Very fun and useful ^ I read this book while I was doing research for my own book about comic books and I found it very fun and useful. The book has tons of color cover images and short descriptions of each comic. Tony also gives you longer descriptions on each decade and those very important comic book issues. A great book any comic book fan will appreciate.
A few glaring Omissions but quite good ^ Longtime comic book writer and reviewer Tony Isabella presents a gift for comic book fans...his picks for the 1000 comic books you must read. Now note that this isn't necessarily meant to be the greatest comics although certainly many would fall into that category, or perhaps most important might even be more appropriate. Isabella has segmented his book by decade beginning with the hero who started it all, Superman, an continuing with a look at each decade leading off with the 1940s and continuing to new Millennium.
A picture of each and everyone of the thousand comics is included along with the issue #, artist and writer credits, publisher, and date. Isabella then gives a one paragraph note about why the issue was included in the book. The diversity of titles is extraordinary! As comic fans we sometimes get wrapped up too much into superhero titles. Comics, especially back in the 1940s and 1950s were an incredible mixed bag: action, war, horror, humor, detective, science fiction, romance, and westerns all enjoyed their eras of popularity and they are well-represented in the book.
Yes the major issues are hit upon: .Marvel Comics #1. Flash Comics #1, More Fun Comics #52 (the First Spectre), Detective Comics #27, All-Star Comics #3...the key titles of the Golden Age are all included. But what's also included is the lesser known books like Quality's Police Comics #1; