It might just be one of the greatest and most quintessentially "Marvel" concepts in the history of the House of Ideas: A loose-knit group of heroes form their own "team," but basically can't stand to be around each other much, and resist participation in any given adventure unless it benefits them or is somehow required by honor and/or duty.

That's the Defenders, in essence, and this first Essential edition features classic stories that exploit the concept well, even if the truly weird stuff hasn't quite come around the corner yet.

Roy Thomas is a key player in this book, penning some of the initial stories on the Undying Ones that initially bring the Hulk, Doctor Strange, Namor and Silver Surfer together. The villains in these tales are a clear riff on H.P. Lovecraft and his Old Ones mythos, but they're effective especially when penciled by Gene Colan, whose moody work really kicks this book off with a creative bang.

At the other end of the volume is one of the first big crossover events maybe in the history of comics, the Avengers/Defenders War. If these issues by Steve Englehart read a bit dated and quaint today, it's worth remembering when these were published, and cutting all involved a break. Fans who grew up reading them will no doubt find some nostalgic value, and modern fans may scratch their heads at times, especially once they realize that the "war" promised in the story's title is little more than a series of typical Marvel "misunderstandings" that lead to battles between heroes. Regardless, it's an undeniable part of the history of Marvel and of comics in general.

In between those two tales, we get the introduction of the Valkyrie, who will blossom into one of the more intriguing creations of the seventies over the course of the series. Hawkeye also joins up with the "team" for a time and hits on Valkyrie, naturally. Throughout, there's plenty of great character beats, driven by the book's central premise, which is that these heroes will work together if they must, but they don't like each other very much.

Now here's where things start getting nutty.

Longtime Marvelites know that one of the kookiest brains cooking up stories for the company in the seventies was Steve Gerber, he of Man-Thing and Howard the Duck fame. What's not discussed nearly as often is that he also lent his talents to a wide range of the decade's superhero books, and it's on Defenders where that gift for the odd and offbeat is served incredibly well by the gimmick of a team that is itself odd and offbeat.

Check out the lineup, alone; by this volume, the core group had evolved into Doctor Strange, Valkyrie, and Nighthawk of all people. "Who's Nighthawk?" you ask, quite reasonably. Nighthawk was a former villain turned hero and the Batman allegory in the Squadron Sinister, a thin ripoff of the Justice League played as inter-dimensional villains. So he's this low-level hero and slightly weird playboy who has his own thing for Valkyrie, just like Hawkeye did in Volume 1.

And let's not forget the Hulk, who ends up palling around with this motley crew simply because they're the only heroes who will hang out with him and not try to punch him in the face. It's hard to tell if it's endearing or merely annoying every time Hulk calls Nighthawk "Bird-nose," but hey, that's the joy of the Defenders--you're just a little bit uncomfortable the whole time you're reading, because all the typical Marvel tropes play out, but they don't fit this group quite as well as they do, say, the Fantastic Four. Because again, the FF fit together and genuinely enjoy their time together, while the Defenders switch off between barely tolerating one another and feigning interest in each other's lives.

This second Essential sees some trippy tales, including a Steve Gerber epic involving a magical harmonica and a dead bum, and the premiere of the Headmen, villains with weird heads. Seriously. A fun time is had by all.

This is it.

No, seriously. This is IT.

When it comes to comics, great comics or weak comics or historically important comics or comics PERIOD, this is the one run that rises above them all. It isn't just great comics, it IS COMICS. It is their blood and bone, their heart and soul.

And that's sorta just applicable to mainstream superhero comics, but really, it's true of artsy indie comics and bloody horror comics and anything else you can call "comics" as well. Because the work Stan Lee and Jack Kirby began in this Essential volume--the creation of their 102 issues on Fantastic Four--is the foundation of all that comics are today, and all that comics ever will be.

Just for kicks, it's also the foundation of superheroes as a genre, which has seeped its way into countless other forms of pop culture and storytelling, from video games to movies to novels and TV shows.

