Comic books and Manga Thread

[TheDuke]

I used to love getting the essential Marvel books. They were a lot of comics for a cheap price but were black and white. This is how I read the classic X-Men stories that came out before I started reading comics. It's funny, I believe Volume 2 was the one I was missing. I believe I had 1, 3, and 4. I feel like 2 had the most famous Byrne stories which was why it probably wasnt in stock at my local comic shop when I bought 1, 3, and 4.

[TheBean]

On 11/21/2025 at 1:16 PM, TheDuke said:

I used to love getting the essential Marvel books. They were a lot of comics for a cheap price but were black and white. This is how I read the classic X-Men stories that came out before I started reading comics. It's funny, I believe Volume 2 was the one I was missing. I believe I had 1, 3, and 4. I feel like 2 had the most famous Byrne stories which was why it probably wasnt in stock at my local comic shop when I bought 1, 3, and 4.

I wish I had bought a bunch of these essential books when they came out. I got the first X-Men volume back then though. They are like telephone books 😄 I like the b&w as it kinda feels like an "artist edition" before that was a thing. The Byrne art looks great. I would love to get the X-Men volumes with Art Adams art too but I think that's kinda pricey now.

[Ricky Jackson]

I had quite a few of the Essentials during the first wave in the late 90s, including the first 2 X Men volumes. Definitely my favorite X Men (I've never been a huge fan in my 40+ years of comic reading). I traded in a good chunk of my Essentials about 5 years ago when I did a big purge coinciding with subscribing to MU and thinking "well, if I want to read that stuff again, I'll just read it here". Thankfully I kept Conan, Dr. Strange vol 1, Howard the Duck and Defenders vol 2-3. These days I'm definitely on the lookout for cheap copies of Essentials, plus the equally wonderful Showcase Presents from DC

[TheBean]

On 11/24/2025 at 7:01 PM, Ricky Jackson said:

I had quite a few of the Essentials during the first wave in the late 90s, including the first 2 X Men volumes. Definitely my favorite X Men (I've never been a huge fan in my 40+ years of comic reading). I traded in a good chunk of my Essentials about 5 years ago when I did a big purge coinciding with subscribing to MU and thinking "well, if I want to read that stuff again, I'll just read it here". Thankfully I kept Conan, Dr. Strange vol 1, Howard the Duck and Defenders vol 2-3. These days I'm definitely on the lookout for cheap copies of Essentials, plus the equally wonderful Showcase Presents from DC

Heck yeah, I picked the Howard the Duck one up recently. Memories of that movie tarnished a really good comic. Glad I did some research and found out how cool it was. I've looked at Showcase Presents but most of the ones I'm interested in are too pricey used.