Customer Reviews

Baby Boomer Comics: The Wild, Wacky, Wonderful Comic Books of the 1960s

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is about the most fun you can have with 1960s comic books without actually sitting down and reading them. Mr. Silver Age has a sly-but-respectful style of relating the silliness and fun of some of our favorite superheroes from that time. It's a style that works even if you aren't familiar with the origial stories themselves.

The book is lavishly produced with color reproductions of funnybook covers and appropriate comics panels on every page so you know exactly what the commentary is referring to. My only complaint with the book is that some of the reproductions are too tiny for this silver ager's eyes to see, but that just leaves more room for the copy!

Lots of trivia spread throughout, fun quizzes, and wry observations from Mr. Silver Age Craig Shutt make this the most funnest book about the beloved comics of my youth I've read.

Thanks to Krause and the Comics Buyers Guide for publishing this. When's Vol. 2 coming out?

--your pal, Hoy

Comic book publishers are happily discovering a renewed interest in just about every title from the 1960s, and are repackaging those yellowing old comics in just about every format you can think of -- from expensive glossy hardcovers to inexpensive b&w omnibus editions.

The publication of this book is not only evidence of that trend, but in fact evidence that BABY BOOMERS COMICS' author, Craig Shutt, had a lot to do with sparking the renaissance of the glorious old Silver Age comic books. Consider: When Shutt began writing his column for COMICS BUYERS GUIDE, back in the early 1990s, the comic book field was obsessed with "grim 'n' gritty" heroes-turned-villains, ridiculously overendowed "bad girls" and an almost complete lack of humor. Through his regular "Ask Mr. Silver Age" columns, Shutt was able to remind readers -- many of whom were born well after the 1960s -- that there used to be a lot of plain old goofy FUN in the comic books, whether it was the backward-thinking and -talking Bizarros, the cross-dressing Jimmy Olsen, Spider-Man's frequent costume catastrophes, and of course the trend for which the Silver Age is best known: talking gorillas. Shutt made it cool to love those old comic books all over again. Is it any coincidence that nowadays you can buy complete collections of those Pop Art and Go-Go Checked classics off Amazon or in any bookstore? I think not.

With this book, Shutt proves once and for all (as if there was any doubt) that Silver Age comics were not only good, but good for you.

Sure, there are more expensive hardcover books on comics out there that treat the medium (and themselves) very seriously. But this book is a welcome relief from that pseudo-intellectualism. It's fun to read and enjoy the author's encyclopedic knowledge of the comics of our youth. Excellently illustrated. This one's a keeper - buy it.

Being a member of that tiny subset of us who were nurtured on the "funny books" of the sixties, this book was simply a delight. It's not really a scholarly treatise on this time in the development of this mass media, but it is a fond celebration with not a little influx of sardonic wit. I looked forward to each new smile chapter after chapter forced upon my visage.