Marvel Treasury Edition #1: A Super Giant-Sized Smorgasbord of Spider-Man Delight

In 1974 Marvel introduced us to something a heck of lot larger than good old Giant-Size comics: Marvel Treasury Sized Editions. 10” x 13” suckers that were so big, they fell over on the newsstand.  And while they mostly contained reprints, Marvel put in a few special features in the early editions.

100 Pages of Spider-Man were wrapped around a John Romita (Sr) cover featuring the web-slinger in a classic pose.  I say thee nay—classic is too weak a word. It’s archetypal!  How could a kid not want to buy this comic if they were a Spidey fan?  If I were Disney, I’d take this image and slap it on mugs, T-shirts, and all kinds of merchandise.

The inside front cover featured an editorial by Stan the Man—can you dig his mad mod haircut and full beard?  Crazy, man.

There was also a double page mockup of the Daily Bugle, with Marie Severin providing the “photographs”.

The second page of the Bugle shows the Bullpen hard at work and also announces Ross Andru joining Gerry Conway on Amazing.

The table of contents page featured a gallery of headshots by Romita, comprised of Spider-Man’s friends and foes.

The back cover was another Romita headshot, accompanied by the possibly the most famous quote from any comic book.

I was thrilled to get this in 1974, and I still get one when I pull out my beat up copy.  The Treasury Editions that followed in the first year were pretty good as well—most notably the Fantastic Four (with the Galactus Trilogy) and Conan (with Barry Smith’s Red Nails) editions.  Nuff said!

Update: Comment from my old blog...

1 Comments

By Andrew Wahl on December 9, 2009 5:49 PM

Richard:

Nice post. Like yourself, many Bronze Age bloggers recall these treasury issues with great affection. I'm an oddball on that front, I guess, as it took me the longest time to warm up to this format. The treasuries couldn't be stored with my other comics and they were just too big for my then-little hands. It's only in recent years that I've finally started to add them to my collection. Of course, today, they fill my warm fuzzy like most other Bronze Age books do!

Cheers,
Andrew
ComicsBronzeAge.com