Book Review - Marvel Television's Agatha All Along: The Art of the Series
- The Artbook Collector
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
June 3rd 2025
Agatha Harkness made her return in 2024 with her own series on Disney+, Agatha All Along. Following her debut in WandaVision, she took the centre stage and travelled The Witches' Road with her new coven. Fans can now get a look at some of the concept art behind the show in the latest entry in the artbook series from Marvel Studios, titled Marvel Television's Agatha All Along: The Art of the Series.
After multiple delays, the book was finally released on June 3rd 2025 and comes less than a year after the show premiered, a much shorter time gap than many other books. It is the second artbook to come with a slipcase and five prints, and the first to come with the new moniker 'Marvel Television's', after Marvel Studios' rebranding.
In this review I will cover my usual five points; build quality, content, credits, use of space and value, with details and my thoughts on each.
Build Quality
As previously mentioned, this book comes with a slipcase that comes with the above cover art. It is 30cm x 27cm in size and is very sturdy, built in the same way as the slipcases for the original Infinity Saga artbooks. This is more than decorative, it's protective too and I can speak to this as my first copy came damaged, the slipcase took the damage through the packaging and left the book unscathed.
The book itself is what you expect from Marvel, a 29cm x 24.5cm hardcover with strong binding, coming with 224 pages. The paper isn't as thick as what you get in a lot of artbooks, but still of a good quality. The art on the cover this time round leaves a lot to be desired, they usually have a wrap-around piece of art featuring characters, but this is just the logo on an image of the forest coloured in purple.
Like the previous book in this format, Marvel Studios' Deadpool & Wolverine: The Art of the Movie, the prints aren't anything special unfortunately. They feel like simple card, the image fills just over half the space and the print is very dark. They add nothing to the overall package for me personally and even those that do love prints will find that other artbooks on the market have had better offerings.
Content
As expected, the book showcases the art for the characters, settings, key frames and props, all with insights from the creative team, artists and actors. Marvel Studios have always been good at covering everything in the artbooks and that continues here.
I'll start with the positives of the content, first by highlighting the great job they did with the insights throughout. Early on there is a lot of recapping and covering the story of Agatha, from her appearance on WandaVision, to where she is early on in the show. The book becomes much more interesting after this though, as you get to read about the costume designs and the thoughts behind them, how the sets were designed and working on props and extras. You get some nice stuff throughout, a lot of it from directly from writer Jac Schaeffer, the artists and the actors too, including Katherine Hahn, Joe Locke and Aubrey Plaza. You feel their passion for the show throughout, making it an engaging for the reader.
Of course they art itself is superb too, but you expect nothing less from the team. The full credits page is below in the review, which has many names seen on other Marvel projects, with notable artists that include Jana Schirmer, Vance Kovacs and Karla Ortiz, among others.
Unfortunately, this is all let by down by a few issues and one of them has been a plague on the Marvel artbooks for a while, rearing its head most notably here, which is the print quality. I feared ahead of time that this book would highlight their issues with dark prints and I was sadly correct in this instance.
Dark locations or costumes, especially on dark backgrounds, have been a weak point of the Marvel artbooks as they hide details due to not being clear enough. Some books avoid this by simply not having images like this, such as entries for She-Hulk and Deadpool & Wolverine, both being lighter in tone and in colour palette. Here though, there are pages where it's back in force, such as those with costume designs for Agatha and Death, using blacks, blues and purples on darker backgrounds. This wasn't a big issue in older books, but even then the print quality and clarity has been much improved in the Titan Books rereleases, indicating this is not an image problem, but rather a Marvel published book problem. Finding the same images online also highlights it's a problem with the book, as on screen they are much clearer. It feels like such a disservice to the wonderful art of the team. A lot of the brighter images get to shine though, but for a series with a lot of dark costumes and locations, this should have been addressed.
Another issue, one that isn't the fault of the team, is the large number of spreads that repeat the same character pose or background image, with variations in their design. Of course this is going to be the case, you wouldn't completely repaint and change up the composition when tweaking clothing or colours, but it does occur much more in this book than others, so worth noting. There are over 20 double page spreads that include a single pose or set design, and others with just a couple. Again, this is simply how the art was done, but those expecting lots of dynamic poses big variations in character designs won't find that here. Marvel Studios very rarely include early sketches, but if there were any, this would have been the time to show them off.
The book needed a shake up, rather than placing the same pose multiple time on the same spread, they should have been spread out and mixed up. While this wouldn't made sense for the continuity of the pages, it would at the very least stopped the repetitive nature of the experience going through it. Mixing different poses side by side or even throwing in some location art between them would have broken the pages up better.
Those excited to get lots of art for the coven will also be disappointed, as Lilia Dalderu and Jennifer Kale get just one spread and one pose each, with Alice Wu-Gulliver getting a single spread and a couple of poses, unfortunately affected with the dark print issues in her case. The focus for characters is very much on Agatha, Billy and Death, with some other pages for the Salem Seven too.
Credits
Marvel continue to do a fantastic job at crediting each artist on the page, as well as having their names in the back with a list of page numbers they are featured on. Short and sweet for this part of the review, always a strong point of their books.
Use of Space
The page design is also another thing that Marvel always does well, they make good use of all the pages available to them, leaving little wasted space. Although the art can be similar on each page, the layouts do change throughout and placement of text between the images is also well done. You never have to worry about wasted space or messy pages, they have done a good job since way back in 2008 with The Art of Iron Man.
Value
Like the last artbook in this format, pricing is a problem in my opinion from a value perspective, but there is also some good news.
To start, I'll highlight that the RRP price on this book is $100/ £89.99, which is way too much. Like before, I cannot see a justification for a jump of $40 to include a slipcase and prints. Although the slipcase itself is very good, the prints are still of a low quality and you are essentially paying the price of some artbooks, with more pages than this one, to get a slipcase that this series went without for 21 previous releases. Of course, this is ignoring some of the issues mentioned in the previous content section too. I still believe they should have continued without the slipcases, or at the very least added more pages, as it's a lot to ask from people for what you get.
But onto the good news, because it seems retailers may be aware of the issue because discounts are already available. Using Amazon for comparisons to stay consistent, on the day of release in the UK it is already 39% off from one third-part retailer, knocking it down to under £55. In the US, it can be found for just under $90. The UK price is much improved, while in the US it is lower, but still way too high overall. If you are interested in this book, it's worth looking around as you may find better prices.
If I had to make a bold prediction, discounts will be coming, because despite being the biggest franchise in cinema history, Marvel's lack of promotion for these books and releasing them too late doesn't place them highly on Amazon lists. Others out there tops the charts months ahead of release, but again this isn't the case here, so retailers could want to shift copies.
At the time of writing this on the day of release, in the US, which should be the biggest audience for the book, it ranks as follows; 20,431 in Books, 69 in Media Tie-In Graphic Novels, 92 in Marvel Comics & Graphic Novels and 249 in Superhero Comics & Graphic Novels. Not great for a Marvel Studios book, though others have been much worse.
Verdict
Marvel Television's Agatha All Along: The Art of the Series is unfortunately not the book I had hoped for as a fan of the show. The quality of the art itself is fantastic and Marvel shine with their included insights yet again. Ultimately though, the poor print quality and repetitive pages fail to capture the magic of the show, made worse by the very high price point. This book then is hard to recommend, only suited for those that can't wait any longer for more Agatha and Billy before their next appearance in the MCU.
If you are interested though, you can add Marvel Television's Agatha All Along: The Art of the Series here;
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