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Folio Society’s “Marvel Heroes” collections earn London publisher comic collector acclaim

By John Freeman on October 24, 2021

In hard times, there may be few collectors out there who might even think about checking out the high end, high quality books published by the London-based independent publisher the Folio Society, but their current Marvel range has caught the attention of knowledgeable fans, who have been full of praise for their productions.

The present Folio catalogue includes five titles, all running to over 250 pages of content: Marvel: The Golden Age 1939-1949, Marvel: The Silver Age 1960-1970, Marvel: The Bronze Age 1970-1980, Spider-Man, and Captain America. Prices for these slipcase collections range from just under £85 to £160.

While those prices may be eye watering, American comic creators Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg recently reviewed the Folio Society’s Captain America collection, celebrating the 80th anniversary of the first Avenger, selected and introduced by Roy Thomas, with cover art and endpapers by Michael Cho, and were impressed by both design and reproduction quality of the book, urging both Marvel and DC to follow suit with their classic collections.

Priced at just under £85, the exclusive Folio edition collects ten classic Captain America stories by comic book legends including Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Jim Steranko.

Also available is Spider-Man, the second volume in Folio’s exclusive ‘Marvel Heroes’ series, also introduced by Roy Thomas, featuring 12 stories by Stan Lee, Steve Dikto, Todd McFarlane and Brian Michael Bendis, with cover art by Marcos Martín, the multiple-award-winning Marvel artist famed for his work on webcrawler.

All these collections come with a variety of “extras”, in addition to the hardback book, such as replica comics.

These Folio Society editions are most definitely collections for connoisseurs, they might make for a special present for longtime Marvel fans for a birthday or Christmas. Recent praise has, however, offered an insight into what’s possible when it comes to classic comics reproduction if a market is identified – albeit one that may be quite niche… and wealthy!

The publisher also produces numerous high end collections of SF works, such as a recently-released edition of Frank Herbert’s Dune, illustrated by Sam Weber, whose work also appears in the Folio editions of Fahrenheit 451 and Lord of the Flies.

• Check out the Folio Society catalogue at www.foliosociety.com/uk

John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.

He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.