Science Fiction Comics: The Illustrated History

Well, my comic book life at least. I didn't mean to start out by spreading it on so thick, but there it is. Anyways, up until I discovered this book I had just been kind of moving aimlessly and idly without a fixed direction as to my buying habits, "favorites," things that are a vital necessity when trying to navigate your way through this sub-culture of ours. All I knew was that I liked Superman quite a bit and that certain heroes like Daredevil or the Batman just weren't really up my alley. See, that was the problem, it was all back alleys, dark rooftops, disreputable characters, etc. Too down to Earth... I wanted Fantastic, you know? Pardon my language, but screw Gotham, Star City, Marvel's New York. Lets see some galaxies or far off places and such and so. That's when this book came home with me from the public library on a whim (I had pretty much exhausted every other book containing anything claiming to be "Comics History" that they had in the place) and as soon as I was done, had read the book front to back I think I experienced some sort of micro epiphany, it all just came to me. These were the types of stories that I would like to be reading, these are the types of artist that actually got me excited. Names like Wood, Raymond, Basil Wolverton would now be my mantra. DC's Strange Adventures one of my many bibles. I could continue my love of TV series like Star Trek and movies like 2001 into there comic book counterparts and be just as enthralled with them as I had been in the theater or sitting in front of the television screen. It was perfect. The book even has a list in the back of pretty much any SF comic published from about 1950 to the early 90's so that can get you collection started right there. Just go down the line and don't stop until you've hit the Z's. Or you could do what I did and pick and choose what you like best and just go from there. Either way, it turned out to be a very useful tool when trying to amass a collection of just strictly science fiction/science fantasy type books. I can't recommend this book highly enough. It really did change my outlook on the whole comic landscape and what kind of stories were really important to me. Spider-Man who? It's all about Buck Rogers!