Read Free

Comics through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas [4 volumes]
By:"M. Keith Booker"
Published on 2014-10-28 by ABC-CLIO

Focusing especially on American comic books and graphic novels from the 1930s to the present, this massive four-volume work provides a colorful yet authoritative source on the entire history of the comics medium. • Provides historical context within individual entries that allows readers to grasp the significance of that entry as it relates to the broader history and evolution of comics • Includes coverage of international material to frame the subsets of American and British comics within a global context • Presents information that will appeal and be of use to general readers of comics and supply coverage detailed enough to be of significant value to scholars and teachers working in the field of comics

This Book was ranked 23 by Google Books for keyword marvel legion.

A Complete History of American Comic Books
By:"Shirrel Rhoades"
Published on 2008 by Peter Lang

This book is an updated history of the American comic book by an industry insider. You’ll follow the development of comics from the first appearance of the comic book format in the Platinum Age of the 1930s to the creation of the superhero genre in the Golden Age, to the current period, where comics flourish as graphic novels and blockbuster movies. Along the way you will meet the hustlers, hucksters, hacks, and visionaries who made the American comic book what it is today. It’s an exciting journey, filled with mutants, changelings, atomized scientists, gamma-ray accidents, and supernaturally empowered heroes and villains who challenge the imagination and spark the secret identities lurking within us.

This Book was ranked 26 by Google Books for keyword marvel comic books.

The Secret History of Marvel Comics
By:"Blake Bell","Michael J. Vassallo"
Published on 2013-11-16 by Fantagraphics Books

The Secret History of Marvel Comics digs back to the 1930s when Marvel Comics wasn't just a comic-book producing company. Marvel Comics owner Martin Goodman had tentacles into a publishing world that might have made that era’s conservative American parents lynch him on his front porch. Marvel was but a small part of Goodman’s publishing empire, which had begun years before he published his first comic book. Goodman mostly published lurid and sensationalistic story books (known as “pulps”) and magazines, featuring sexually-charged detective and romance short fiction, and celebrity gossip scandal sheets. And artists like Jack Kirby, who was producing Captain America for eight-year-olds, were simultaneously dipping their toes in both ponds. The Secret History of Marvel Comics tells this parallel story of 1930s/40s Marvel Comics sharing offices with those Goodman publications not quite fit for children. The book also features a comprehensive display of the artwork produced for Goodman’s other enterprises by Marvel Comics artists such as Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, Alex Schomburg, Bill Everett, Al Jaffee, and Dan DeCarlo, plus the very best pulp artists in the field, including Norman Saunders, John Walter Scott, Hans Wesso, L.F. Bjorklund, and Marvel Comics #1 cover artist Frank R. Paul. Goodman’s magazines also featured cover stories on celebrities such as Jackie Gleason, Elizabeth Taylor, Liberace, and Sophia Loren, as well as contributions from famous literary and social figures such as Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, and L. Ron Hubbard.

This Book was ranked 16 by Google Books for keyword marvel comic books.

Comic Books and American Cultural History
By:"Matthew Pustz"
Published on 2012-02-23 by Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Comic Books and American Cultural History is an anthology that examines the ways in which comic books can be used to understand the history of the United States. Over the last twenty years, there has been a proliferation of book-length works focusing on the history of comic books, but few have investigated how comics can be used as sources for doing American cultural history. These original essays illustrate ways in which comic books can be used as resources for scholars and teachers. Part 1 of the book examines comics and graphic novels that demonstrate the techniques of cultural history; the essays in Part 2 use comics and graphic novels as cultural artifacts; the third part of the book studies the concept of historical identity through the 20th century; and the final section focuses on different treatments of contemporary American history. Discussing topics that range from romance comics and Superman to American Flagg! and Ex Machina, this is a vivid collection that will be useful to anyone studying comic books or teaching American history.

This Book was ranked 31 by Google Books for keyword marvel comic books.