THE UNBOXING - MAY 2018

Marvel comes at us with two books this month; a trade paperback and hardcover. The trade is CAPTAIN AMERICA EPIC COLLECTION: THE BLOODSTONE HUNT, plugging a long-lived hole in Marvel's reprints of Mark Gruenwald's CAPTAIN AMERICA. Slotted between the previously released THE CAPTAIN collection and the STREETS OF POISON EPIC COLLECTION, and combined with the SOCIETY OF SERPENTS EPIC COLLECTION and JUSTICE IS SERVED EPIC COLLECTION, this book now completes a full run of CAPTAIN AMERICA issues 302 through 386, plus assorted annual and other goodies! Essentially this is the first half of Gruenwald's ten-year run on the bookshelf, and while the second half has seen some spotty collection over the years, it seems only a matter of time before it, too, receives the comprehensive Epic Collection treatment.

And from the X-Office of the nineties, we have the X-MEN: LEGIONQUEST hardcover. This book contains several of the same issues as could be found in the X-MEN: AGE OF APOCALYPSE PRELUDE book from some years back, though that was a volume I never picked up due to very poor reviews of the paper quality -- which turns out to have been the right choice in retrospect, as this book offers a significant upgrade in size and quality.

And now a new edition of the Junior Unboxing! It came to my attention recently that Marvel published a second edition of the AVENGERS STORYBOOK COLLECTION, just released last month, containing all-new tales aimed at younger readers. I snagged it and, while I was at it, picked up 5-MINTUE SPIDER-MAN STORIES (2017 edition) and the SPIDER-MAN STORYBOOK COLLECTION (2016 edition), both of which also offer (mostly) new contents as well. I spoke a few months back about the Marvel Storybook Universe I'm compiling and suggested I might write a post about it -- and that's still my plan, but the addition of these three books has me revising the universe, so the post has been delayed. I suspect it'll probably arrive this summer for the one or two people who might any interest.

I think that's it for May, so we'll reconvene in a month to see what shows up next!