Customer Reviews

Comic Book Encyclopedia: The Ultimate Guide to Characters, Graphic Novels, Writers, and Artists in the Comic Book Universe

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a big showy book with a bright graphic cover but I found the interior coverage of various characters too light for serious research or reading.

This may make a good gift book for someone just getting started but I recommend either The Superhero Book: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Comic-Book Icons and Hollywood Heroes
by Gina Misiroglu or The Slings and Arrows Guide to Comic Guide Second Edition for the more serious fan/collector.

This is a big, beautiful, richly illustrated book that covers a lot of territory-the history and development of comic books and graphic novels. It attempts to cover the entire field, characters, artists, writers, and give at least a basic understanding of the history. Unfortunately, as it says on the cover, "Nearly 400 BIG pages!", i.e., it's not quite four hundred pages. That's not enough space for in-depth treatment, it's made a bit more cramped by those beautiful illustrations (which, I must say, it would be a shame to lose.). The articles are mostly short, and characters one would have thought important enough for their own entries are reduced to mentions in broader entries. (Bugs Bunny, for instance, is barely mention in the "Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies" entry.) This is a good, fun book nevertheless, but possibly a better choice for the reader just getting seriously interested in comics, than for the established fan who already has an in-depth knowledge of the field.

If you're getting this book for hardcore reference material I would be careful. I literally had the book 5 minutes and discovered a handful of mistakes.

Ex.

-Jim Lee's entry has the best selling X-Men #1 as being released in 2001 instead of 1991.

-The timeline has Sandman ending in 1997 when it was actually 1996.

If you buy this book get it for light reading. Do not use it for quoting comic fact until you check the validity of what you are using. Like I said.. I noticed these two mistakes after skimming the book for 5 minutes. I am afraid of how much more I will find once I start digging in.

This book has alot of comic characters and their creators in here, but most get half a page or about one whole page per character. Basically it is filled with short overviews of the comics that just get your mouth watering for more but, then leave you in the dark. I only wish they would have added more detail and info to each of the characters, there is alot of drawings in here though.

Comic books have been around in one form or another since the 1920's, entertaining children of all ages. From the young readers to the old, there has been a strong following for a number of titles. In fact, some comic books have surpassed the printed page and reached the heights of stardom as movie characters. Some have gone beyond the realm of the animated feature and become quite real, as we've seen recently in X-Men, Spider-Man, Bat-Man, etc., etc.

This Encyclopedia is the ultimate guide to anything dealing with the comic book universe, and very well put together. Art driven storytelling finally has a history book of its very own - from A-1 Comics to Zorro they're all listed here, complete with their own history blurb. Ron Goulart, an award winning SF and mystery writer, is considered one of the leading experts on comics, both nationally and internationally. This Connecticut native has written a number of his own comics and also published numerous books on the subject.

I've been a collector of Vampirella since about the same time my eldest son was born, when the original publication sadly came to an end. An avid collector, it's nice to actually learn a little more about this dangerous lady and her history, such as - the most recent resurrection began in 2001 and still continues. Frank Frazetta penned the cover which showed Vampirella with one spiked heel resting on a human skull, and was basically put together for laughs. However, Vampi took off and when Tom Sutton became the artist in the eighth issue, things went from good to fantastic!

A previous love interest collected Archie comics, and I will admit that they provide some wonderful entertainment. This is the best thing to read when you've got a headache or a fever and don't need to focus completely. According to the information in this encyclopedia, Archie is now in his second century as a teenager. That's a long time. However, there's been numerous changes to this comic along the way. Vic Bloom wrote the script for the very first story, and usually goes uncredited, he also apparently borrowed a character or two from an earlier comic entitled Wally Williams, in Jughead, Betty, and even Riverdale High. It wasn't all original!

Another personal favourite is Heavy Metal and even it is found in these pages. Originally this magazine offered its older readers continuing tales of SF&F, along with some fantastic artwork by European artists. Initially it was made up of translated reprints, which was no big deal to anyone on this side of the Atlantic. Over time, Heavy Metal went the way of most publications and leaned into the sex scene, so it was a publication of SF&F with heavy erotica. I never knew that one half of the Ninja Turtles creative team took over as publisher in 1991 until I read Ron's blurb in the Encyclopedia. There is a huge amount of fascinating information to be found within the colorful covers of this tome. It is a must have for any comic fan!

"The Ultimate Guide" is a bit of a stretch as not a single b-list character from Marvel or DC that I used to collect as a kid is represented here, nor many of the creators I rank among my personal favorites, but it definitely offers a wide-ranging overview - emphasis on the word OVERVIEW - of the industry, past to present. There's a smattering of independent/alternative comics and a hefty load of Golden and Silver Age oddities I'd never even heard of. Overall, a perfect gift for the newcomer or casual fan, but I'd suggest letting the more experienced fan/collector decide whether to buy it for themselves.

As with most of these comic book/fantasy "guides" or "encyclopedias", such a huge task is bound to end up with a few factual errors and typos. There are certainly a few of those here in this book. For instance, Ron Goulart mentions that Jim Lee helped launch X-Men, Vol. 2 in 2001 (a full ten years after it originally happened). Such a mistake would probably fall in the "typo" category, but still pretty silly nonetheless.

The author admits that he grew up reading comics during it's "golden age", and it shows as this book *mostly* focuses on the industry throughout the late 20s-50s, and seems to completely forget all but the truly major top-selling characters of the 60s onward. But this indeed the "Comic Book Encyclopedia" because all years are represented, up to about 2001, it's just that the golden age seems to be the primary focus. Reading many entries in this book, I often wondered if Goulart was simply inserting his own favorites from his childhood into the book, because many of these characters and titles I had never heard of, even though I am a fan of that era. He seems to showcase the most obscure of companies, creators, and books even for the 30s & 40s.

Also at times Goulart seems to have a bit of a chip on his shoulder and may make remarks in regards to how underrated or overrated an artist or writer was, going as far to call out certain artists by speaking of how poor their style is.

But don't get me wrong, this encyclopedia is a joy to read. There's a great use of artwork here in relations to characters, comic book covers, and a creator's work. Having been born in 1981, I still have great interest in all those comic book years before me and I really enjoy reading about and seeing the artwork of the books of the 30s and 40s and 50s. So as long as you're not expecting an overview covering the New Avengers, X-Men, JLA, and Batman universes exclusively and don't mind catching up on the golden age, this is a very good book to pick up for fans of comics in general.

First of all i was looking for a book that describes each super heroe's style, character, super powers in detail, even i expected a scala or a chart showing his/her powers, intelligence, agility, dexterity out of say, 10 or 100 what ever. But none is available, just a brief explanation of how he /she is created, and etc. No description of his/her adventures, friends, the very popular speciality etc.

I bought this book with 2 other books "The superhero book" (visible ink production) and "500 comic book villains" (Baron's production) and none of them satisfied me.

However this book is the only one which provides all superheroes with "pictures" other books doesnt even provide picture for all characters but some mostly known ones.

i dont recommend this product for those who is familiar with the super heroes but to those who knows nothing about comics.

I skimmed through this book, which I fortunately bought from SFBC instead of a book store or Amazon, and found at least three errors.

Basically, don't count on this book to be 100% factual.

The blurbs say that this is a book for both beginners and experts in the field. Well, actually it will probably be confusing for the beginner and somewhat irritating for the expert. The book is heavily oriented to the Golden Age of Comics and somewhat skimpy on anything from the last 25 years. For example, there are detailed entries on everyone who ever had their own comic shop in the 40s and entries for comics that lasted all of 6 issues in the 40s but nothing on Jim Shooter, who helmed Marvel for many years and also made major contributions at DC when a teenager, and nothing on the industry revolving around the character Wolverine - which is bigger than some entire comic book companies.

Even within the Golden Age, the entry choices are rather whimsical. Lady Fair Play, who appeared all of 3 times anywhere and whose creators influenced no one, gets an entry; Mandrake the Magician, an icon of comics, does not. The omission of Mandrake (and Terry and the Pirates, and Prince Valiant) illustrates another problem. The proof-readers and editors of this thing should be shot. There are quite a few references in other articles bringing up Mandrake but the beginner will find no help in figuring them out because there's no Mandrake entry. For example, another magician character's sidekick is described as filling the place of Lothar. Who's Lothar? Well, he was Mandrake's sidekick but you can't find that out here. Similarly, the entry on Fantastic Comics mentions that "Stardust, Henry Fletcher's other contribution, is of sufficient unusualness to require an entry of his own." Very, very true - Stardust is like nothing else. Too bad the required entry isn't in this book. And let's not even get into the number of times "Stan Lee" is misprinted as "Stan Less".

Still, I must thank the author for providing a lot of information on characters and creators who have long fallen into, sometimes undeserved, obscurity. The actual production values of the book are quite good too. Lavishly illustrated and good quality binding. I wish, however, that the credits for all those lavish illustrations were more specific. There's just a list at the end of the book of everyone who's art was in the book but nothing to say where any particular panel came from. I'd really like to know where some of those great strips came from.