The secret history of Marvel’s earliest graphic novels and books, circa 1983-84

Following the recent announcement that Marvel Comics is teaming with Scholastic for a series of all-ages graphic novels, we’re taking a look back at some of the publisher’s earliest bookstore offerings. Read on for a history lesson of the many formats and titles Marvel released in the early days of the graphic novel.

In the early 1980s, both DC Comics (via Warner Books) and Marvel Comics (via Fireside and Pocket Books) realized that there was a market for comicbook books in both comic shops and the book trade. Both companies set up their own in-house publishing houses and began selling a handful of titles each year, featured in bespoke spinner racks for both B. Dalton’s and Waldenbooks bookstore chains. (This is where I discovered most titles in 1984. Later, I would buy Life In Hell and Bloom County there as well, in the humor section.)

Here is a listing of Marvel’s first 100 titles, as best as I can discover online. There are gaps, possibly due to a title which was scheduled but later cancelled, or which was never released into the booktrade system.

The books follow certain formats:

• • The “Marvel Graphic Novel” series were graphic albums, similar in size to magazines.
  • Marvel Illustrated Books were comic book stories reformatted into a mass market format. Some were Marvel Super Special movie tie-ins, reformatted. Sometimes in color, usually in black-and-white.
  • Briefly, Marvel tried pop-up books.
  • There were also many activity books. The best known are the Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars titles, which were recently reprinted during the coloring book craze. Marvel also published tie-ins to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Heathcliff.

Of interest to collectors are the Big Looker Storybooks, which were picture books produced by Sol Brodsky’s staff, which included work by John Romita, Sr. and Marie Severin! Also of note is Berni Wrightson’s adaptation of Frankenstein, and a rare hardcover collection of Marvel team-up stories which appears to follow the series of anthologies published by Fireside Books.

I don’t know if these were successful, per se (most got reprinted later as graphic novels), but Marvel has kept publishing titles since then… Fireside keeps How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way in print, but that’s the rare title that’s stayed in print. I suspect even DC has retired the original edition of Watchmen, replacing that edition with the corrections from the Absolute Edition.

The cut-up paperback format/tradition goes back to at least the 1950s, with MAD Magazine. I don’t know the history of mass market paperbacks and comics… there were a few, like VIP and Dennis the Menace and Peanuts. Also the occasional anthology reprints of gag panels, by subject. The Berenstains did a series of original humor books. (Yes, the Bear couple.) The mass market format for comics vanishes around 2000, as trade editions (Garfield horizontal, Calvin and Hobbes square) become popular. Tor was still publishing a few DC titles in mass market editions, such as The Superman Story at the turn of the century.

Most of these early titles are curiosities. Either the original comics are easy to acquire, or Marvel has reprinted them more recently. If you’re a fan of the Smurfs, A-Team, Dungeons & Dragons, G.I. Joe, or Heathcliff, then you might be interested in the activity and storybooks.

Methodology: I did an initial search of the their ISBN prefix (978-0-939766) in Books In Print, then, using the progression, I calculated each unique EAN/ISBN and searched those via Google. 35 titles are unknown.

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