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Photo-Journal Guide to Marvel Comics Volume 3 (A-J)

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As you can probably guess from the title of the book, this presents almost 4,000 covers from Marvel Comics published between July, 1961 (shortly before the first appearance of the "Fantastic Four" ushered in the Marvel Age of Comics) and 1986, thus providing a span of 25 years. In some cases, titles are continued to 1988 or 1990 (this book was originally published in 1991).

This is the first of two volumes and presents titles beginning from "Alien Legion" and "the Amazing Spider-Man" to "the Mighty Thor" (because he premiered in "Journey into Mystery" and kept the numbering). For the same reason, "Iron Man" is in this volume, but "Captain America" is not; his first series of the Marvel Age began in "Tales of Suspense" which eventually became his own title. Both of those comics appear in volume 2: K through Z.

Nearly every issue published between those two dates is shown, but there are exceptions. There are no magazines (like "Savage Sword of Conan") or foreign reprints. Western titles are shown, but not always in their entirety. There's only a handful of teen books presented. Some titles are truncated; covers for "Chamber of Chills" issues one through six are shown, issues 7 to 25 are not.

In addition to the cover photos, there is an introduction by Stan Lee giving a brief history of the company and his philosophy on choosing cover images. Gerber also assigns an RVI ("relative value index") to every issue, shown or not. This was a tool designed to give people an idea of an issue's cash value, not only when this book was published but for several years to come.

An index of titles and artists appears in the K to Z volume.

Generally speaking, this book covers period when Marvel Comics went from publishing "Kid Colt, Outlaw" to putting out "G.I. Joe" and "Ghost Rider." It may not show every Marvel cover you remember fondly, but it is a lot of fun to just browse through.