By: Robert Schnakenberg (commentator)
The Story: An oversized edition that showcases 100 of DC comics most famous covers.
What’s Good: This oversized 11″ x 14″ book is really a history lesson. In terms of format, each right-hand page has a notable cover from a DC comic. Then when you flip the page, you can read what issue that cover came from, when it came out and what artist drew it. That stuff is pretty basic, but the real gem is that you also get a paragraph or two of background information. For example, it’ll tell you that detective Speed Saunders was the star of Detective Comics before a certain Caped Crusader horned in on his action with issue #27. It also gives you a lot of information about future covers that paid homage to a particular cover. It’s just a wealth of information.
And, it isn’t just famous golden age covers either. There are gems from all parts of DC’s history. I’m not much of a buff on the Golden or Silver Age, but I really enjoyed the nostalgia of seeing The New Teen Titans #1 and Crisis on Infinite Earths #7. And the goodness continues right up to the present day as the most recent cover is Batman #679 from September 2008. All genres are represented too: superheroes, romance, western, war, crime, indie/vertigo, etc.
The covers are all presented in tear-out, ready-to-frame format. Ordinarily, I’m not much for hanging reprinted material on my wall since I collect original comic art and can be a little snobby about reprints. But, the original art for most of these issues is long gone (they used to throw things like that in the trash) and even if it existed, the price tag would be more than most people’s homes. Cover art for a current issue of Batman is going to run you a few thousand bucks, so you can imagine what these things would cost.
What’s Not So Good: My biggest issue with this book is that you can find most of this information on the internet. 20 years ago, you couldn’t figure out what any of these covers looked like unless they had one up on the wall at your local comic shop. Now you can see these images on any number of online databases such as comicbookdb.com or comicvine.com. Heck, Google Image searching will reveal them asap. And you can find almost all of the textual information on Wikipedia or other web sources, although it will NOT be organized as well as commentator Robert Schnakenberg has done for us here.
Some of your personal enjoyment of this volume is going to come down to whether you attach value to having a paper copy in your hands or whether you’re perfectly fine gathering information and image from the internet.
Finally, although price is a concern, I think this collection might have been best served as a hardcover with glossy paper. Oversized softcovers tend to flop a little more than I’d like.
Conclusion: A true history lesson on DC comics that walks you through from the Golden Age until the present. Some of these covers are truly iconic things whereas others show the neat romance comics and the like that are a part of DC’s heritage. The only downside is how necessary a coffee table sized reference book is in the digital age when you can find this information online.
Grade: B
-Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion