Happy Anniversary, True Believers!

I can hardly believe that it’s already been a year since I started this blog! If the timestamps are to be believed, though, it was indeed one year ago today that I posted my first review, in which I spotlighted one of my favorite collected editions, The Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus, Vol. 1. Since then I’ve written and posted an additional 40 reviews, begun an annotated timeline of Marvel’s collected editions (more on that in a minute!), and made some great friends in the online comic book community. I’d like to thank everyone who has contributed to this blog in some way over the last year, whether you’ve read a review, left a comment, or browsed the timeline. I never imagined that I would accomplish so much at With Great Power in only a year, and I owe it to you guys.

But enough with the sappy stuff. It wouldn’t be an anniversary if we didn’t celebrate somehow, right? So in honor of the occasion, I’ve made the biggest update to the Marvel TPB Timeline ever. The timeline now begins with the first issue of Marvel Comics in 1939 and goes all the way up to the start of the Secret Invasion crossover in 2008. I’ve done my best to make the information provided on big storylines like House of M and Civil War as understandable as possible, so I hope you enjoy those sections. (On the other hand, if you think I could do better, feel free to let me know – I’m always looking for new ways to improve the timeline!)

I didn’t ignore the period of time (1970-2005) that had already been covered, though. It’s been overhauled with new and more accurate annotations for many books, information on a variety of out-of-print collected editions (including the original Onslaught and Kurt Busiek Avengers trades), and books from Marvel’s most recent batch of solicitations. In other words, pretty much everything published in Marvel’s first 70 years is on the timeline! Of course, that doesn’t mean my work is even close to being done – the next step is to get the timeline totally caught up to the present day, and beyond that, I have a few other cool ideas. They’re a little too far off to talk about in much detail yet, but I’m pretty sure you’ll like ’em!

So that’s what you can expect in the immediate future in regards to the timeline, and it’s exciting stuff, to be sure. What about reviews, though? As you’ve probably noticed, those have been a bit less frequent in recent months than they used to be. The simple reason for that is that I’ve been so busy lately that it’s been hard to find the time to read, much less review, very many comics. For the next month, at least, the reviews will probably continue at a rate of about one every other week, although I may occasionally be able to post a review on off-weeks. In May, though, I hope to really get back into the reviewing groove and to make up for lost time with extra reviews on top of the planned weekly ones. Also, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ll be doing a creator-focused month during the summer, which I think will be a lot of fun. Who will the creator (or creators) be, you ask? That’s still a secret… although I can tell you that the books have already been picked out!

That’s about it for now. Thanks again for stopping by, and as always, if you have comments, questions, or feedback of any kind, you can either leave a comment here, email me at marveltimeline@gmail.com, or follow me on Twitter (@Dief88)!

Streams of Consciousness – “NFL Superpro Appreciation Day” Edition!

It’s that time of year again: the day when we all pause for a moment of silence to remember the greatest hero and sports legend ever to star in his own Marvel comic book. That’s right, ladies and gentleman. Today is NFL Superpro Appreciation Day.

Okay, so I’m just messing around a bit (even though I really would like to see Marvel release an NFL Superpro collection one day!). I hope everyone is enjoying Super Bowl Sunday; personally, I’m pretty excited. As a proud resident of Wisconsin, you can probably guess who I’ll be rooting for, but I honestly think both teams are pretty evenly matched and that it will be an exciting game, no matter who comes out on top (must…resist…Roethlisberger joke).

But you didn’t come here for my thoughts on football – or at least, I certainly hope you didn’t! I sort of fell off the two-reviews-per-week schedule I had intended for last month, but on the bright side, I did manage to post more reviews than if I had been doing them once a week. I’ll make up the ones I missed with extra reviews at some point in the future, I promise. At least for this month, though, I’ll be doing my best to keep to a weekly schedule.

In other news, I’ve updated the Marvel TPB Timeline yet again with over 150 new books. The 1980s are now finished, and so is 2005 (aside from House of M, which goes at the end of the year and will be part of the next update). There have been a lot of requests for me to add material that takes place after Avengers Disassembled, so hopefully this will satisfy people at least until the next update!

