Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Box Set Slipcase (The Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heros) Hardcover – April 2, 2019

I concede. Initially I was uncertain of this purchase. The price point slows one’s hand.I received it yesterday for 300.00—a nice drop. In the days since I ordered my set, the price increased. It may fall again. This happens. Once can seek many of these books in paperback form in Marvel’s great “Epic Collection” series—but those readers will miss out on the tidy, well-produced hardcovers that, thank goodness, lack the sometimes unwieldy “tome” aspect of the omnibuses—my goodness; some are bricks—which are often nonetheless wonderful.Now that I have the set, I utter a simple, ecstatic wow, absent reservations in recommending this set.As a screenwriter/film professor, I know this offers a powerful (“Screw it all! This is comix!”) story resource.Thus far, I’ve unwrapped a few... to dip in. As a reader, I’m most familiar with the original Lee-Kirby arc, bound often, the Kurt Busiek/Perez work, and Brian Bendis’s coda come-early, in my view: the high watermark of Bendis’s career, as the Scarlet Witch, post-mass-mayhem, comes to life in this sequence lovely, sad sequence drained of color in which she resides in a self-created dream world that has none of the bad things that have made her life, as well as the lives of so many others, pure hell.The sequence resembles “Godfather II”’s coda—in which Michael, after securing the murder of his brother, Fredo, contemplates an earlier, innocent time in his life, when those whose deaths he caused are still alive, awaiting “Pop’s” birthday party.I am no Bendis mark. But here, Bendis pointed into the stands, Reggie Jackson-style, and knocked it out of the park.I don’t mean to ignore the accomplishments of illustrators, such as Neal Adams, the extraordinarily underrated John Buscema, (yes, you can be Buscema and still be under-rated…this is possible) who I enjoy seeing in thread-bound IDW artist editions, George “Crisis on Infinite Earths”— (for my money, DC’s greatest visual contributor this side of Curt Swan/Dave Gibbons/José Luis García-López) Perez, Carlos Pacheco—have you ever read the Busiek / Pacheco “Superman” stories circa 2006-2007? No one has nailed the character to less acclaim or notice than Busiek. The run, sadly, is rarely collected—all of whom make the stories breathe on the page, often with a seventies pop art sensibility the Warhol crowd will crib from.Naturally, most of these comics emerge in an era preceding our overwhelming influx of superhero cinema, in which the superhero film is officially the western—in terms of: the most produced, most successful genre—(that is no insult. Look at the British Film Institute 360 greatest films of all time… nicely divided into decades list) and you will see a stunning amount of John Ford, Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann (Hawks’s “Rio Bravo” was penned by SF writer Leigh Brackett, who will write “The Empire Strikes Back” ), and Sam Peckinpah westerns.The books also, for the most part, precede cinema’s influence on comics, which has been for both good and ill (more ill in my view)—especially when one desires mind-blowing action-adventure SF, with those odd doses of Marvel characterization, apparent in Hank Pym’s split personalities—rather than the HBO-ization of comics, (my term), in which bleak somehow equals complexity, and even the dialogue sounds a bit too much like repartee cribbed from Aaron Sorkin.Thus, here we have writers like Steve Englehart giving us pure, complex Super-hero-driven SF, with concepts as bold as anything in Matt Smith/Peter Capaldi (my two favorite doctors) Dr. Who—for me, few filmed work is as pure in terms of SF) mingling with big, big budget space opera spectacle (Yes, Star Wars or Trek, cinema’s equivalent of the grand western).Thus, what I’m saying basically is: this is the comics equivalent of music’s The Beatles. Enjoy.

Let me start by stating that I'm a huge fan of Marvel and, to some extent, a completionist, which isn’t a good thing in this case. I've loved all previous Marvel Superhero Box Set Slipcases released (Famous Firsts, Battleworld, Civil War, and Infinite Gauntlet), so I had to have this one. I'm keeping the second copy Amazon shipped me (first arrived damaged), but man, clear signs that Marvel really cut corners on this one.First thing’s first: the packaging is nowhere near the caliber of packaging for all previous slipcases released. Those were packed in thick padding that fully and tightly encased the set, with a shell of cardboard wrapped around the padding, placed inside a box, placed inside another box. Next to bulletproof, really. This thing? The slipcase is in a box with 1/2-inch-thick Styrofoam sectional pieces surrounding it (see picture). That's it. Marvel got cheap, and this was likely 80-90% of the reason as to why my first set arrived with damage to the slipcase (cracked along one of its hinges--see picture). And while I'd like to blame Marvel completely for that damage, I can't help but think that Amazon did little to keep the set protected, considering the size of the box the set was shipped in (see picture, there was nothing else in the Amazon box). Both sets came in the same size Amazon box, which included nothing to keep them from bouncing around inside while en route. I'm actually surprised that my replacement set arrived without damage.On to the box set itself: the exterior art on the slipcase isn't bad, but compared to other sets, it's rather unimaginative and doesn't feel very “iconic.” The books themselves inside the slipcase aren't as tightly packed as usual, which to me indicates a lazy design. Also, while it didn't seem to make a difference, there's usually extra foam padding inside the slipcase on top of the books; I guess this wasn’t a priority.Finally, onto the cloth poster (pictured). The design isn't bad, pulled from a sort of anthology comic that Marvel put together years ago with a new Kirby cover, but still, it could've been something much more iconic. What really bugs me, though, is the fact that in the bottom-left corner it's printed quite noticeably where it's made and the material type used. This isn’t on any of the other posters with previous sets, and just makes me feel that again, Marvel didn't try too hard here.If you're like me and still want to enjoy some of the best Avengers stories collected in one reasonably-sized set (I've never collected their books, so I was excited about the content), go for it at your own risk, but buyer beware that you might run into damage issues. Also, don't pay more than $300 for this. It’s not worth it.

This was a Christmas gift for my husband. HUGE marvel fan! He has been really wanting this.First the packaging was done haphazardly.Second, it's supposed to come with a poster.....and that was NOT received, at all. Very disappointing to say the least. Curious where the poster went to 🤔.