Black Panther, Iron Man, Black Widow, and Guardians of the Galaxy, and the writers and artists who developed them. It also charts the real-life events that shaped the times and details Marvel landmarks in publishing, movies, and TV.
Explore the pages of this magnificent Marvel book to discover:
- Timeless art from the original comic books on every page that brings the text vividly to life.
- Easy to navigate, chronological presentation of key events, plus an extensive index.
- Written by leading Marvel historians: Tom DeFalco, Peter Sanderson, Tom Brevoort, Matthew K. Manning, and Stephen (Win) Wiacek.
This latest edition to DK's best-selling encyclopedic Marvel publications offers an unparalleled breadth and depth of information about the company and its vast creations, bringing the Marvel story fully up-to-date with information on all the company's achievements. The format is accessible and easy-to-navigate, showcasing chronological presentations of Marvel milestones alongside real-life events, as well as an extensive index.
A must-have volume for all Marvel fans from age 12 to adult, whether for readers interested in popular culture and comic books, or fans of Marvel comics and movies seeking to broaden their knowledge and deepen their understanding of the company's history, impact, trends, and huge output.
2633 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 2, 2022
82 people are currently reading
100 people want to read
About the author
Tom DeFalco
2,477 books106 followersTom DeFalco is an American comics writer and editor, well-known for his association with Marvel Comics and Spider-Man.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 19, 2024
What a stunning book for Marvel fans! It includes the FULL history of their comics from 1939 to 2021!
September 29, 2022
Nice overview and great recap of the Marvel Age of Comics with a bit more focus on what happened when in terms of publishing and world events.
That said, the amount of drastic change and dramatic shifts in character/story directions moved exponentially faster with each passing decade of Marvel's existence. Thus, ultimately, this wasn't a great read for me as, while it indulged my nostalgia, it reminded me of so much "change for change's sake" or short-term thinking that led to many changes undone as quickly as they were implemented. Thus, not a great look overall for Marvel on the whole
That said, the amount of drastic change and dramatic shifts in character/story directions moved exponentially faster with each passing decade of Marvel's existence. Thus, ultimately, this wasn't a great read for me as, while it indulged my nostalgia, it reminded me of so much "change for change's sake" or short-term thinking that led to many changes undone as quickly as they were implemented. Thus, not a great look overall for Marvel on the whole
October 13, 2023
This house story of Marvel is a jewel for those who love comics. For me, the most enlightening part was near the beginning (the period between the end of WWII and the beginning of the Silver Age) and at the end (the period since the misbegotten Spider-clone saga and Cable and Stryfe and Bishop, that drove me away from new comics).
After a period of unusual creativity in the early years of WWII (that saw the creation of Captain America, the Submariner and the first Human Torch), Timely comics quickly became formulaic and did not reach the heights seen in DC in the same period. After superheroes became unpopular Timely (then Atlas) turned into a me-too in all genres (Western, jungle, horror, sci-fi, romance, teen humor, funny animals) trying to flood the market and take up spinner space in drugstores. The only field where Marvel seemed to have an advantage was in comics about huge monsters with alliterative names: these were written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko among others. Even the creation of the Fantastic Four was a knee-jerk reaction to that of the Justice League of America, the difference was in the internal team dynamics, the less than sterling character of some of the heroes and in the real world, New York setting of the stories (although, not right from the beginning). The explosion of talent was such that in barely five years The House of Ideas created all their important characters minus The Punisher, Wolverine and Deadpool. Originally Stan Lee is said to have assumed a generational turnover of 3 years, so that a reader would only remain with the company maybe from age 10 to 13, when he (and it usually was a “he”) would graduate to Mad Magazine and to Playboy Magazine and leave childish things behind. This would allow Marvel to recycle its plot lines every 3 years with no one the wiser. It didn’t work out that way, kids in their early teens would stick with comics into college and beyond. This is turn would force comic writers into engineering a heightened tension to keep reader interest, generating larger team ups across titles and coming up with greater and greater menaces for the heroes to fight. Heroes would become more and more powerful and therefore less human except that they became more impatient and brutal. This unpleasant trend would lead to abominations like The Boys and Marvel Zombies.
The 70s saw a darkening mood, exemplified by the Punisher and Wolverine. The conventional end point for the Silver Age is the murder of Gwen Stacy after being thrown either from the Brooklyn Bridge or the George Washington Bridge by the Green Goblin, in 1973, which would coincide roughly with the period in which Captain American, having lost confidence in the country’s leadership presumably due to the Watergate scandal, gave up his shield and winged cowl. The late seventies saw a revival of horror comics, but with a more supernatural bent. In the 1980s things got darker, especially in the aftermath of The Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, which was the harbinger of (bad) things to come. This trend would make even comic relief characters like Daredevil become dark and gritty. There was still great stuff, like the Claremont and Byrne X-Men runs and Byrne’s FF run, but mostly not so much.
As Marvel was bought up by unscrupulous corporate raiders, respect for the reader would vanish, cash generation would be king and there would follow a multiplication of popular titles (notably Spiderman and the X-Men) often execrably drawn and plotted, with multiple covers often in metallic finishes, and crossovers across multiple titles that forced serious readers/collectors to buy the whole or much of the lineup. No one could keep up. The affection generated by the letters page, the MMMs and Stan Lee’s mannerisms was quickly exhausted as the Marvel Universe was consumed by cruel and violent “antiheros” and sociopathic, often genocidal villains like Apocalypse or Carnage. The stylized representation of NYC became in this era like something out of the movie Taxi Driver. Heroes’s origins reappeared in nastier, more brutal versions and everything (or near it) became ironic, cynical and dark. For me, events came to a head with the Spiderman clone saga. Although I was annoyed at the resurrection of Jean Gray after the Dark Phoenix saga, first as a clone, then as herself, with the spider clones it really became too much. Cloning, time travel, resurrection of characters, and also a permanent knowingness and the reinvention of familiar characters with alternate sex, gender and sexual orientation made it too hard for this aging fan to suspend disbelief, when permanently confronted with the fictitious nature of the characters. While rationally I understand this is a consequence of the need to keep churning out stories about the same characters for many decades and without obvious repetition, in a changing cultural and demographic context, emotionally I did not enjoy and so I checked out of Marvel comics until the movies came in the 2000s. Some of the more recent storylines seemed intriguing and I may check them out.
