This book does exactly what it says on the cover - it takes you through the Marvel universe of comics through the eyes of a man who has read them all. What it doesn't do (and what I really wanted it to) was provide a reading order for novices, although the author does discuss making such a reading order for his son in the final chapter. I really enjoyed the first couple of chapters, which focus primarily on the nature of comics and the history of Marvel. The bulk of the chapters cover key comic issues within certain characters' story, or in the over-arching story of the Marvel universe. While these were interesting, they could become a little repetitive at times and I didn't always understand why the chapters were ordered in the way they were. Overall, I would say that this was a thoroughly researched and generally accessible piece of non-fiction, but it didn't quite deliver for me on what I was hoping for.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I can't quite get my head around how many comics Douglas Wolk read to put himself into the position where he could write a book called "All of the Marvels". Six decades of comics, over half a million pages (presumably not the classic adverts from the 1970s where you could buy x-ray glasses) and tens of thousands of individual comic books. I am more than a little bit jealous to be honest as there are so many classic storylines I still hope to find time to read one day.

Why am I reviewing a book about a man reading comic books? Because I love comics. More accurately I love Marvel Comics and I wish more people would read them too. I wondered how a book addressing all the Marvel comics would discuss the huge volume of stories, the vast array of characters and whether it would inspire new readers to pick up some comics to try them too.

I also wondered how this book would read...where do you start discussing that vast body of work and which characters do you focus on? Well it didn't read quite how I had expected and the focus sometimes surprised me but it works. Douglas Wolk does not take a chronological approach to the comics and I was secretly pleased by this as I suspect I may have jumped to "my era" of reading which was the 80s/90s. Instead there is an early focus on Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. The stories they crafted, how they worked together, other artists and writing teams that contributed and how some of the most famous characters came to the news-stands.

There was a section about the Shang-Chi comics and the martial arts books from the 1970s when Bruce Lee movies were doing well in cinemas and Western audiences were keen to discover more. He discusses how some writers dominated a particular title and then how the title declined or lost focus when the writing teams changed. It's fascinating to see how one man (and for years it was mainly men) can make or break a character and define how we see them now. This focus on writers allows a shift through different characters over a long time period but don't expect a Spider-Man chapter, an Iron Man chapter then a Hulk chapter as the narrative is much more fluid and conversational.

Naturally some characters will dominate Marvel's history but Douglas Wolk does mix up the focus and I found myself deep in passages discussing characters I don't really know and the author made me want to read those comicbooks.

Will All of the Marvels appeal to new readers? I think perhaps not as I came to this book with a bit of knowledge of Marvel and their big name artists/authors and this really helped me relate to what I was reading here. But I also found I was learning about the team behind the scenes as well as the teams on the pages. I also wanted to read many, many more books which I hadn't really considered prior to Wolk's

It's a huge undertaking to cover so much material and there is the risk your favourite story or hero may not get many mentions. However, All of the Marvels is a fascinating analysis and recounting of some of the most famous stories in comicbook history. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I am sure many Marvel finds will find it equally absorbing but non fans may struggle to fully engage.

I can only review what I read. This is not the type of book to read non stop so I found myself dipping in as and when I had a spare 5 minutes. Unfortunately this approach meant that I ran out of time and didn't get to finish the book before it was archived. However I'm interested enough to continue reading that I have add it to my Amazon wishlist.

An interesting approach to comics and how to read them for any comic fan.

All Of The Marvels seems initially to fit into the “man does a ridiculous project” genre of books, like the Babel Message or even Around Ireland With A Fridge. But the method in the madness moves beyond “someone does something so they can then writer about it” into, “this is the culture – isn’t it?”. Certainly what Douglas Wolk has done here – read every single Marvel comic (with caveats so minor they don’t matter) – is a gargantuan task. There is a reason why there are at least three preamble chapters telling you not to do it, and if you even vaguely try to do it, don’t do it, but if you really, really want to do it – do it your way. Because the artistic value of the project, reading the largest piece of shared Universe fiction where everything happened and everything matters (that week), also involves reading quite a few badly written stories, a fair few terribly drawn comics and plenty of stories who exist to unpick or contradict previous stories. By all means follow your favourite characters over sixty years, aging perhaps ten at best, but be prepared for their personalities, back story and even in some cases powers and parentage to change. It might be the largest piece of shared universe fiction out there, but no-one every promised it would be good or make a whole lot of sense.

