A New Book, The Marvel Vault

During a visit with Joe Simon, I had the pleasure of looking at an advance copy of a new book called “The Marvel Vault: A Museum-in-a-book With Rare Collectables from the World of Marvel” by Roy Thomas and Peter Sanderson. Here is a link to it in Amazon. They list it as available on October 8, 2007. It is an unusual book, to say the least. It is hardcover but is more like a spiral notebook then a regular book. Some plastic pages are included among the regular paper ones. These plastic pages have pouches that include reproductions of various items. I did not look at them all but one group that I did look through were a pile of reproduction of golden age sketches. I cannot say I care for the paper they were printed on, it is much too brown for my taste. But the printing quality and the sketches themselves are just marvelous (pun intended). I remember great stuff by Bill Everett and Carl Burgos, perhaps other artists were represented as well.

The book covers Marvel’s entire history, including the Timely and Atlas periods. So of course there is a lot of Jack Kirby. Joe Simon is in it as well in what is my favorite photograph of him. It shows Joe at his drawing board, talking on the phone and smoking a cigar. (I guess I better add something for in the spirit of full disclosure, I digitally restored the photograph and the books gives me credit along with Joe for supplying it.)

I only spent about five minutes looking at it so I am not able to provide an in depth review. Or to comment about the accuracy of the history the book provides. But I did see a lot of interesting stuff and I heartedly recommend anybody interested in history of comic books to check it out when it is released.