I know the point of this is to cover every Marvel super hero book, and there are a few books that I consider to be Schrödinger’s comics. They’re simultaneously Marvel super hero books and not Marvel Super Hero books. For instance, Marvel Comics #1 is the first appearance of the Human Torch and Namor, the Sub-mariner. But… they’re also not. First of all, they’re actually published by Timely Comics. So yeah, they’re in a book called Marvel Comics published by Timely Comics. Shrödinger would be proud. Also, Human Torch is an android, created by a scientist, and he gets fooled into working for the mob, which he rectifies by murdering them all. It’s really a great read. In typical Human Torch fashion, however, he kills one by burning up a truck a guy is hiding under. Some things never change. My favorite one, however, is when he fucking boils two guys that were trying to hide in a swimming pool.
There’s also Namor’s first appearance where he murders some innocent divers but then goes on to murder some not-so-innocent people shooting at him. All in all, it’s just some real murderous fun. The Thing would be super upset he missed out. But back to my point. These early comics are infamously known to have characters that were re-introduced in some form later in the 616 time line. Well, I’m reviewing “all Marvel super hero books,” so why not these? It’s really simple: they’re fucking awful. I started to read a couple, and while the first appearance of the Torch was pretty awesome, everything else was just terrible. And Bucky is just God damned terrifying looking sometimes. The only good part (outside of the senseless killings) was when Cap and Bucky dressed in drag. No, I’m not kidding. The reasoning behind this is simple: they don’t explain. That’s just how bad these comics are.
The other aspect is that reading them just felt very disconnected to the Marvel comics I know and (mostly) love. Yeah, it’s cool to have that knowledge, but with roughly 31,000 comics to get through (at the time of this writing), it’s a bit daunting to add another couple hundred that are really just completely unimportant in the grand scheme of things. In around 30 years when I finish all the other comics, I’m sure I’ll circle back around to these.