Stay tuned for more timeline updates and for a new review sometime this week!

It’s Not Quite a Review, But...

I know I said I would be posting two reviews a week for January, but alas, I just don’t think that second review is going to happen this week. But just to make it up to you, I’ve posted yet another big update to the Marvel TPB Timeline! This one isn’t as noticeable as previous ones at first glance, since I haven’t added any new years to the timeline. Instead, I’ve added TONS of books that were missing for 1984-2004 – and while I didn’t count how many there were, I think it’s safe to say that there are over two hundred new books in the timeline. Heck, a couple dozen books were added featuring the Punisher alone!

Some other titles that have been added include Squadron Supreme, Star Comics, The ‘Nam, Women of Marvel, the New Universe books, JLA/Avengers, various inter-company crossovers, more anthology and “Best of” trades and hardcovers, a handful of upcoming trades, and well over a hundred original graphic novels. I’ve added new links and information about out-of-print versions of many trades and OGNs, and I’ve also updated and corrected the annotations for too many books to even begin to list. I owe a big debt to Ian at Trade Reading Order for his help in pointing out several resources that contained details on many of the books I was missing.

The next step is to go through the years 1984-2004 one last time to add a few other things I missed (I should add some information on the original Age of Apocalypse and Onslaught trades, for example). Once that’s through, the updates should come a bit more fast and furious. The next update will finish up the 1980s by adding the first few years of the decade, as well as add some post-“Avengers Disassembled” material, probably up to the “House of M” crossover.

As always, if you have thoughts or suggestions (and especially if you spot any errors!), feel free to leave a comment or send me an email at marveltimeline@gmail.com. Thanks for stopping by!

A Huge Marvel TPB Timeline Update!

I have some good news and some bad news today. First, the bad news – I won’t be posting a new review this week. But the reason why is actually the good news! This week I used the time I normally would have spent on a new review working on the Marvel Trade Paperback Timeline, which has now been updated to cover everything – and I do mean everything (so far as I can tell, at least) – that Marvel published from 1984 to 2004. In terms of Marvel continuity, that’s everything from the original Secret Wars to Avengers Disassembled! I also added a Table of Contents to the top of the page for easier navigation.

As always, any and all feedback is welcome. If you think I’ve made a mistake somewhere (which is more than likely, given the number of books now on the timeline), please let me know! Feel free either to leave a comment on this post or to send me an email at marveltimeline@gmail.com. Thanks for stopping by!

Streams of Consciousness – 9/30/2010

Hey everyone, just a few things to share with you today. First of all, I’ve done quite a bit of work on the Marvel Trade Paperback Timeline over the last couple of weeks. When I first posted it, the reading order covered the years 1998 through 2001. It now covers 1998 through 2004 – or, in terms of Marvel continuity, from Heroes Return through Avengers Disassembled. Furthermore, from what I can tell the timeline is totally complete for those years, even including a number of trades that haven’t been solicited yet. But if you think I’m missing something or that I need to shuffle anything around, please let me know! And if you have any other feedback at all, feel free to leave a comment or email me at marveltimeline@gmail.com. (And speaking of reading orders, Ian at Trade Reading Order is back to working on his site after a brief hiatus, so head over there and leave him a comment!)

That aside, this blog reached two other milestones recently. The first is that Gambit Classic, Vol. 1 marked the blog’s 25th review, and while I’m not sure the honor should have gone to such a terrible book, I’m really happy to have been able to keep this going for so long. And that brings me to the second milestone, which is that yesterday marked the blog’s six-month anniversary! So thanks to everyone who’s been following the blog, either in terms of commenting, being an actual “follower” on Blogger, or even just reading my ramblings every week; your comments and feedback are what keep this enjoyable for me.

So I think that’s about it for now. There should be a new review either Friday or Saturday – see you then!

