THE UNBOXING: 2024

One more bit of business before we wrap things up. Back when I had the time and motivation*, I used to do a regular monthly feature here where I went through the assorted trade paperbacks and hardcovers (and later, digital comics as well) that I acquired. Then I stopped, in large part because Marvel and DC drastically scaled back releasing things I was interested in, but also because I essentially ceased buying trades, preferring hardcovers whenever possible. However, I did start working The Unboxing into my annual "Happy New Year!" posts, going through notable items I had picked up over the prior year. But since next week's "Happy New Year!" will also double as my farewell, I don't really want to clog up the proceedings shilling a bunch of books. However, I did pick up some great things over the past year and would like to share them here for those interested. So, let's go for it right now, shall we?

(Note: The following will include, in addition to the afore-mentioned books I own, books I have pre-ordered for the coming months as well, given it's unlikely I'll be doing another of these posts next year!)

We'll start off, as always, with the most prolific publisher on my bookshelves, Marvel. From January through to today, I've grabbed the following volumes from the House of Ideas:

• AMAZING SPIDER-MAN OMNIBUS Vol. 6: I'll keep buying these numbered AMAZING SPIDER-MAN OMNIBUS volumes for at least one more installment. This book collects Marv Wolfman's run on Marvel's flagship here from the late seventies, and so the next book should cover Denny O'Neil's run, and will hopefully line up with the SPIDER-MAN BY ROGER STERN OMNIBUS Marvel published many years ago.
• CAPTAIN AMERICA BY MARK GRUENWALD OMNIBUS Vol. 1
• CAPTAIN AMERICA BY MARK GRUENWALD OMNIBUS Vol. 2: After years of publishing Mark Gruenwald's long CAP run via the Epic Collection trade paperbacks, Marvel has finally seen fit to give this material the Omnibus treatment. Gruenwald is the definitive CAP for me, so I'm in for all the books in this series, which should be three in total (though I will admit that I would've preferred it be split into a set of four, as the first book, which I already have, is extremely thick, and I so I expect the second, coming this summer to be equally cumbersome.
• IRON FIST: DANNY RAND: THE EARLY YEARS OMNIBUS: I have no idea why it took Marvel so long to get this material into an Omnibus! They published it in an ESSENTIAL volume many years ago, and then in two MARVEL MASTERWORKS well over a decade ago at this point. After that came an Epic Collection in 2016 -- but finally, in 2024, we have received a proper oversized hardcover collecting this classic material by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, among others.
• NEW WARRIORS CLASSIC OMNIBUS Vol. 3: Not a lot to say about this one, other than that it's nice to see the series finally finished! Marvel published volume 1 some time back, then... nothing. Until they reprinted it in 2023, then published volume 2 this year, followed by the final installment in the coming year.
• SPIDER-MAN BY DAVID MICHELINIE AND MARK BAGLEY OMNIBUS Vol. 1
• SPIDER-MAN BY DAVID MICHELINIE AND MARK BAGLEY OMNIBUS Vol. 2: I love Spider-Man by Stan Lee and John Romita. I love Spider-Man by Roger Stern and his various collaborators, chiefly John Romita, Jr. But Spider-Man by David Michelinie and Mark Bagley -- this is my Spider-Man. This was the AMAZING SPIDER-MAN I read every month in middle school and early high school, my "Personal Golden Age". So when Marvel announced this two-volume series, there was no doubt I was going to pick them up. Volume 1 came out this year, and volume 2 is coming in 2025.
• WOLVERINE/GAMBIT: VICTIMS GALLERY EDITION: Last year I noted that I had picked up (or was planning to pick up) the Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale Gallery Editions of SPIDER-MAN: BLUE and DAREDEVIL: YELLOW. I passed on HULK: GRAY and DAREDEVIL: YELLOW, because I'm not as big a fan of those two. But WOLVERINE/GAMBIT: VICTIMS, the duo's very first work at Marvel from the mid-90s, has been a favorite of mine since it was published when I was in high school, and I'll be very happy to own it in this gigantic format when it releases in 2025.
• X-MEN 2099 OMNIBUS: I read three series in Marvel's 2099 universe in the nineties -- SPIDER-MAN, DOOM, and X-MEN. Marvel published the first of those in Omnibus format a couple years ago, and now we have the third. My recollection is that X-MEN 2099 was my favorite of the three series, so this is one I'm quite happy to own and look forward to reading. (As for DOOM; that's getting an Omnibus release as well, in 2025! I just haven't decided if I want it. While I liked the early issues by John Francis Moore and Pat Broderick, eventually Moore left the series and Warren Ellis took over, and I strongly disliked his run -- so I'm not certain I want to bother with this one.)
• X-MEN: MUTANT MASSACRE PRELUDE OMNIBUS: This book, reprinting a bunch of UNCANNY X-MEN, NEW MUTANTS, and X-FACTOR issues, among varius mini-series, annuals, etc. from the mid eighties. is ginormous. Like, way, way, too big. But it fills an important hole in the X-Men Omnibus collection, so I had to get it. I may sprain a wrist whenever I finally read it, but at least I have it.
• X-MEN: ROAD TO ONSLAUGHT OMNIBUS Vol. 1: Years ago, I opined that the year between "Age of Apocalypse" and "Onslaught" was one of my favorite periods for the X-Men. I can't quite explain it; I just really enjoyed that period. I bought the three ROAD TO ONSLAUGHT trade paperbacks Marvel published around that time, but we've now reached a point where they're upgrading the material to an Omnibus, so yes, I'm buying it. It'll take two hardcovers to encompass the contents of those three trades (with a few things added that the trades skipped), and I'll be extremely pleased when I have them both on my X-shelf!
• X-MEN: THE HIDDEN YEARS OMNIBUS: I loved John Byrne's HIDDEN YEARS series. I know it has its detractors, but for my money, it was the best X-title coming out at the time. Certainly it was the one I looked forward to reading most every month, So, even though I owned this series in two trade paperbacks, I was more than happy to "double-dip" on the Omnibus this year.
• X-MEN: X-TINCTION AGENDA OMNIBUS: A long time ago, Marvel released an X-TINCTION AGENDA hardcover. It collected that event, and nothing else, and it fit neatly between the two X-MEN BY CHRIS CLAREMONT AND JIM LEE Omnibuses. But now, Marvel has expanded the contents of that book to include several odds and ends from that era, including some annuals and limited series, so naturally, in order to ensure my hardcover X-Collection is as complete as possible, I had to pick this up.

