Name: Brian Hill's review of Marvel Masterworks by Stan Lee
Item: Marvel Masterworks
Rating: 5
Author: Brian Hill

Stan Lee

Steve Ditko

The Amazing Spider-man

Marvel Masterworks

Brian Hill

Dimitris Papastergiou

Great art. Bad bad bad writing with a slice of dumb dialogue to go along with it.

Wren Hardwick

I think this was a great read... for when you want to jump back to the fifties (which I am not downing at all). This is where it all began! I was so excited to see where this started.

I'm not going to go into much detail on what happened in each issue, because we all know the drill: bad guy trying to take/take over something and then good guys appear and beat them and save the day. So I am going over some of the characters that made an appearance.

So the X-Men team starts with these characters:
Professor X: The man in the wheel chair with telepathic abilities
The Beast (Hank McCoy): Isn't blue but still very ape-like 
Iceman (Bobby Drake): The youngest of the group, and becomes basically a walking snowman
Cyclops (Slim [Scott] Summers): Has to have his eyes covered all the time because laser eyes (sunglasses will do); does become the leader while Professor X is away
Angel (Warren Worthington III): Has big ole' angel wings
Marvel Girl (Jean Grey): Telepathic and told not to strain her powers.

So, few things: 
01. Why do all the guys turn to mush about Marvel Girl? Have they never seen a girl before?
02. The language in this comic literally brings me back to the fifties. 
03. They always explained what they were doing out loud (for the reader, I am assuming) and it was kind of like me "yah, I know you are doing that because I can see you doing it." MAYBE it was because it was the first X-Men so it was common sense? Or maybe comics weren't big back then so they had to spell it all out? I would have to do some research on it.



Some special features:
Thor	Odinson: doesn't have an alter ego because he's a Asgardian and not from Earth. He has a hammer that only he can pick up.
Captain America (Steve Rogers): Oh Captain America, my favorite avenger. The leader of the group and the one with the morals to shoot for. 
Giant-Man (Hank Pym): I'm pretty sure this is the same guy that does Ant-Man, but I don't think that has been made at this point? I would love for someone to tell me if I am right or not.
Wasp (Janet van Dyne): I have never even heard of this marvel character before. She is tiny and can lift really big things. I'm pretty sure she shrinks to that size though; I don't think she stays that size forever. 
Ka-Zar: I'm not sure if they consider him an X-Men, but this caveman has a saber-toothed tiger. Shows up later in the volume, not in all of them like the rest of them.



And, of course, the villains:
Magneto (Max Eisenhardt): The ability to control metal! It was so perfect for the first villain to be Magneto, since he is the one that is at the core of a lot of the bag things that happen in the movie (sorry, I've watched all the movies before reading the comics. Let it go). His costume is purple and red and I think it looks kind of silly.
The Vanisher (Telford Porter): The ability to transport himself (hence, he vanishes). He robs banks and gets a bunch of thugs to be his lackeys. He looks like a clown in red. I was not a fan. 
The Blob (Frederick J. "Fred" Dukes): He stands in one place and literally nothing can move him. He also can shoot things back at you that you shoot at him. They just bounce right off of him. He was invited to be an x-men, but then turned on them and now has it out to destroy them all.

Magneto then forms his own little group of mutants:
Toad (Mortimer Toynbee): He can hop real big like... lol. He is actually really disgusting looking and I was not a fan. He reminded me of Renfield from Dracula, except Toad is to Magneto. He will just do anything he says.
Mastermind (Jason Wyngarde): He can manipulate your mind. So he makes you see something that is not really there, or he can erase a memory or put a memory in your head. He was a complete jerk.
Scarlet Witch (Wanda Maximoff): I can honestly say I do not know the extent of her power. All I know is that she has trouble controlling it. Wikipedia says, "The Scarlet Witch can tap into mystic energy for reality-altering effects; this power was formerly limited to the creation of "hex-spheres" of reality-disrupting quasi-psionic force to cause molecular disturbances in a target's probability field, resulting in spontaneous combustion, deflection of objects in flight, and so on. She later became able to alter reality on a far greater scale, creating entire armies of enemies from nowhere. Although the Scarlet Witch has been trained in basic sorcery techniques, she lacks the specialized mystic training required to fully control her power."
QuickSilver (Pietro Maximoff): He runs like, really fast. He also can speak and think at supersonic speed. Wanda is his sister, if you didn't catch on to that.

So with this core group here, only two are really wanting to destroy people (Toad and Mastermind), from what I understand. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver owe Magneto something,so they do his bidding.

A few other villains that make an appearance:
Sub-Mariner (Namor McKenzie): He lives in the water, so I assume he can breath under water too. He also has tiny wings on his ankles, so he can fly too. They said something about him being from Fantastic Four Issue #27 and he's also associated with The Hulk from Avengers Issue #03. He has trust issues since The Hulk apparently... He teams up with magneto and wants to dominate all those who aren't mutants.
Lucifer: I didn't really gather a lot from him besides he is smart enough to link a bomb to his heart so if he dies, the bomb goes off. Seems pretty sinister to me. 
Maa-Gor: He showed up with Ka-Zar. He was like half-ape-half-man. He's the leader of some caveman tribe. 

In conclusion, it was kind of hard to get through since there were a lot of everything on one page. And when I say everything, I mean a lot of unneeded words and such. I do realize this was written forever ago and they had to describe things back then because Marvel Superheros weren't common sense yet like they are for us now. I liked it, but I am not sure I will ever read them again.

Brian Hill &
Marvel Masterworks by Stan Lee

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Brian Hill &
Marvel Masterworks by Stan Lee