ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS (3 trade paperback series) 1974-1998

From Wikipedia:

The Marvel Fireside Books Series was a series of full-color trade paperbacks featuring Marvel Comics stories and characters co-published by Marvel and the Simon & Schuster division Fireside Books from 1974 to 1979.

The series enabled fans of the old comics to have access to the stories without having to pay exorbitant prices for the original back issues. It introduced new readers to the work of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and other Marvel creators, and packaged the material in a traditional book format that carried more caché than the flimsy pamphlet style of a typical comic book. Many of the books featured painted covers illustrated by such artists as Bob Larkin, John Romita, Sr., and Earl Norem. In this way, the series was an antecedent to the now common practice of packaging "classic" stories into archival editions and trade paperback collections including Marvel's 1998 book Grandson of Origins of Marvel Comics.

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The essays by Stan Lee are fascinating reads, but these very old (almost 40 years) collected editions feature great Marvel stories from Fantastic Four #1 (1961) to Ka-Zar #1 (1997). The three books in this torrent run over 700 pages (about 230 to 240 pages each). All credit to the original scanners!