Then, from the Distinguished Competition, a smaller handful of books:

• DC/MARVEL: THE AMALGAM AGE OMNIBUS
• DC VS. MARVEL OMNIBUS: I don't think anyone imagined these two books would ever happen. When George Pérez was dying and Marvel and DC wanted to honor him by rereleasing JLA/AVENGERS, it took small armies of lawyers on both side to make it happen; and even then the result was a simple trade paperback with a microscopic print run. But something obviously changed, because here we are in the year 2024 (soon to be 2025), with nearly all of the Marvel/DC crossovers issued or about to be issued in Omnibus format!
• SPY VS. SPY OMNIBUS: I read MAD magazine sporadically as a child, and my favorite feature was always the Spy vs. Spy strip by Antonio Prohías (though I didn't know his name back then). So, on a lark when DC reissued this Omnibus recently, I picked it up.
• SUPERMAN: THE TRIANGLE ERA OMNIBUS Vol. 1: Having read the initial Post-CRISIS Superman material some years ago, I've had an interest in continuing with it. At one point, DC had released a hardcover called THE EXILE, which picked up immediately after John Byrne's run ended, but I passed on that volume (though it did get a reissue this year). But recently, DC released this ostenisble first book in a series collecting the so-called "Triangle" period of Superman (called such due to the fact that every issue of the Super-titles featured a little triangle on its cover telling readers where it fit into the year's reading order). At some point, I will read this and decide if I want to keep going with it.

And as always, I have a few titles from a couple of indepenent publishers, Clover Press and Fantagraphics, respectively:

• TERRY AND THE PIRATES MASTER COLLECTION Vol. 7
• TERRY AND THE PIRATES MASTER COLLECTION Vol. 8
• TERRY AND THE PIRATES MASTER COLLECTION Vol. 9
• TERRY AND THE PIRATES MASTER COLLECTION Vol. 10: I mentioned last year that I'd started grabbing these books reprinting Milton Caniff's magnum opus newspaper strip, TERRY AND THE PIRATES. Throughout the past year, I've acquired (or will be acquiring in coming months) four more volumes in the series. I believe after volume 10, which is due out in March, there will be only two more books to finish the series.
• CARL BARKS DISNEY LIBRARY Vol. 1: PIRATE GOLD
• CARL BARKS DISNEY LIBRARY Vol. 2: FROZEN GOLD
• CARL BARKS DISNEY LIBRARY Vol. 3: MYSTERY OF THE SWAMP: As always, I continue to pick up Fantagraphics' Carl Barks books, which have finally, thirteen years after the series started, moved backward to collect Barks' earliest Duck stories!

But that's not all! After all the above, I've saved possibly the best for last: from IDW, we have a doozy: the JOHN ROMITA'S AMAZING SPIDER-MAN DAILY STRIPS ARTISTS'S EDITION. I found about this volume under some sad circumstances; in 2023, the day John Romita Jr. announced his father had passed away, I was reading tributes to the senior Romita online and stumbled across the fact that this book was forthcoming, and I immediately pre-ordered it. I've mentioned more than once on this blog that John Romita is by far my absolute favorite of all the Silver Age Marvel artists. Above Kirby, above Ditko, above Buscema, in my pantheon, there sits Romita. (And Romita's inks made all his peers in the 60s Bullpen look a million times better, too!) I wanted to publish a post here when Romita died, but I had already praised him at length in my look back at the Spider-Man newspaper strip, among other posts here, and frankly, I was too dismayed by his death to prepare any sort of coherent post about it.

But the fact remains that I have long considered the Spider-Man newspaper strip to be the pinnacle of Romita's work with the character. It's breathtakingly beautiful, and to own so much of the "original art" in a massive tome liked this is something I had dreamed of but was never sure could actually happen. The fact that it did, and that I own it, is still a little hard to believe. This volume is one of the crown jewels of my comic collection.

And that's it; the final Unboxing is in the bag. Come back next week for my final Hail and Farewell post.

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*That's "motivation", not "interest". I have always had interest in doing The Unboxing. I just never actually feel like doing it.