Reprints Marvel Premiere 47-48; Iron Man 131-133, 151; Avengers 195-196, 223; Marvel Team-Up 103; Marvel Two-In-One 87; material from Avengers 181, Iron Man 125. Published to provide background to the first Ant Man movie.

Got this from my local library thinking I'd never read any Scott Lang Ant-Man stories, but found myself remembering reading the MTU and MTIO issues and the Avengers issues featuring the Taskmaster.

It's pretty c-list early-80s-superheroes-by numbers stuff but I was quite tickled by the idea that someone has a training facility that churns out goons for super villains. I wonder where they advertise, whether you get bulk rates, etc.

And a tier list of villains--which are suitable for apprenticeships, which you have to earn the right to minion for.

High turnover, though.

Been reading my newly acquired Taschen Marvel Comics Library: Spider-Man Vol. 1 - 1962–1964 oversized hardcover. This thing is gorgeous – pictures really don't do it justice – but it weighs a tonne! Forget the Omnibuses, this book is seriously heavy.

The book has great production values and very nice paper stock throughout. It really is a thing of beauty. I've found that the most comfortable way to read it is to have it flat on my bed, with me sitting upright in front of it looking down. With the combination of my glasses and the book's huge size, I can easily see the artwork details and read the word balloons from that position.

So far, I've re-read Amazing fantasy #15 and Amazing Spider-Man #1 and #2, and it's fascinating to see how these stories initially appeared, when compared to the re-prints that we've all seen. Especially so with the colouring! I mean, I knew about things like the spider symbol on Peter's back being blue instead of red early on, but much more surprisingly, the blue in Spider-Man's costume is reproduced in a very different purply hue for the first 4 issues or so.

Of course, the Lee/Ditko stories in this volume are all fantastic, but I must say that it's great to have them reproduced so faithfully and at such a large size. I can't see my old copies of Marvel Tales featuring these stories getting too much use from now on; this Taschen hardcover is sure to become my go-to version of these classic comics.

Thanks to Dark Horse's very affordable EC Archives softcovers, I recently read Weird Science-Fantasy #27-29 and Incredible Science Fiction #30. They're found in the book Incredible Science-Fiction.

Really nice stuff. The art is absolutely beautiful, with people like Wood, Williamson, Crandall (and even Joe Orlando, whose work in more recent comics I didn't especially enjoy). There's even a Frazetta cover in there (pencils and inks, not a painting).

The stories are a bit formulaic, in that many hang on a twist ending... but taken in moderate doses, it's quite all right. It's pretty much par for course with such anthology titles anyway. It was interesting to see how influences vary over the decades; while many stories in DC's Time Warp had a strong Star Wars and Star Trek influence, EC's SF stories are mostly set in worlds familiar to readers of the old pulps. (Every representation of Mars seems to use Bradbury's work as a model!)

Letter pages and house ads are included, for which I am very grateful... and now I am very curious about a comic book titled Psychoanalysis! Was it some kind of jab at Fredrick Wertham? (The GCD says that it lasted only four issues, but it's definitely an unexpected subject for a comic-book!)

The Feldstein edited EC books read better if you read an issue a week or thereabouts.  If you try to really binge them they start to blend together.  The Kurtzman edited books are a bit easier to binge, but are still better savored.