THE UNBOXING - MARCH 2018

Last month I did a quick "Junior Unboxing" of three Marvel storybooks I'd picked up to read to my son. Well, subsequent to that post, I went through all the books and came up with an order in which we could read the stories that would follow some minor train of continuity. I even tweeted about it:

One thing no one ever tells you about parenting is how much time you’ll put in poring through Marvel storybooks, arranging the stories into a proper sequence of continuity and spreading apart Avengers and Spider-Man stories so they’re not all clumped together. pic.twitter.com/ApWNXNpibj

— Matt Re (@MC_RE) February 18, 2018

Among other smaller issues, the main concern, from my perspective, was that the story introducing the Avengers gives us the original lineup of Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man, Wasp, and the Hulk -- but all the stories in the AVENGERS STORYBOOK COLLECTION feature the more movie-centric team of Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Falcon. I wanted the stories to get from Point A to Point B, and while there was no specific story showing Ant-Man and Wasp leaving the group, there were tales about the Avengers recruiting Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Falcon. But then -- catastrophe!

Update: None of these books features the story of Captain America waking from suspended animation. One story he’s in WWII, next time we see him he’s hanging with the Avengers. Major continuity glitch. 18 month-old will surely notice. Need to find a storybook covering this.

— Matt Re (@MC_RE) February 18, 2018

Fortunately, I found a solution: a book called 5-MINUTE MARVEL STORIES featured Captain America's defrosting in the twenty-first century. I quickly ordered it from Amazon, and while I was at it, I picked up 5-MINUTE AVENGERS STORIES and 5-MINUTE SPIDER-MAN STORIES. These three books are hardcovers like the Storybook Collections, the stories are about at the same reading level, and they mostly feature different stories than those in the other books (with a few exceptions, particularly the bizarre fact that there's a story about Hawkeye joining the Avengers in three of these books, but it's basically the same telling, with different words and pictures, every time).

Anyway -- all this is my way to fill some space since I have nothing else -- no books, no digital stuff -- to unbox. And after typing all the above, I'm thinking maybe I'll write up a post on the "Marvel Storybook Universe" I've concocted at some point in the not-too-distant future. No one is likely to care other than me, but I think it'll be fun anyway.

THE UNBOXING - FEBRUARY 2018

Nothing in physical format this month, but we do have the "Digital Unboxing" to enjoy. A couple weeks ago, Amazon had another of their bargain basement Marvel sales, and I took advantage to pick up a few collections dirt cheap: BLACK PANTHER: PANTHER'S QUEST, INVADERS CLASSIC: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION volume 1 and volume 2, and IRON MAN EPIC COLLECTION: DOOM. Also, in a Dark Horse sale I grabbed THE BLACK BEETLE IN: KARA BÖCEK by Francisco Francavilla, and in a Conan-specific Dark Horse sale, I picked up CONAN AND THE JEWELS OF GWAHLUR by P. Craig Russell.

(It was announced recently that Marvel has regained the Conan license, and presumably they will begin publishing Epic Collections, Omnibuses, etc. of their original Conan material when the transfer takes effect in 2019. But I recall that when Dark Horse lost the STAR WARS license, they had a massive, insanely discounted sale near the end of their final year, and I'm holding out to see if they do the same with Conan later in 2018. I only picked up JEWELS OF GWAHLUR because it looked cool and was pretty cheap to begin with.)

And now a surprise: The Unboxing Junior Edition! I love to read to my son, and we have a ton of little simple readers for him to enjoy. But recently I started reading him a MICKEY AND MINNIE STORYBOOK COLLECTION which is a little advanced (he's only nineteen months old, after all), but which he still seems to really like. Thus I checked to see if there was a Marvel equivalent, and came across three such books on Amazon! The books all come in an earlier and a more recent edition, and since the covers of the recent ones aren't very uniform, I went with the lovely matching prior printings (which also happen to cost less on Amazon).

So now we have an AVENGERS STORYBOOK COLLECTION, a SPIDER-MAN STORYBOOK COLLECTION, and a MARVEL SUPER HEROES STORYBOOK COLLECTION to read. And the best part -- and one of the major reasons I'm mentioning these here -- is that these books were printed before Marvel stopped promoting certain characters whose rights belong with Fox, so the SUPER HEROES book actually includes a Fantastic Four story and a Silver Surfer story. In addition, the collection goes deep with certain characters you don't normally see in these kids' books, like Daredevil and She-Hulk.

The second reason I decided to spotlight these books is that, even though they were published within the past few years, they present the more classic versions of the characters (albeit usually in 2000s-era costumes). So the SUPER HEROES book, for example, has a story about Professor X's younger days, which covers his encounter with Baron Strucker alongside Magneto, his first meeting with the Shadow King, and even his battle against the demonic Lucifer (!), as well as a story about the original X-Men and even one covering the "All-New, All-Different" team's mission to Krakoa! That's some relatively obscure material for a kids' book, when they could've taken the easier route of Magneto and the Brotherhood all the way through.

Anyway, I won't gush too much over these things, but for someone like me, it's great to have the ability to read kids' books to my son which cover the actual, authentic backstories of these characters as originally conceived in the comics. I don't intend to be one of those parents who tries to force his interests onto his child -- in fact it would break my heart if my son grew to resent Marvel simply over my pushing him into it -- but I do want to introduce him to Marvel, and I would prefer to do that via the original continuity and characters, then let him branch out into whatever he likes going forward.