American Update: The ‘First Wave’ of Marvel Reprint Titles – Fantasy Masterpieces, Collectors’ Item Classics & Marvel Tales
*Marvel: By 1964, the Marvel Age had already been well established, and fans were clamouring for the stories they had missed. Marvel promptly obliged by launching, in 1964/65, Marvel Collectors’ item Classics (with Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and Ant-Man) and Marvel Tales (with the X-Men, Avengers, Hulk and Doctor Strange), reprinting the earliest adventures of their heroes. The line-ups shifted and settled over time, but these ‘King-Size’ compilations helped many a Marvelite catch up with the ‘Story So Far’. Now old enough to be collectors’ items in the their own right, we have Marvel Collectors’ Item Classics #1-4 and Marvel Tales #2-5, plus issues #2-4 of Fantasy Masterpieces, which started as a ‘Big Panty Monster’ reprint title, but expanded to giant size with #3 and reprinted Golden Age Marvel stories for the first time ever.