The Comic Book History of Comics
Genres: Comics & Graphic Novels, General, NonfictionPublished on 2012
Pages: 224
For the first time ever, the inspiring, infuriating, and utterly insane story of comics, graphic novels, and manga is presented in comic book form! The award-winning "Action Philosophers" team of Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey turn their irreverent-but-accurate eye to the stories of Jack Kirby, R. Crumb, Harvey Kurtzman, Alan Moore, Stan Lee, Will Eisner, Fredric Wertham, Roy Lichtenstein, Art Spiegelman, HergE, Osamu Tezuka -- and more! Collects "Comic Book Comics" #1-6.
The title of this book made me laugh so I borrowed it online from the library.
I don’t know a whole lot about comics but this book packed a whole lot of history into it. It starts with the development of the comic strip and then moves into the business ideas behind making books out of comic strips. The early developers of the format are all profiled.
The history of comics seems to be mostly about intellectual property disputes. Were comic artists creating work for hire in which case anything they made belongs to the company or were they authors in which case their creations belong to them? For me the book got bogged down in the middle around the 1980s with all kinds of legal challenges.
I was more interested in the early creators like the men behind Superman and what Stan Lee may or may not have done for comics.
This book looks mostly at American comics with some side trips to France but it does contain a section on manga too.
This would be a great book for any comic book fans in your life who also love history.
How was this as an ebook? I’m always nervous about picking up books that have a visual element as an ebook.
It was easy to read and you could zoom in. I read it through Hoopla from my library and that software is made for comics.
I actually started reading this last year and actually found it didn’t grab me. I should try again!
Haha that is one awesome title! 🙂 I learned a bit about comics history starting with the Yellow Kid till comix and graphic novels in college (thankfully cause I had never read a comic till then, can you imagine!!), but whoa do I have zero knowledge about mangas. Is that covered well? Because think I might be missing out on awesome mangas 🙂 Happy weekend!
This is a little bit on manga. It isn’t extensive but maybe enough to get you started.
There is a little on manga. It might be enough to get you started.