Absent from newsstands since the abandonment of magazines, Marvel returns through this best of the year 1982 published by Panini. How about discovering a major year of comics?
A treasure at a low price
Are you a young reader eager to discover Marvel? This title also allows you to read not only one of the greatest years of comics. "Marvel Treasures" is an ideal gateway to discover a vast shared universe because this quarterly review is certainly at a low price but the choice of artists included is luxurious with among others Frank Miller, John Byrne, Chris Claremont, John Romita Junior and Bill Sienkiewicz. In addition, the seven episodes bring together very popular heroes and there is also a new episode. Here, it is a short but beautiful Christmas story of a few pages on Daredevil drawn by Paul Smith.
Major stories
This is the case of episode 181 of Daredevil written and drawn by Frank Miller. The brilliant author tells us a whole novel in twenty-one pages by coldly describing a threat that keeps getting closer. The criminal Bullseye has only one goal: to take revenge on the blind superhero. The reading becomes breathless in the face of this threat that keeps approaching at each box. Miller's visual splendor serves a drama to come. The finale is just as paradoxical and disturbing as in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. One of the most awesome elements – yes, that word is totally appropriate – is the economy of dialogue.
We find this cartoonist at the top but in a totally different genre in the first episode of the mini-series Wolverine. This chapter also marks his collaboration with X-Men guru Chris Claremont, both at Marvel. The two authors in this episode transform the wild animal into a samurai. The narrative creates a problem specific to these stories: the opposition between individual feeling and clan honor. By rereading this story, we realize how much the movie Wolverine: The Fight of the Immortal has plundered this story.
Good stories
Two episodes of Amazing Spider-Man #229-230 by writer Roger Stern and penciller John Romita Jr. demonstrate the quality of this series. It all starts with a nightmare. The medium Madame Web sees the defeat of Spider-Man but also his death. The sequel will try to answer this question: can we escape our destiny? The reader quickly understands that she perceives the first confrontation between the Scourge and the weaver. While Roger Stern's very dense text is well written, Romita Jr.'s drawing renders the Scourge very well, this unstoppable force that advances straight regardless of the obstacles set by Spidey. Yet accustomed to the fights of Marvel heroes, New York will be marked by this passage with the multitude of crushed cars and entire collapsed buildings. 
Uncanny X-Men 159 is also a good read at Marvel by illustrating a moment of the very great period of the X-Men by Claremont. The publisher has the good idea to choose a separate episode (a one-shot) with the very young cartoonist Bill Sienkiewicz who is quite unrecognizable. Kitty Pryde, a young member of the X-Men, is going to spend the night at a friend's house. Ororo, her older teammate, accompanies her but she is assaulted on the way home. She gets away with it but, back in their temporary accommodation in Greenwich Village, she acts more and more strangely especially at night… As with Daredevil, the atmosphere is dark but more gothic with a vampire story close to the Hammer movies. We are not afraid but we enjoy reading this exercise in style by finding all the elements we love: a count thirsty for female blood, bewitched animals, a crucifix … But this time, the explorer is a woman.
The last complete episode comes from John Byrne's memorable passage on the Fantastic Four. From the point of view of drawings, it is a splendor because John Byrne is at the time a peak of precision in the details of each box. More classic, the scenario is a tribute to the beginning of the series by Lee and Kirby by taking up the Inhumans, the abundance of intrigues and theatrical strokes.
The treasures of Marvel offer the chance to (re)read mythical episodes like those of Daredevil and Wolverine with artists at their peak but also excellent surprises. We can salute an excellent selection of episodes. There is no second choice. Eagerly the sequel in May which will plunge even more into the past around the year 1973 with, among other things, the appearance of the Ghost Rider.
If you want to read more about Marvel, you can find here our guide to Wanda and The Vision or a dramatic narrative about Magneto.
