Customer Reviews

The New Smithsonian Book of Comic Book Stories: From Crumb to Clowes

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3 star:		(2)
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Since another reviewer on this page has pointed out the Fat Freddys Cat mistake, I thought I'd draw readers attention to the other problems with this book. The Captain America story, which features 2 of Sterenko's most well known double-page spreads also features a strange right-hand page that does not appear in the original comic. This page (which precedes the spreads) features a reproduction of a later page and appears to have been dropped in randomly. This page unfortunatly creates a knock-on effect that means the 2 spreads are now right and left pages! For a book that claims to celebrate the best comics created this is a poor oversight. Also, the Dan Clowes story features 2 pages out of order. Lastly, why on earth is 95% of the book in black and white? For stories like The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen - where the colour really helps add tone and mood - this seems like a strange decision.

I agree with the other reviewers the editing is shoddy in production, but the initial selection of the materials is quite excellent. No one could argue that all of the comics included are indeed some of the best work from the later half of the 20th century. for that reason I am willing to give the book a little more respect and hope that a paperback edition corrects some of the more glaring faults.

An expertly assembled collection of stories, covering everything from superheroes, to feminist comics, to historical fare. The only complaint that I have is that sometimes the splash pages (especially 2-page spreads) were arranged in such a way as just to make them fit, and not necessarily with the flow of the story. Other times the print was just too small to be reasonably called legible. But overall, a good variety for the money, and a fabulous primer for anyone who is wondering what comics are all about.

We can at least hope that the errors will be corrected in the paperback. An even more serious omission in the book is that it totally ignores such major artists as Dave Sim, Wendy and Richard Pini, Jimmy Gownley, Phil Foglio, and Jeff Smith.

This book looks great and my initial expectations were high. However, imagine my disappointment when I discovered the last page of the Fat Freddy's Cat adventure (page 30) was a duplicate of an earlier one (page 26)! I expected better proofreading from a Smithsonian publication.