Two new books about comic books 0

[namisgr]

So right on the front page of the Sunday Book Review of the NY Times are a Pow! Bang! Boom! illustration and reviews of two recent books about the comics.  There's 'All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told', written by Douglas Wolk.  And there's 'American Comics: A History', by Jeremy Dauber. 

Having just learned about these two books about comics, I haven't read them but intend to.  Has anyone read either of them?  The Wolk book is written by an Eisner award winner for his prior work 'Reading Comics', and is based on an attempted distillation into a single narrative after he read all 27,000 Marvels published from 1961 to today, excepting a small few.  For what it's worth, the Times reviewer, who claims to have grown up on Marvel comics, loved it, with a few caveats.  An excerpt from the review, directed at the author's starting point being Fantastic Four #51:

It was in issue 51 that Kirby and Lee hit the mother lode; discovered the precise amount of human misery you need to inflict on a superhero in order to sell the galactic and fantastic, to make it real.  The galactic fantastic without human anguish: kid stuff.  Human anguish without the galactic: soap opera.  But the two blended together in the right proportions equaled a new type of imaginative vibranium.  Once Kirby and Lee cracked the Galactus equation, Marvel never looked back.

Here are the two new books:

    

Edited November 29, 2021 by namisgr

[namisgr]

Found the old thread from October on Wolk's book:

 

I see much of the prior discussion focused on just how many of the 27,000 Marvel comics Wolk really read, rather than the substance and insights of the distillation of it all.  But that was right at the time of book release, so probably no one here had read it yet.

Edited November 29, 2021 by namisgr

[bronze johnny]

Hi Bob,

I have Wolk’s book but haven’t gotten around to it yet. Will be getting Dauber’s.

Thanks for sharing!

John

[Grottu]

I started reading the Dauber book. Not all that impressed. I think he tries to cover a little too much material, and I’m not convinced he actually knows his stuff well enough (the NYT review highlights some errors). I found these two to be better … 

[NoMan]

On 11/29/2021 at 4:04 AM, namisgr said:

Found the old thread from October on Wolk's book:

 

I see much of the prior discussion focused on just how many of the 27,000 Marvel comics Wolk really read, rather than the substance and insights of the distillation of it all.  But that was right at the time of book release, so probably no one here had read it yet.

wonder if he read Dazzler #1 and Dazzler #2 cause they suck

[Doctor Dositheus]

On 11/29/2021 at 1:54 PM, NoMan said:

wonder if he read Dazzler #1 and Dazzler #2 cause they suck

This movie is going to be epic!

[kav]

On 11/29/2021 at 7:31 PM, Doctor Dositheus said:

This movie is going to be epic!

Hasnt everyone fighted Galacticus by now and he loses every time?  I think even Devil Dinosaur fighted Galacticus.

[Doctor Dositheus]

On 11/29/2021 at 9:45 PM, kav said:

Hasnt everyone fighted Galacticus by now and he loses every time?  I think even Devil Dinosaur fighted Galacticus.

Yes, they "fight" Galactus in this issue apparently.