Stan Lee (1922- 2018) and artist Jack Kirby made comic book history in 1961 with The Fantastic Four #1. Lee oversaw the creations for over a decade before handing over the editorial reins at Marvel to others. Jack Kirby (1917-1994) cocreated with Joe Simon Captain America in 1940. Over the next decade, Kirby and Stan Lee would introduce new characters that formed the foundation of the Marvel Universe. Jerry Craft is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of New Kid, the first graphic novel to win the Newbery Medal (2020), and winner of the Coretta Scott King Award and the Kirkus Prize, and its sequel Class Act. Ben Saunders is a professor of English at the University of Oregon. He has curated several museum exhibitions of comics art, including Marvel- Universe of Super Heroes.
“A groundbreaking example of comics representation in literature.” —Publishers Weekly “Penguin provides introductory essays; superb analyses by the series editor, Ben Saunders; and extensive bibliographies.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post “Stories become classics when generations of readers sort through them, talk about them, imitate them, and recommend them. In this case, baby boomers read them when they débuted, Gen X-ers grew up with their sequels, and millennials encountered them through Marvel movies. Each generation of fans—initially fanboys, increasingly fangirls, and these days nonbinary fans, too—found new ways not just to read the comics but to use them. That’s how canons form. Amateurs and professionals, over decades, come to something like consensus about which books matter and why—or else they love to argue about it, and we get to follow the arguments. Canons rise and fall, gain works and lose others, when one generation of people with the power to publish, teach, and edit diverges from the one before ... A top-flight comic by Kirby—or his successor on “Captain America,” Jim Steranko—barely needed words. You could follow the story just by watching the characters act and react. Thankfully, Penguin volumes do justice to these images. They reproduce sixties comics in bright, flat, colorful inks on thick white paper—unlike the dot-based process used on old newsprint, but perhaps truer to their bold, thrill-chasing spirit.” —Stephanie Burt, The New Yorker “As before, all three of these volumes re-present Professor Ben Saunders’ learned general series intro which does an excellent job of succinctly explaining the rise of Marvel Comics and the Marvel Method.” —Forces of Geek