Jim McLauchlin, writing for Newsarama, has a great story on the importance of a book that came out in 1974 — Origins of Marvel Comics by Stan Lee. Without this book and the marketing showmanship of Stan Lee going around and promoting it, the Marvel Comics of today might not have existed.

"Origins was the trade paperback before the trade paperback market even existed," says filmmaker Kevin Smith. "And it wasn't just some Marvel in-house compilation book. It was published by Simon & Schuster, a real publisher, a book-book publisher. Most importantly, that was an indicator that somebody outside the comic book market was treating this seriously."

“If you were looking for a comic book in the library in the ’80s, good luck,” he says. “You weren’t finding one, except for this. That legitimized what Stan was doing, what comics were doing. This was a beautiful, perfect way into the Marvel Universe for someone who didn’t grow up in it, or a classic revisit, a nostalgia jolt, if you were reading Marvel back when this happened.”

I had a similar experience to Kevin Smith. My father bought this book in hardcover, and I devoured it growing up. When I was a kid, all his comics were in banker’s boxes in the attic and was not a place I could easily get to when I wanted some Silver Age DC to read. However, Origins was on the bookshelf. Soon, Bring on the Bad Guys was in my possession too.

These two books helped me become a much better reader when I was 7 years old and allowed me to understand concepts other kids weren’t thinking about, like not being popular, the importance of self-sacrifice, not being self-centered, and so much more.

Now, I’ve got to go find those books at home and crack them open again.