After a series concentrating on longer, modern stories the second phase of this range (the ‘Classic’) launches with what’s essentially more of a short story collection. As the title suggests, it collects origin stories of major heroes from the early days of Marvel –the first appearances of the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Daredevil, Ant-Man and the Wasp (well, Captain America’s first modern appearance).

The stories naturally haven’t aged particularly well- everyone seems to have been swallowing the anti-communist propaganda wholesale, the Marvel world’s a hugely macho one and, particularly after the decompressed storytelling technique, it’s text intensive. There’s an intense creative energy evident though, a sense of a million ideas being thrown at a wall to see how many stick (Ant Man’s origin story, for instance, was obviously only meant to fill a few pages as a one off), the art from Kirby, Ditko and Everett is still a stylised joy, and Stan Lee’s ever bombastic badinage shamelessly sells the wilder concepts. The omission of Thor is the only strange omission, particularly given his appearance in The Avengers, but that’s promised for a later volume. Fascinating for historical significance, but hard to recommend to modern readers. ( )