The Marvel Age starts here, True Believers, and we still live within it--mainstream comics, for better or worse, are consumed by it. It's that imperfect mix of bold action, melodrama, and whacked-out ideas that has fueled comics for going on forty-odd years.

The Lee/Kirby (or Kirby/Lee?) Fantastic Four maybe doesn't get GREAT until Essential Volume 2, but the seeds are planted here, and it's worth the price of admission to see these two reinventing the medium on the fly. Hell, Kirby's reinvented the medium so many times it ought to be called Kirbys instead of comics.

If your house burns down, and if you have to save one comic book, save this one. Wait--save your kids first, and your pets. Then save this one. The very DEFINITION of Essential.

It's a little-known fact, but Henry Kissinger is a key player in Essential Super-Villain Team-Up.

That's not exactly the type of stuff they're gonna advertise on the cover, but they SHOULD, dammit. Because that in a nutshell is the charm of Super-Villain Team-Up: This stuff isn't gonna earn a spot on your shelf next to Watchmen anytime soon, but it may deserve a place in the corner of your bottom shelf, where you keep the dusty old paperbacks that make you feel silly.

This, right here, is primo seventies Marvel madness: A slew of weird bits strung together by the barest suggestion of a plot, executed with artwork that verges wildly between the superheroic sublime and the simply stupid.

It's a reminder, too, that comics history isn't just stacks and stacks of great classics that we all love and read over and over and let's sing Kumbaya too, while we're at it. Those historic runs and titles stand upon the bending backs of countless other comics, books whose tales will fade quickly or slowly with the passing of time, regular dumb monthly superhero comics, churned out for decades by two major publishing houses in quantities of millions apiece.

These comics weren't great high art, agonized over by ambitious young auteurs seeking to place their creative imprint on the world. These were churned out at what was probably a frightening pace by journeymen craftsmen who knew their trade and plied it well.

That doesn't mean they're bad; it just doesn't mean they're great. Books like Super-Villain Team-Up are good, and fun, and worthy of your brainless time.

There's a handful of graphic novels and trade paperback collections that are rightfully deemed "essential" by pretty much

anyone who reads funnybooks for any serious length of time.

You've got your Watchmen, your Maus, your Dark Knight Returns.

And then there's Batman: Year One. Maybe it's not one of the great paradigm-shifting works of western sequential art, but it's a damn good story nonetheless, and anyone interested in the evolution of the superhero comic book (and of course, fans of Batman) needs to pick this up post-haste, if it's not already on your bookshelf.

Frank Miller tackles Batman for the first time post-Dark Knight as a writer on this book, which takes apart the seminal early days of Batman's career and reassembles them into a shape resembling the original, but also wholly unique. One big change Miller makes is that characters like Selina "Catwoman" Kyle and "Lieutenant" James Gordon now have their own major roles to play in the Bat-mythos. In doing so, he subtly expands Batman's foundations to include these vital supporting characters; just as Batman wouldn't be Batman without the fancy car and the insomniac crimefighting schedule, Miller seems to be suggesting that Batman also wouldn't be who he is without the female foil and the long-suffering cop on his side. It's an interesting shift in the Batman mythos, and it starts here.

Miller also gets good mileage out of planting Batman's feet more firmly in a "realistic" setting, as his chief adversaries in this story aren't whacked-out supervillains but instead are very violent and legitimate mobsters. It doesn't help him much that the cops also aren't really on his side, yet another subtle tweak to the early days of Batman that casts this era in some interesting shades of gray.

David Mazzucchelli's artwork is rightfully regarded as stunning and groundbreaking; you can see hints of it in artists today as diverse as Darwyn Cooke and Cully Hamner. Working in shades and the barest of lines, he suggests as much as he shows, which should be the golden rule of drawing Batman, since that's the whole point of the character.

It's hard to believe, honestly, that any self-respecting comics fan would never have read this, but if you're new to this stuff, or if this book has somehow slipped outside your radar, buy it now, and read it immediately.