Recommendation of books about comics

[RuthB]

Uff... yap, it might be too far back. For girls I got the Susan Brewster Book. Is not bad but I find is missing a bit more of information about artists and character instead of rambling so much about clubs, free gifts and collection blablabla.

[Phoenix]

Great-Grandmas

I'm sure the title used Grandmama's rather than Grandma's. I have this book somewhere but, as I'm not as organised as I should be, inevitably I haven't been able to lay my hands on it this afternoon to check.

[Richard S.]

I "googled" it at work earlier and got several slightly different answers so had a bit of a guess at i in my earlier answer but....<pulls book down from shelf>...I see it's called "Great-Grandmama's weekly - a celebration of the Girl's Own Paper 1880-1901"

[Peter Gray]

Thanks Lew

maybe i'll see if Surrey libraries have it first..

[dishes]

"Great British Comics" IS good but have a magnifying glass handy if you want to read any of the comic pages reproduced therein.

I still think Perry and Aldridge's "Penguin Book Of Comics" is a well-written, good primer. Lots of great classic comic art, too, though a bit quirky and out of date.

[colcool007]

I can also recommend Martin Barker's Comics: Ideology, Power and the Critics (Cultural Politics) as a very good look at the cultural background of comics.

[RuthB]

That's sound very interesting, yes. I like the political or sociological backgrounds even if we think most of comics are apolitical.

[kevf]

I can recommend the Essential Guide to World Comics by Tim Pilcher & Brad Brooks for an up to date and comprehensive survey of the world's... well, what it says on the cover.



Also Men Of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones, which is a thorough and fascinating history of American comic books, in particular DC Comics. Its subtitle, Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book, gives you an idea of some of the ground covered. In fact, suggesting it now, has just made we want to dig it out and read it again.

Kev F

[philcom55]

One surprising candidate would be Twomorrows' The Warren Companion. Even though it's devoted to the US horror comics published by James Warren and doesn't feature UK comics at all it does contain a long and fascinating appendix by David Roach about the many Spanish agency artists who worked for both Britain and America.

Other than that I'd have to agree with those people who've singled out Paul Gravett's Great British Comics as the single best work on the subject to date.

- Phil Rushton

[dishes]

James Chapman's book is reviewed here at The Comics Journal website, though the article is more interesting as an American comics critic's view of British comics:

http://www.tcj.com/reviews/british-comi ... l-history/