Review by Ian Keogh

Marvel Fanfare was a series created to service the rapidly growing new market of speciality comic shops in the early 1980s. The original premise was top creators and high production values designed to appeal to fans, and this collection presents the earliest issues, which were the best of the series.

The opening four chapter story certainly fulfils the remit of something for the fans. Chris Claremont’s X-Men were becoming Marvel’s biggest sellers, and with two chapters drawn by Michael Golden and two by Paul Smith (sample art left), their trip to the Savage Land alongside Spider-Man and Ka-Zar hits the spot. Why, though, did the pagination have to follow the publication schedule of the main feature interrupted by back-ups?

It’s the back-ups that point the way to Marvel Fanfare’s future as a home for tryouts from new and lesser known creators, and later a home for fill-in material commissioned, but never previously printed. No back-ups are poor, but few are any better than ordinary.

Claremont’s verbosity is the subject of editor Al Milgrom’s funny ‘Editori-Al’ strips, and is more apparent in the X-Men strip than his restrained Doctor Strange, atmospherically drawn by Marshall Rogers. It’s actually Clea who’s the eventual focus in a satisfying magical jaunt. As good as Rogers is, though, Sandy Plunkett’s work on the Scarlet Witch teaming with Spider-Man is an unacknowledged masterpiece, and utterly gorgeous. There’s also much to admire about the delicate art of Charles Vess on the following Doctor Strange solo, but it suffers from Roger Stern exploring much the same theme as Claremont earlier did.

Whatever happened to Joe Barney, artist on the Hulk coming up against the Blob and Unus? This is a début of exceptional promise (sample art right) in rather a touching story of friendship from Steven Grant. Human emotion and very good art also characterise Bill Mantlo and George Freeman’s closer, Daredevil’s second appearance. It’s the best of the back-ups for Mantlo focussing on a problem that wouldn’t be included in Daredevil’s regular series, yet making good use of his abilities and confounding expectation with a decidedly unsentimental ending.

This is a mixed bag, but with enough good art to repay investing in a used copy.