Wolk can say this, and say this in some cases with glee, because he has read them all. In his generous fashion finds the upside of the project (the good stuff, the great art, the surprising or satisfying stories) outweighs the bad stuff and the bad stuff, well its often interestingly bad. A continuous piece of fiction written and released in multiple books monthly rides the zeitgeist, though it also often rides the coat-tails of the zeitgeist if not the second wave coat-tails (Oh Dazzler – disco was dead and buried before you put your glittery roller skates on). So you can watch US society change, deep buried politic ideas shift. It helps that the carnival barker of Marvel - Stan Lee (whose input Wolk muses upon in many places) talked a good equality talk. But even in some of the most heinously racist portrayals – and Wolk spends a chapter on Shang-Chi and the Fu Manchu connections – you can see things change and arguments happen in the letter pages (again a forerunner of our own hyper-mediated feedback culture).

What is great about All Of The Marvels – and it is great – is the sense of sitting with someone telling you how great, and silly, and infuriating, and addictive their hobby is, and it never gets old or boring. Wolk has read all of these comics SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO, and spends much of the book doing deep dives on favourite bits. Most of these coincide with characters who have greater media attention through the films now, they are the big characters, so no-one gets to go in cold. But every time Wolk tells you not to do what he has done, the urge grows greater in the reader. This engaging, funny and warm writer did it, and it didn’t break him (it might have broken him a bit). One of those books that could have been twice as long and still as much fun, I read it in a day – cancelling my plans because it was that much fun. I know Marvel comics pretty well so wasn’t surprised by many of the revelations here, but it was like spending a day chatting about this nonsense. If along the way he makes the case for cultural significance (probably already a given), and artistic value then his job is also done. Treat yourself if you are even vaguely interested in the topic, and perhaps, even if you aren’t.

Real intricate details of all your marvel characters, their histories and character developments. The book charts all the ,main characters and some that have been forgotten or you've not heard of before. You get an understanding of how the Marvel characters were created, Why the stories of your favourite superheroes have been rewritten or taken a different arc as times have changed and peoples expectations and morality. This book isn't a want for any die hard Marvel fan, this is a 'need'. Makes a perfect addition to any comic collection and a must read for all lovers of Marvel, whichever Superhero is your favourite.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for digital ARC, it has not affected my honest review.

"All of the Marvels" is a comprehensive and incredibly detailed analysis of Marvel comic history that differs from the usual "history" book of it's kind. Douglas Wolk, rather than simply writing a timeline of Marvel, has instead made a tour of aspects of the company's history that might interest most. This includes a focus on the Marvel films that were never made but also how the MCU in modern day has impacted the way comics are presented. This book approaches comics in their broadest contexts- from issues of Captain America written during protests against Vietnam, the relationship between the "founding fathers" Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko to openly discussing the issues of race and misogyny more prevalent in older comics (such as Shang Chi in the 1970s and the lack of leading women in the 1980's). My favourite aspect of this book is how Douglas Wolk is quite clearly a comic fan, there's passion in his writing that can only come from a long time reader; but the book is still very much accessible to those who haven't been reading for years or haven't read comics at all. Each section was clear and his writing style is passionate and personal, it's less like reading a history book and more like having a conversation with a friend, which I massively enjoyed. This is a book I will definitely go back to in the future.

I am a lifelong Marvel fan (Fantastic Four 127) to be exact and deep down I have always wanted to do what Douglas Wolk has done and read everything. This is very comprehensive but I personally would have preferred this to be a chronological run-through from the start.rather than selecting certain Seri as a focus. That said this is excellent and I did learn things I never knew before. Very good book

For the occasional comic reader it’s hard to know where to dip your toes in the epic lake that is the history of Marvel. It’s too vast with it’s own positives & negatives to know where to start. Especially if you are only familiar with some characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe since it has a habit of tweaking characters & stories into their own creations. Wolk has taken on the burden of doing the time-consuming research so that new converts to the church of comics and fans like myself can find out where to bow down and be wowed. I have a habit of reading whatever graphic novels I can get my hands on from my local library which can mean I travel all over the timelines and discover various styles & storytellers in a haphazard manner. I love this approach and have read some of this author's recommended stories and I've now added lots of new things on my list to try and track down.

