Customer Reviews

The Photo Journal Guide to Comic Books (VOL I: A-J & VOL II: K-Z)

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I was amazed at the scope of this book, every cover from 1935-1965, and the labor that must have gone into compiling and producing it. Its extremely well photographed, carefully indexed, and the quality of paper and binding is excellent. For serious comic book collectors, it's worth every penny. A lifetime book.

What can you say about two books that have 21700 comic book covers beautifully printed on gloss paper? WOW! for a start. No one is going to better Ernst and Mary Gerber's five-year labor of love to complete this project. If you collect comics from 1935 thru 1965 you need these. I don't collect them but as a publication designer I have an interest in the visual aspects of popular culture so I got a set...despite the price!

Open either book anywhere and start looking and it soon becomes apparent that this is a very comprehensive collection, I kept coming across comics that ran for a few issues, sometimes only one issue. Each cover has up to twenty-five pieces of information, essential for collectors. Many show a cover of the only copy known to exist. The first sixteen pages of each book has text about collecting comics and their values. I liked the page in book two that is devoted to ads that appeared on the back covers, strangely some collectors only go for these, if you do, go for a copy of 'Hey Skinny!' by Mike Beller and Jerry Leibowitz, surely the only book about the subject.

Author Gerber says on the jacket flap...''if you spend one minute examining each picture, eight hours per day, five days a week, it would require an astounding NINE weeks to complete the job.'' Nine weeks later have a rest and then go and buy the two volume 'Photo-Journal Guide to Marvel Comics' and start to look at a further 7700 covers!

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

I've got both volumes of this book and it is invaluble to me as a collector of golden age comic books. I would recomend this book only so you can see some of the outrageous 1940's war covers i.e Japanese soldiers with huge teeth. Some of the price information is now out of date, but Gerber is spot on with the scarcity ratings. What I like most about these two volumes is that it gives me a chance to see covers of comics that I will never be able to afford.

What a [great] set of volumes. I am a huge comic collector, owning every issue of Spider-Man ever printed, but I am also a great fan and collector of various other comics, and a comic-history buff. These books are a joy to just flip through, learning about Golden and Silver Age comics. The pictures are gorgeous, all in color on glossy paper. And there's 10's of thousands of them! Well worth the money and worth their weight in gold if you're a true comic fan and collector! Might be a bit much for just the casual comic enthusiast. These 2 books and the two volume Marvel set are the standard by which all other collecting resources should be held to!