With only two books to buy today, I decided to kill some time at the comic store by looking at the TPBs. I took a look at the Marvel Essentials, something I hadn't looked at, much less thought about, in a long time.

Now I know that these books are printed in black and white on (relatively) cheap paper, but is the quality still good?

I'm thinking of collecting the Essential X-Men books though I noticed that they start with the formation of the new team, rather than the original five. Is there any reason Marvel skipped the first 66 issues?

And, on a related note, I seem to recall that DC has their own "Essentials" collection. What do they call them? I thought it was Archives, but when Amazon has a list price of $50, I guess I was wrong.

 

Oh yeah, definitely. The binding is sturdy and the printing is sharp and doesn't smear or anything.

Essential Uncanny X-Men collects the first twenty or so issues of the series. I'm guessing Marvel started Essential X-Men with the formation of the new team since that's when the series started to become really popular.

 

I wouldent piss on Essentials for the classics, but they've been put to great use in the last couple of years reprinting more obscure or less popular titles that could never sustain a decent reprint line.

I wouldent worry too much about missing most of the first 66 issues of X-Men, the Adams/Thomas run is the only pre-cancellation stuff thats really good and you can pick that up on its own in a visionaries/legends volume (assuming its still in print).

Chronicals is DC's low-rent reprint line, but theres only 2 books in it at the moment since it only started at the end of last year.