Great American Comic Books
/ Over 50 Years Of American Comic Books
(2001 - Publication International)

(by Ron Goulart) First, be very aware that these are almost the same book. Simply put, OVER 50 YEARS... was released in 1991 by Mallard Press and then 10 years later the same book, with only an additional 24-page chapter added, was released with the *new* title, GREAT AMERICAN COMIC BOOKS. Both volumes are of a too-big, 10-by-13-inch, size and both seem pretty much available for low prices, so we're going to recommend the slightly more comprehensive GREAT AMERICAN COMIC BOOKS as the one you should seek out. So, focusing on that volume, you get 344 pages - which, as we indicated above, is too big by our standards. By those same standards, we would count 142 pages that 'well-present' a single piece of artwork, but know that, in reality, about a third of those pages game-the-system by presenting some single small-ish 2-by-3-inch image amid half a page of negative space. Anyway, there is another 115 art-pages that present multiple images. Content-wise, you are seeing not just comic covers, but also panels, caricatures & figure-extracts. The author's text is a well-regarded essay on the roots, travails and resurgence of comic books (then up from another fall, into the new millenium), with a preponderance of attention on the medium's so-called Golden Age. Chapters are entitled: How It Began, The Bandwagon Starts To Roll, "Everything Is Brand New", Heroes For Sale, "It's...Superman!", The Boom Years, Laff It Up!, Girls!-Romance!-Horrors!, Crime And Punishment, Surviving The Fifties, The Great Superhero Revival, It's Good, But Is It Relevant?", Expanding The Boundaries, Toward The Millennium, Comic Fandom, and an index. Most images are captioned with a generous factoid, but it often leaves off identifying an exact issue, or sometimes even the particular artist. Diversity is indeed the watchword here as the following is the breakdown of the 'well-presented' artists: Neal Adams, Murphy Anderson, Edd Ashe, Dick Ayers, Matt Baker, C.C. Beck, Leon A. Beroth, Jack Binder, Charles Biro (4), Frederick Blakeslee, Alex Blum, Jon L. Blummer, Brian Bolland (3)***, Wayne Boring, Frank Brunner, Steven Butler, John Byrne, Don Cameron, Eddie Campbell, Milton Caniff, Dave Cockrum, Jack Cole (2), Johnny Craig (3), Robert Crumb, Jack Davis, Billy DeBeck, Dick Dillin, Steve Ditko (2), Kevin Eastman, Will Eisner, Will Elder, Whitney Ellsworth, Bill Everett (2), Al Fagaly, Al Feldstein (3), Lou Fine (2), Creig Flessel, Gill Fox, Dan Gordon, Harold Gray, Paul Gustavson, Jaime Hernandez, Erwin L. Hess, Al Hubbard, Graham Ingels, Greg Irons, Klaus Janson, Kelley Jones, Dan Jurgens (2), Michael Kaluta, Bob Kane, Gil Kane, Walt Kelly (2), Jack Kirby (10), Andy Kubert, Harvey Kurtzman, Jim Lee, Gus Mager, George Marcoux, Sheldon Mayer, Frank Miller, Sheldon Moldoff, Joe Musial, Leo O'Mealia, Victor Pazmino, George Pérez, H.G. Peter (4), Keith Pollard, John Prentice, Fred Ray (2), Alex Raymond, John Romita, Alex Schomburg (3), Joe Shuster (3), Bill Sienkiewicz (2), Dave Sim, Joe Simon (3), Ed Smalle, Jeff Smith, Bill Spicer, Chris Sprouse, Dave Stevens**, Vin Sullivan (2), Curt Swan, Frank Thomas, Frank Thorne, Bill Ward, Ogden Whitney (2), George Wilson, Barry Windsor-Smith, Bill Woggon, Wally Wood (2), and UNKNOWN ARTIST (12).