This book is not just for newbies, die hard geeks and the casual fan will all find something to treasure in Wolk’s approachable style and recommendations. You can feel his love seep through every chapter.

For all true believers!

All of the Marvels by Douglas Wolk is a must-read for everyone who loves Marvel Universe and would like to learn more about its history.

I read and watched a bit of Marvel, so when I saw the book, I had to read it! I found so much fascinating information and I don't feel bad anymore for not starting 'at the beginning' with the comics, because it's nearly impossible to establish where the beginning really is. The timeline was always quite confusing for me, but after reading All of the Marvels I have much better understanding about how time and events work there.

I was happy to see several of my favourite comics described in details on the pages of this book. I admire the author for reading over a half a million pages as a preparation, from well-known and loved stories, to those that have only a few very nerdy fans and no one else has probably heard about them in the XXI century.

The research is thorough and we get lots of footnotes, some with lovely fun facts like one of the first published pieces of G.R. (R.) Martin was a fan letter to Marvel!

All of the Marvels is a fantastic journey through the Marvel Universe, engaging, informative and captivating. If you want to learn more about the characters whom you love on the big screen or colourful comic book pages - check Douglas' work because it's worth it! And yes, pre-order now!

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Thank you so much Profile Books for giving me a chance to read an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is such a good book. My daughter and I are both massive marvel fans, but to have read every single marvel comic even made, is quite an achievement!

Readability. That's supposed to be what we get from mainstream comics, but it certainly isn't what we always get from books about them. It's here in abundance, however, and comes from a unique guy – someone who churned his way through the entire first few decades of Marvel Comics' output – cape books and others besides. I had thought this would be about the journey he made, from decision to final monthly on the 'read' pile, but no – beyond a few mentions in what ends up being quite a lengthy introduction of what an awkward experience it ended up being, we don't see our author in action. What we get instead acts as a singular selection of potted histories about the Marvel Universe.

The first chapter concerning those shows us the worlds of Fantastic Four, and how so many years were wasted churning out copies of the first few. Then we have a timeline through the multiple swings and harrows Spider-Man has faced. The mainstream-avoiding Master of Kung-Fu is forensically discussed, although we have also by now seen the other strand of the book, looking at the history of Marvel – the early proto-monster books, Stan Lee's collabs of debatable stature, and how they peppered their pages with echt US Presidents, and pop stars real and otherwise.

Throughout we're shown how the average read of the full Marvel Universe, were we to do it, is very scatter-shot, jumping us from one character of interest to follow one author, to see how a new generation was looking at an older gang of heroes, even how an unseasonal snowfall was seen elsewhere... This book does the same, with footnotes mentioning chapters way in ahead of our page-turning, as if we're supposed to follow suit. It's a book that does show all the pratfalls that can be had with narrative multi-part stories; our guide talks of something called 'Ultimate End' as being heinously misread by people before it was all presented to us. The irony in that being a feature of an endless, multi-authored cash-cow that in no way is a Gesamtkunstwerk no matter what our chap says, finds no room here.

What is also evident is the fact that, for all the woke quibbles about the early creators of all this being similar, white, cis males, any commonality in thought and process that might have created the one ur-comic (growing, we're told, by 20,000pp a year) would not have existed if they had been any other way. People trying to enforce a singular universe on all their output (hello, Valiant) are doing it because the shorthand of cultural history implies it seems to have worked in Marvel's case (although their results are distinctly ropey at times).

Still, nobody – not even Stan Lee – has ever claimed Marvel to be perfect, and there must have been a heck of a lot of dross to wade through, and a mountain of repeated storylines and tropes to gloss over in the final report. I kind of think this book missed a trick by discussing the ordeal more, for looks at Marvel's output in other fashions have long existed. But it was still interesting, informative and entertaining – and proof on every page why nobody would ever try the same with DC.

