Eh. Usually when people rave about something being magnificent I can see where there coming from, even if I don't agree. With the early comics I just do not get it. Literally nothing about them strikes me as even remotely spectacular at all.
They feel like a kid's fan-fic to me, with the exception of a couple of minor mature points, which in turn feel like they were thrown in in some kind of attempt to stop it being kids' fan fiction, and as a result they're pretty much dropped straight away.