The Comic-Book Book

Don Thompson's and Dick Lupoff's' 1973 THE COMIC-BOOK BOOK is even finer than the book that precedes this, the 1970 ALL IN COLOR FOR A DIME. I used to love reading this when I was a child, wishing I could somehow get my hands on reprints of the 1940s comics stories so lovingly retold here (many of which were long out of print when I read this), especially in Maggie Thompson's fine essay on "The Spirit." Now that those old "Spirit" stories have been reproduced by DC, it's fun to go back and read these essays again, and the fascinating background information about the comics creators. the highlight of the whole book is Juanita Coulson's hilarious take on Golden Age superheroines, "Of (Super) Human Bondage": her detailing of the absurdities in an old Wonder Woman story (WW vs. Giganta the Gorilla Girl) are uproarious as well as very forward thinking.

There was a time when comics where not collected. They were purchased, rolled-up, traded and then thrown away. However, those four-color wonders had enough of an impact on a few people that, In the 1970's, they decided to create the hobby known as comics. Those few people decided to write "The Comic-book Book.""The Comic-book Book," like its predecessor "All in Color for a Dime," is the misty recollections of a group of friends who share the love of this peculiar art form. Each author writes an essay about the genre that affected him/her most. One essay is about the Frankenstein monster, and it's legacy in comics. Another author writes about the romance of the aviator, and how comics entered World War II before America. The Spirit and Will Eisner are the subject of one essay, and the magicians of comics (Mandrake, Zatara, Ibis...) fills another. Each essay is well written, although not particularly scholarly. Many of the authors are writing from memory, as original material was hard to locate. The best thing about reading "The Comic-book Book" is being able to glimpse into the past, and see people gushing about comics that carry little or no monetary value. The high prices for golden age comics had not yet appeared, and the affection is genuine. A nice book to read for anyone who loves the hobby of comics.