As someone who read a few Spider-man and X-men comics as a child, and who has followed the behemoth that has become the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but who has been put off from reading further by simply not knowing where to start, Douglas Wolk's book has proven invaluable by explaining that basically - it doesn't matter!

"All of the Marvels" does a great job in giving an overarching view of Marvel's printed output since the 1960s and highlighting some of the individual highpoints from both the main comic book lines and the slightly more obscure ones, in a highly entertaining and readable manner. But for me, it's main point is that you can just pick a story or character who grabs your attention and dive in - there may be some references you miss at first, but then you'll read another story and find yourself thinking 'ah, so that's why Doctor Doom said that in the last panel' as it clicks into place.

I can thoroughly recommend 'All of the Marvels' to anyone who has a passing interest in comics, but would like to find out more. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to find "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #1"!

This was such a cool book!! im so glad i got to read this - if you love marvel as much as i do. This is super interesting and i need a copy!

I am very impressed by Douglas’s commitment & energy, to have read so many comics and be able to speak in depths about them. You can definitely tell he has a clear passion and live for this universe. Despite being a big marvel comics fan, unfortunately I don’t think this was the book for me. I found it a slog to get through and often found myself skipping lines & zoning out. I think this is due to how dense the material is & I do find nonfiction quite difficult to focus on if not written dynamically.
I think this book could be of great interest to those wanting to unearth the legacy of Marvel & understand the connective tissue of the universe but on if your able to devote a lot of time to focus & absorb the text.

There have been a LOT of Marvel comics. A lot of X-Men, a lot of Hulks, a lot of Spidermen, a ;lot of Iron Men and a lot of things you've probably never even heard of. For those of us jumping on board rather late in proceedings, perhaps as a result of recent films and series like Loki, Black Widow and Wandavision, the prospect of so many comics can be daunting. How would anyone ever get hold of them all, let alone find time to read them?
This is where Douglas Wolk steps in. For he really has read them all. And though, as he admits, it's probably no longer to read them and concisely summarise them all here, he has a darn good try.
It's an impressive achievement. Even The Flash himself couldn't better! Although, thinking about it, he wasn't Marvel was he? Damnit!

I've read more Marvel comics than most people, but I still find the work behind this book a little terrifying: with a few small exceptions, Douglas Wolk read every Marvel comic from 1961 to 2017 (and plenty of the other ones too). All 27,000 of them. So on one level, it's impressive enough that the book isn't just page after page of 'All work and no play makes Doug a dull boy.' Excluding DC on account of its reboots, and its coming later to full engagement with the shared universe idea, Wolk makes the case that the Marvel Universe, if not if the greatest story ever told, is certainly the biggest, in more ways than one. He uses the metaphor of a vast mountain in the middle of pop culture; even before it spawned 18 of the hundred highest grossing films, and influenced plenty of the others, many of its characters and tropes (bitten by a radioactive spider; 'You wouldn't like me when I'm angry') had entered the culture. Yet when this inspires people to attempt their own ascent of the mountain, many of the apparently easy routes prove fruitless and frustrating. Yet people keep emerging gasping about the wonders inside. What to do? Well, Wolk wants to provide a guidebook, a celebration of how a handful of creators, and the hundreds who came after them, folded all the other comics genres like romance and monsters and humour into the superheroes whose rebirth they kicked off, in the process beginning "a funhouse-mirror history of the past sixty years of American life". "In some of its deeper caverns, it's the most forbidding, baffling, overwhelming work of art in existence. At its fringes, it's so easy to understand and enjoy that you can read a five-year-old an issue of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl and she'll get it right away. And not even the people telling the story have read the whole thing.
That's fine. Nobody is supposed to read the whole thing. That's not how it's meant to be experienced.
So, of course, that's what I did. I read all 540,000-plus pages of the story published to date, from Alpha Flight to Omega The Unknown. Do I recommend anyone else do the same? God, no. Am I glad I did it? Absolutely."

