The 1990s was the decade when Marvel Comics sold 8.1 million copies of an issue of the X-Men, saw its superstar creators form their own company, cloned Spider-Man, and went bankrupt. It was when Superman died, Batman had his back broken, and the runaway success of Neil Gaiman's Sandman led to DC Comics' Vertigo line of adult comic books. It was the decade of gimmicky covers, skimpy costumes, and mega-crossovers. But most of all, the 1990s was the decade when companies like Image, Valiant and Malibu published million-selling comic books before the industry experienced a shocking and rapid collapse! These are just a few of the events chronicled in this exhaustive, full-color hardcover.
1950 : Variety on the newstand -- 1951 : Before the storm -- 1952 : Expansion -- 1953 : EC soars, Fawcett crashes -- 1954 : Comics in crisis -- 1955 : Censored! -- 1956 : Birth of the silver age -- 1957 : Turbulence and transition -- 1958 : National takes the lead -- 1959 : The silver age gains traction
Tales to Astonish tells the spectacular life and times of Jack Kirby, the legendary forefather of American comic books. In the 1960's, Kirby joined with Stan Lee to develop many of our best-known and most beloved superheroes, including the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, the X-Men, Thor, Iron Man, the Avengers, and the Silver Surfer. Ronin Ro chronicles Kirby's poverty-stricken origins in New York's Lower East Side, his early commercial triumphs and failures, his renowned partnership with Lee, and his revolutionary artistic innovations, tracing the comic book industry from its inauspicious beginnings to its sensational successes. Ronin Ro lives in New York City and is the author of Gangsta: Merchandising the Rhymes of Violence, the award-winning international bestseller Have Gun Will Travel, and the novel Street Sweeper. He has written for Vanity Fair, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Herald, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and Spin. "Ro cleanly lays out Kirby's story...He does well by the facts."-The Onion "Ro deftly handles Kirby's relationships...Tales to Astonish celebrates the stubbornness that kept Kirby, a superhero of comic books in his own right, creative as if against his will."-San Francisco Chronicle Also available: HC 1-58234-345-4 $24.95
The sweeping story of cartoons, comic strips, and graphic novels and their hold on the American imagination. Comics have conquered America. From our multiplexes, where Marvel and DC movies reign supreme, to our television screens, where comics-based shows like The Walking Dead have become among the most popular in cable history, to convention halls, best-seller lists, Pulitzer Prize–winning titles, and MacArthur Fellowship recipients, comics shape American culture, in ways high and low, superficial, and deeply profound. In American Comics, Columbia professor Jeremy Dauber takes readers through their incredible but little-known history, starting with the Civil War and cartoonist Thomas Nast, creator of the lasting and iconic images of Uncle Sam and Santa Claus; the golden age of newspaper comic strips and the first great superhero boom; the moral panic of the Eisenhower era, the Marvel Comics revolution, and the underground comix movement of the 1960s and ’70s; and finally into the twenty-first century, taking in the grim and gritty Dark Knights and Watchmen alongside the brilliant rise of the graphic novel by acclaimed practitioners like Art Spiegelman and Alison Bechdel. Dauber’s story shows not only how comics have changed over the decades but how American politics and culture have changed them. Throughout, he describes the origins of beloved comics, champions neglected masterpieces, and argues that we can understand how America sees itself through whose stories comics tell. Striking and revelatory, American Comics is a rich chronicle of the last 150 years of American history through the lens of its comic strips, political cartoons, superheroes, graphic novels, and more. FEATURING… • American Splendor • Archie • The Avengers • Kyle Baker • Batman • C. C. Beck • Black Panther • Captain America • Roz Chast • Walt Disney • Will Eisner • Neil Gaiman • Bill Gaines • Bill Griffith • Harley Quinn • Jack Kirby • Denis Kitchen • Krazy Kat • Harvey Kurtzman • Stan Lee • Little Orphan Annie • Maus • Frank Miller • Alan Moore • Mutt and Jeff • Gary Panter • Peanuts • Dav Pilkey • Gail Simone • Spider-Man • Superman • Dick Tracy • Wonder Wart-Hog • Wonder Woman • The Yellow Kid • Zap Comix … AND MANY MORE OF YOUR FAVORITES!
