A great book for any Marvel reader or Marvel curious person. The breadth of the Marvel superhero comics universe spanning from the 60s until now can be incredibly intimidating to readers. This book covers major arcs in a few different ways. There may be one chapter following a character or team and then another about the major crossover events. This is not an encyclopedia or character but instead a more broad and narrow look at the specifics of a genre that is continually changing. As a more modern reader who has only experienced the newer arcs, the chapter on Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl was spot on. The author does not gloss over past racism and sexism, which as especially covered in the chapters on Black Panther and Shang-Chi. Overall, a great read, highly recommended.

As a huge fan of Marvel comics AND a librarian, I feel like I spend a lot of time explaining comics to people--from why they're important to add to our collection, to why that character who randomly shows up in an episode of a Disney+ show is actually a very big deal. It's probably why I devoured The Marvels, and why I immediately made plans to add it to our collection here at work, and to buy several copies to give out as gifts. Talking about the entirety of Marvel comics seems impossible...but this book made it feel ridiculously easy (and a lot of fun.)

This book was received as an ARC from PENGUIN GROUP The Penguin Press in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

I applaud Douglas Wolk's passion and determination in reading all 27,000+ Marvel Comics and researching further the inspiration and construction of each of them. Even in the eyes of Stan Lee could not have come up with the determination in reading and telling all that went into drawing and writing the speech bubbles and dialogue that went into each and every comic that transformed the Marvel Universe into this billion dollar box office we now know today. My jaw was dropping many times with all of the nostalgic information and unknown findings that most of the movies and comics we know of today kept hidden. I have not read a Marvel Comic nor saw a Marvel movie I did not like and grew an appreciation for. We do have many members of our library community that love this nostalgic information and will appreciate this book very much.

We will consider adding this title to our Biography collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.