History
The Essential range launched in October 1996 with the joint release of Essential X-Men vol. 1 and Essential Spider-Man vol. 1. While Essential Spider-Man started with Spider-Man's first appearance in the Silver Age (collecting Amazing Fantasy #15 and Amazing Spider-Man #1-20), Marvel chose to skip ahead to Giant Sized X-Men #1 and Uncanny X-Men #94-119, the relaunch of the title that sparked the X-Men's popularity in the late 1970s and 1980s. The decision to skip the original X-Men in favor of starting with the more well known "All-New, All-Different" X-Men was controversial, though Marvel ultimately went back and began a new collection of Essential volumes, titled Essential Classic X-Men, to collect the earliest X-Men stories (originally titled Essential Uncanny X-Men).
The (second) cover design launched in 2001—all the older volumes (excluding Essential Conan vol. 1) have been reprinted since then with the new design as well as to correct printing mistakes from previous volumes (such as the fact that both Essential X-Men vol. 1 and vol. 2 both have missing pages from their earlier printings) and to reshuffle content to put volume breaks in more logical places, continuity-wise.
From May 2005, many of the volumes have been reprinted for a third time—this time with the same cover design as the second reprint, but with different cover artwork. Initially, the Essential line used newly produced artwork. For the current printing, artwork from the reprinted material is used, with the legal indicia in these new editions saying 'Second Edition, First Printing'.
In 2008, a new (third) cover design launched, again starting with reprinting older volumes that were going back to press for new printings, and is now the look for new volumes.
Marvel has come under criticism for censoring some of the Essential books, specifically the third and fourth volumes of Essential Tomb of Dracula, in which digital editing was used to remove or obscure nudity. Both volumes contain reprints of Dracula stories originally published by Marvel in magazine format, which allowed for them to include nudity in the artwork.
Read more about this topic: Essential Marvel
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