Bring on the Bad Guys: Origins of Marvel Villains

It's fun to find out origins of most popular Super Villains. Good book!

This is another in the excellent series of compilations that Marvel Comics produced in the middle of the 1970s. They changed the focus with this volume, and decided to highlight some of their bombastic, bigger than life supervillains. Of course, you get the heroes tagging along in the conflict, but you can't go wrong with Doctor Doom and Dormammu for example, and how they came to be.

Some people here have called the artwork in this book clunky & not very good when compared to the Artwork in Comics today. These people don't know what they are talking about. How do I come to that conclusion? Because I once said the same thing to the owner of a comic book store. Not just any comic book store, but one which dealt specificaly with buying and selling vintage comic books. I remember saying that the Steve Ditko artwork on the first 38 Original Spiderman issues was terrible. I'll never forget..the owner had this incredulous look on his face, and told me that this was "Comic book Art" and not "Let's draw something as realisticaly as possible Art!" With that in mind, I went home and looked at the Steve Ditko Spiderman issues again and came to slowly realize......"I must have been crazy!....He's absolutely right!" For myself, this is part of the genious of "Bring on the Bad Guys!". And this is especaily true of my personal favorites in this book.....the origins of Doctor Doom, Loki, and of course.....Thee Red Skull! What fun they must have had in creating these classics!

I'd argue, "sure." Here in Bring BACK the Bad Guys we witness the origins/first appearances of famous baddies Galactus, The Mandarin, Kingpin, Kang/Rama Tut and others. We are treated to a reprinting of GIANT-SIZE AVENGERS #2, which alone may be worth this book's price since it is virtually impossible to find anywhere. The other reprints are enjoyable (except for Fin Fang Foom's -- what the heck is HE doing in here?), especially a Professor X-Magneto flashback tale.

I am not sure what the other reviewers were talking about or expecting when they complained about the art in this book. Comic book art should, by defintion, be exagerrated and cartoonish, in order to have a more immediate visual impact. The artists featured in this excellent collection - Kirby, Ditko, Byrne, et al - represent some of the finest artists to ever work in the field of comics.The stories are wonderfully imaginative, the characters seem as real as people I know, and the narratives are gripping. So what are you waiting for, True Believer? Get your hands on a copy of this titanic tome! 'Nuff said!