In the years between the end of World War II and the mid-1950s, the popular culture of today was invented in the pulpy, boldly illustrated pages of comic books. But no sooner had comics emerged than they were beaten down by mass bonfires, congressional hearings, and a McCarthyish panic over their unmonitored and uncensored content. Esteemed critic David Hajdu vividly evokes the rise, fall, and rise again of comics in this engrossing history. "Marvelous . . . a staggeringly well-reported account of the men and women who created the comic book, and the backlash of the 1950s that nearly destroyed it....Hajdu’s important book dramatizes an early, long-forgotten skirmish in the culture wars that, half a century later, continues to roil."--Jennifer Reese,Entertainment Weekly(Grade: A-) "Incisive and entertaining . . . This book tells an amazing story, with thrills and chills more extreme than the workings of a comic book’s imagination."--Janet Maslin,The New York Times "A well-written, detailed book . . . Hajdu’s research is impressive."--Bob Minzesheimer,USA Today "Crammed with interviews and original research, Hajdu’s book is a sprawling cultural history of comic books."--Matthew Price,Newsday "To those who think rock 'n' roll created the postwar generation gap, David Hajdu says: Think again. Every page ofThe Ten-Cent Plagueevinces [Hajdu’s] zest for the 'aesthetic lawlessness' of comic books and his sympathetic respect for the people who made them. Comic books have grown up, but Hajdu’s affectionate portrait of their rowdy adolescence will make readers hope they never lose their impudent edge."--Wendy Smith, Chicago Tribune "A vivid and engaging book."--Louis Menand,The New Yorker "David Hajdu, who perfectly detailed the Dylan-era Greenwhich Village scene in Positively 4th Street, does the same for the birth and near death (McCarthyism!) of comic books inThe Ten-Cent Plague." --GQ "Sharp . . . lively . . . entertaining and erudite . . . David Hajdu offers captivating insights into America’s early bluestocking-versus-blue-collar culture wars, and the later tensions between wary parents and the first generation of kids with buying power to mold mass entertainment."--R. C. Baker,The Village Voice "Hajdu doggedly documents a long national saga of comic creators testing the limits of content while facing down an ever-changing bonfire brigade. That brigade was made up, at varying times, of politicians, lawmen, preachers, medical minds, and academics. Sometimes, their regulatory bids recalled the Hays Code; at others, it was a bottled-up version of McCarthyism. Most of all, the hysteria over comics foreshadowed the looming rock 'n' roll era."--Geoff Boucher, Los Angeles Times "A compelling story of the pride, prejudice, and paranoia that marred the reception of mass entertainment in the first half of the century."--Michael Saler,The Times Literary Supplement(London) David Hajdu is the author ofLush Life: A Biography of Billy StrayhornandPositively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña.
Chronicles the legendary super heroes, monsters, and caricatures that have told the story of America over the years and the ups and downs of the industry that gave birth to them
The American Comic Book Chronicles continues its ambitious series of FULL-COLOR HARDCOVERS, where TwoMorrows' top authors document every decade of comic book history from the 1940s to today! Kurt Mitchell and editor Roy Thomas composed this volume about the "Golden Age" of the comic book industry, a five-year period that presented the earliest adventures of such iconic super-heroes as Batman, Captain Marvel, Superman, and Wonder Woman. It was a time when America's entry into World War II was presaged by the arrival of such patriotic do-gooders as Will Eisner's Uncle Sam, Harry Shorten and Irv Novick's The Shield, and Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's Captain America. It was when teenage culture found expression in a fumbling red-haired high school student named Archie Andrews. But most of all, the first five years of the 1940s was the age of the "packagers" when studios headed by men like Harry A Chesler, Will Eisner, and Jerry Iger churned out material for a plethora of new comic book companies that published the entire gamut of genres, from funny animal stories to crime tales to jungle sagas to science-fiction adventures. These are just a few of the events chronicled in this exhaustive, full-color hardcover. Taken together, American Comic Book Chronicles forms a cohesive, linear overview of the entire landscape of comics history, sure to be an invaluable resource for ANY comic book enthusiast!