The real beauty of it is that while formatted as a handbook for the curious novice, perhaps someone coming from the films, All Of The Marvels is also written with sufficient verve and insight that any Marvel veteran will find plenty to enjoy too. Sometimes it skirts the mythic awe with which Grant Morrison's Supergods approached the history of the superhero; other times it's spectacularly salty. Some of my favourite bits came when it managed to be both at once: "Readers can either buy into this stuff or roll their eyes at it hard, but it's more fun to do both. It's very easy to mock Claremont by quoting him out of context; all his biggest fans do it." The longer chapters suggest thematic overviews and interesting starting points for individual characters or teams, singling out illustrative issues; shorter interludes take in wider yet also more niche angles like space, or music in the Marvel Universe (which was where I got very excited to learn that someone whose video I was in has appeared as himself in a band with Rick Jones, meaning I'm only a couple of degrees from having teamed up with the Hulk). Along the way certain motifs recur, such as the attitude of subsequent creators to the legacy with which they're working. Here Wolk draws a sound yet never firm dichotomy between two competing urges – the creators like Claremont, who want to push forward the same way Stan and Jack (and Steve) did in the early days, and those like John Byrne, who see themselves more as reverential custodians. At times it can get a little sad to realise how much of the recent past has become a matter of rearranging existing elements; obviously I was aware that legacy titles dominated the line, but I hadn't entirely clicked that the last entirely new title (as against new characters in an old role, like Ms Marvel) to be a hit was Runaways, 15 years ago; the last Marvel comic even to attempt it was Mosaic, in 2016.

Still, when you have that many pieces in play, and can always make new ones so long as they fit supporting roles, or pick up a legacy, there are still an awful lot of options. I love that from all those thousands of comics, the first and last Marvel lines quoted in the book are both by Al Ewing, someone whose journey at Marvel I've watched from the beginning, and who has now shown himself an absolute master at using and reworking the available components into mad, brilliant investigations of whatever takes his fancy. Which has always been one of the options, of course, most famously with Kirby and to a lesser extent Ditko (whose post- and non-Marvel work would showcase more of his idiosyncratic philosophy). But as Wolk points out, even for a later generation of creators such as Jim Starlin, characters like Thanos were part of a very personal and somewhat eccentric cosmology – meaning the mad Titan's modern ubiquity is a lot like William Blake's Urizen suddenly becoming a fixture of cereal boxes and Hallowe'en costumes.

Wolk states early on that he firmly believes every popular success, in any medium, has something remarkable about it. Once I would have agreed; there have been few times I've felt quite so close to the infinite as I used to at Popular, the club which only played Number Ones. But just as algorithmically endorsed beige has spoiled that argument when it comes to pop, so a similar suspension of the old rules seems to have happened at Marvel, where even absolute stinkers of old flop books like the Eternals are soon to be all-but-guaranteed multiplex hits on the big screen. At times you can tell these changes have overtaken Wolk in production; he admits in his chapter on Shang-Chi that he needed to rewrite its opening, because the initial version had confidently asserted that due to the original comics being as problematic as they were pioneering, this was a character who was never going to make it to our screens. Elsewhere, he didn't even have time to do that, as when he explains the TVA in a footnote, clearly lacking his own time travel tech to let him know that the Loki series would have brought them to casual viewers before the book came out. Still, within the limitations of causality, he does a good job of talking about the films too, the way they draw on the comics but then in turn reshape them. Once or twice he even digs up a titbit of which I was wholly unaware, like how Christine Palmer, seen as a colleague of Stephen's in the Doctor Strange film, was a character from Marvel's old romance comics who was actually being published before Strange was. Set against this survey of an unprecedented triumph, though, there is one detail which feels like the slave who would whisper to victorious Roman leaders that they were mortal: the CyberComics which Marvel produced for AOL from 1996 to 2000, a prior multimedia gambit, now seem to be entirely lost, with neither company, nor their creators, seeming to have copies. And I thought the missing bits of Doctor Who and Fraggle Rock ran ridiculously close to the present day!

(Netgalley ARC)