Reviews

DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favorite Comic Book Heroes by Jenette Kahn, Les Daniels

sfian's review

informative medium-paced

3.5

Ah, DC Comics... one of my abiding passions. I've owned this book since it was published in 1995 (IIRC I bought a copy and won another, no idea where the second went) but, like many of my "coffee-table" books, have only just got round to reading it. 

And I'm just a little disappointed. What purports to be a history of the company's first sixty years is actually a series of one-to-two page essays/articles in (mostly) timeline order, each focusing on a specific aspect of DC Comics. Yes, you get the birth of the company,  the creation of the major characters, the TV shows, films and cartoons, the revitalization of the Silver Age and the major events that seemed to happen every year after Crisis On Infinite Earths, but there's something missing. I'm not sure whether it's a lack of detail, or heart or something else. 

Also, because it's a series of essays, facts are sometimes repeated, some events are covered out if sequence - for example, the two pages on Swamp Thing cover his entire comic history, spanning two decades (you don't get that for, let's say, Superman) - and some things are deemed so insignificant as to be swept aside - the birth of Paradox Press mentions the earlier Piranha Press, but that's the only time the imprint is mentioned. 

This isn't a bad book, it's nice to look at and contains a lot of info. I just think it could be better - thankfully, I have another book on my to read pile that I suspect may do a better job of presenting the history of DC...