A Timeline Update

If you’ve arrived here by way of another website, then welcome! My thanks go out to the Collected Editions blog, Chris Marshall at the Collected Comics Library (who mentioned the Marvel Trade Paperback Timeline in this week’s podcast), and others who have linked here. Feedback about the timeline has been great so far, and I’m glad that everyone seems to be enjoying it. Again, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please leave a comment (either on this post or the previous one) or send me an email!

Last night I made some small, but significant, changes to the existing timeline. One of the aims I initially had was to clear up some of the confusion around the many trade paperbacks that have had their contents later repackaged and reprinted in other books – oftentimes, either in oversized hardcovers or Marvel’s massive Omnibus collections. With that in mind, I’ve added additional information (and Amazon links!) for a number of books, including Daredevil: Guardian Devil and Amazing Spider-Man: Coming Home, which have been re-collected in hardcovers or in bigger “Ultimate Collection” trades. I hope this will make it easier for people to find exactly what they’re looking for on the timeline itself, without having to do a ton of outside research just to find out what’s collected in some of these books.

This is also probably one of the last major posts you’ll see about the timeline here in the main blog at With Great Power. I’ve always intended for this to be a review blog, and that’s what it will continue to be first and foremost. At some point I may set up another, smaller blog for the purpose of posting updates about the timeline, in which case I’ll post a link here. Either way, you can be sure that I’ll continue to update and expand the timeline as time goes on, and that I’ll do my best to keep up with all of your comments and emails about it.

Well, that’s it for now – I’ll see you again on Friday for another review. Until then, have a great week!

Introducing the Marvel Trade Paperback Timeline!

It all started some time in April. Having scoured the Internet for a Marvel-themed list in the vein of the Collected Editions blog’s wonderful DC Trade Paperback Timeline and turning up relatively nothing, I decided to work out a proper reading order for Marvel’s trade paperback and hardcover collections. At first it was just something I was doing for myself, but as my list grew longer and more comprehensive, I realized that if I was confused – me, a person who’s generally pretty familiar with Marvel’s collected editions and publishing history – there must be many more people out there with the same, if not even more, questions. And so the idea of creating a fully annotated Marvel Trade Paperback Timeline for this blog was born.

Today I’ve posted the first part of that timeline, starting with the nearly line-wide relaunch that took place in 1998 (following the events of the miniseries Heroes Reborn: The Return) and extending to the beginning of J. Michael Straczynski’s tenure on Amazing Spider-Man in 2001. As I mentioned in my review of Captain America: To Serve and Protect, the first book currently listed on the timeline, this is where the “current” Marvel Universe really got its start. While many titles obviously have roots going back to the early 1960s, I think the shift in editorial direction (and overall quality) that took place in the late 1990s makes this as good a demarcation point in Marvel’s publishing history as any. It’s also the time period that first got me interested in making this timeline – Marvel has been reprinting a great deal of material from this era lately, much of it for the first time.

In the near future, the timeline will be expanded to cover books taking place both before and after the ones listed currently – ideally, it will eventually cover everything from 1939 (when Marvel Comics #1 was first published) to the present. The offline version of the timeline is nearly finished, although there are several sections that require a good deal more reading and research on my part before they can be sufficiently completed. I wanted to start by posting just one part of the timeline so that I could get your feedback and suggestions as well as deal with any necessary formatting changes now, rather than later. I truly hope this timeline will help other people as much as the process of creating it has helped me. If you have any questions or comments (any at all!), please feel free to leave a comment on this post or to send an email to marveltimeline@gmail.com.

Before signing off, a few acknowledgments are in order. Both Comic Book DB and Trade Paperback List have been invaluable resources in making this timeline so far. Thanks as well to Ian from Trade Reading Order, where he’s created an excellent reading order for DC’s collections that complements the one at the Collected Editions blog quite nicely. He’s also working on a Marvel reading order which I think will similarly complement the one I’ve started here, when we’re both finished!

So, I think I’ve probably rambled on long enough. Feel free to check out the timeline (either by clicking here or on the link in the sidebar) and tell me what you think!