In the end, Marvel and DC comics are the most prolonged creative endeavors concerning fictional characters. That these (or the most important among them) have survived for over 50 years, that they have made the transition to newspapers, TV, video games, movies and streaming, is saying a lot about them.
After a period of unusual creativity in the early years of WWII (that saw the creation of Captain America, the Submariner and the first Human Torch), Timely comics quickly became formulaic and did not reach the heights seen in DC in the same period. After superheroes became unpopular Timely (then Atlas) turned into a me-too in all genres (Western, jungle, horror, sci-fi, romance, teen humor, funny animals) trying to flood the market and take up spinner space in drugstores. The only field where Marvel seemed to have an advantage was in comics about huge monsters with alliterative names: these were written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko among others. Even the creation of the Fantastic Four was a knee-jerk reaction to that of the Justice League of America, the difference was in the internal team dynamics, the less than sterling character of some of the heroes and in the real world, New York setting of the stories (although, not right from the beginning). The explosion of talent was such that in barely five years The House of Ideas created all their important characters minus The Punisher, Wolverine and Deadpool. Originally Stan Lee is said to have assumed a generational turnover of 3 years, so that a reader would only remain with the company maybe from age 10 to 13, when he (and it usually was a “he”) would graduate to Mad Magazine and to Playboy Magazine and leave childish things behind. This would allow Marvel to recycle its plot lines every 3 years with no one the wiser. It didn’t work out that way, kids in their early teens would stick with comics into college and beyond. This is turn would force comic writers into engineering a heightened tension to keep reader interest, generating larger team ups across titles and coming up with greater and greater menaces for the heroes to fight. Heroes would become more and more powerful and therefore less human except that they became more impatient and brutal. This unpleasant trend would lead to abominations like The Boys and Marvel Zombies.
The 70s saw a darkening mood, exemplified by the Punisher and Wolverine. The conventional end point for the Silver Age is the murder of Gwen Stacy after being thrown either from the Brooklyn Bridge or the George Washington Bridge by the Green Goblin, in 1973, which would coincide roughly with the period in which Captain American, having lost confidence in the country’s leadership presumably due to the Watergate scandal, gave up his shield and winged cowl. The late seventies saw a revival of horror comics, but with a more supernatural bent. In the 1980s things got darker, especially in the aftermath of The Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, which was the harbinger of (bad) things to come. This trend would make even comic relief characters like Daredevil become dark and gritty. There was still great stuff, like the Claremont and Byrne X-Men runs and Byrne’s FF run, but mostly not so much.
As Marvel was bought up by unscrupulous corporate raiders, respect for the reader would vanish, cash generation would be king and there would follow a multiplication of popular titles (notably Spiderman and the X-Men) often execrably drawn and plotted, with multiple covers often in metallic finishes, and crossovers across multiple titles that forced serious readers/collectors to buy the whole or much of the lineup. No one could keep up. The affection generated by the letters page, the MMMs and Stan Lee’s mannerisms was quickly exhausted as the Marvel Universe was consumed by cruel and violent “antiheros” and sociopathic, often genocidal villains like Apocalypse or Carnage. The stylized representation of NYC became in this era like something out of the movie Taxi Driver. Heroes’s origins reappeared in nastier, more brutal versions and everything (or near it) became ironic, cynical and dark. For me, events came to a head with the Spiderman clone saga. Although I was annoyed at the resurrection of Jean Gray after the Dark Phoenix saga, first as a clone, then as herself, with the spider clones it really became too much. Cloning, time travel, resurrection of characters, and also a permanent knowingness and the reinvention of familiar characters with alternate sex, gender and sexual orientation made it too hard for this aging fan to suspend disbelief, when permanently confronted with the fictitious nature of the characters. While rationally I understand this is a consequence of the need to keep churning out stories about the same characters for many decades and without obvious repetition, in a changing cultural and demographic context, emotionally I did not enjoy and so I checked out of Marvel comics until the movies came in the 2000s. Some of the more recent storylines seemed intriguing and I may check them out.
In the end, Marvel and DC comics are the most prolonged creative endeavors concerning fictional characters. That these (or the most important among them) have survived for over 50 years, that they have made the transition to newspapers, TV, video games, movies and streaming, is saying a lot about them.
February 7, 2023
3.5 stars. Who does better visuals than Marvel, right? Docked a half star for being too weighty to read comfortably in bed.
February 6, 2025
A fun romp from Marvel’s beginnings through 2021-got me up to date on all the fun I missed since switching to rock and roll from comic books at the tender age of 13.
October 28, 2025
I was really enjoying this up until just past the 90s. I think the updated version either had someone less interested writing it, or a lot of AI was used.
August 19, 2024
A stimulating review of marvel comics history
This book provided great detailed information of the many characters developed by so many writers and artists. Reading this from my kindle was often very difficult because the printed text was very small making reading the content much less enjoyable. In the beginning the author tried to provide a hint on how best to follow the flow to better understand the content.
This book provided great detailed information of the many characters developed by so many writers and artists. Reading this from my kindle was often very difficult because the printed text was very small making reading the content much less enjoyable. In the beginning the author tried to provide a hint on how best to follow the flow to better understand the content.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews