Customer Reviews

The Golden Age of DC Comics: 365 Days

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

 

 

This is a very well designed book. Thick, pretty to look at, even the spine is designed to make you think of the old big little books.However it reminds me more of a day by day calender project that got turned into a hard covered book at the last minute.

Inside the book there is a page of text for each day of the year. On the opposite of the text page is a blown up comic panel. Pretty to look at, and this is where the book fails. The reading is a bit too light and the focus is on the blown up comic panel rather than on some interesting trend of the time when the comic that surrounded the panel was published.

An attempt is made to be "arty" making the focus often these very oddball and (in my opinion) unexciting comic panels. I think most readers would have liked to see a book of golden age comic covers rather than this.

When I saw Les Daniels was attached I had high hopes for this book as I had bought his other books on comics. More text might have made this book more interesting.

My verdict. At the regular street price this book is not worth it. At the Amazon price it might be worth it. A nice stocking stuffer for somebody who is into comics but I found it to be more of a snack rather than a main meal.

While the idea of making a book with 365 days may seem odd, this book is quite special. It can be read as a coffee table book. But it's really a remarkably well-informed collection of images from comics. The commentaries sometimes run for a paragraph, giving background on the artists or comic, and sometimes just a few lines, as an informative caption. What Daniels, Kidd, and Spear have done is create a unique compendium of images from DC comics that function like a quirky and very intelligent collection of often forgotten cultural icons. This book is a very worthwhile addition to a library, whether you're a comics freak, a student of popular culture, art history, or you just like beautiful books. The wealth of images is incredible. It can't be appreciated at one sitting.

I agree that as you first glance at this book it seems like a calender. It's a hefty book that has some charm in its views of days gone by. I bought it for myself and wasn't dissapointed in its focus. Les Daniels always has an interesting view and smartly entertains as you go page to page. If one wants a more detailed overview of the subject there are many fine books to seek out. This one is more for a night when one doesn't want to read but rather to remember.Its well bound, excellently to the point concerning its subject. If one wants full covers go to the Photo Journal guide to comics by Gerber. It doesn't have everything but like this book is a visual companion.

Set up as 365-day calendar, this small coffee table book is anything but. What it is is a wonderful collection of comic book covers and pages from the 1930s through the 1950s. Artfully photographed and cropped by Geoff Spear, each of the 365 pages are a visual treat from the DC Comics universe.

Graphic designer Chip Kidd has set up the book not as a stuffy museum piece of days past, but as an explosion of Americana. Vibrant and alive, the pages burst with excitement and fun. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, and others are alive again as our parents or grandparents first saw them. It is quickly obvious why these characters inspired generation after generation, and are still alive and well today in the American consciousness.

Les Daniels does a superb job, as always, of summing up a character's history and importance, but has fun at the same time. Wit and sly commentary on Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Robin the Boy Wonder line these pages. If there is a `comics historian' out there, Daniels is it. And never is it more obvious than in this book, where he comments not only the big characters such as Superman and Batman, but on the smaller characters, the ones long-forgotten, and the myriad of villains.

And for one more bit of fun, the back cover of the book is a display of the ubiquitous advertisements of the day. Everything from X-ray glasses to whoopee cushions, all for just pennies!

Recent movies of Superman, Batman, and the like show that these characters of a by-gone era (and books like this) are still a constant gift and joy in America today. The Golden Age of DC Comics - 365 Days is a delight.

Picked this one out for my son for Christmas. Quite a hit. In fact everyone was looking up there own day of the year to see who was being featured. Well done

The breadth and occasional silliness of the characters that have appeared in DC comics will surprise you. There are many types of superheroes, from the iconic Superman and Batman to Starman and Bulletman. Other DC characters were involved in the Second World War, some fought crime and there was some romance, horror and at times just exotic adventure.
The reading public was less sophisticated in the thirties and forties, willing to tolerate unusual characters, although many of them did not last very long. Some of those that did underwent significant transformations in order to do so. A few, like the Flash, were reborn as a completely new character with the same powers.
This book has an entry for each day of the year, a short textual explanation and a segment of the strip demonstrating the appearance of the character. Together, the entries are a history of the DC characters, albeit for some it is brief. If you are a longtime reader of comic books you will see some characters that you have probably forgotten. However, if you are interested in the history of the genre, then this is an excellent primer on what has passed before in the DC line.

This is a very interesting book, both in the information provided and the art. There are neat tidbits about the artistic processes (like how artists realized that illustrating the follow-though of a punch was more impressive than the moment of impact) that you can still see in modern day comics. There is plenty of background on characters, both well-known and obscure. It's also interesting to see how history influenced both DC Comics as a company and the fates and stories of the DC characters.

What I liked about the art in this book is that though some of the images are familiar, they are presented in a new way... Yes, you'll see the cover of Action Comics #1,Detective Comics #27, and Sensation Comics #1 again, but you'll see them in a cropped format... All the art in the book is cropped,sometimes drastically. Sometimes it's cropped to a single panel and other times the art is cropped for dynamic effect paying no attention to where the panels or the cover indicates you should look... For example, instead of seeing the entire famous cover depicting Superman lifting a car over his head, you'll see it cropped close to the terrified face of the man fleeing the scene (all you see of Superman is his legs).

However the absolutely best thing about the art in this book (in my humble opinion) is all the images that you don't normally see... Besides the few well-known images from the Golden Age,there are so many pages of illustrations that I had never seen!

There was only one thing I didn't like about the book, and that was the paper... The pages are the slick, glossy pages like they use in modern comics... I've never liked those pages. I'm afraid to touch them because every time I do, I leave visible fingerprints on them. It would have been really neat if they had used the newsprint type paper that was used in the Golden Era, but I suppose I can't have everything.

This book is really fun to look at for those who love comic books. It showcases the art work in a fun new format. All the art used, is classic illustrations, and is a great way to look at classic art.

dissapointed with this one , I expected to see some really quality illustrations, instead it looks like someone has got some really old comics and scanned them into this book right down to the newspaper style dots, I guess I didnt read the description properly before I bought this book, to me it is really a breif historical account in pictures using old comics, I dont know it might appeal to the purist comic freak, but I didn't like it. BEtter off relegated to being a paper weight or door stop nothing ground breaking in this, a boring book.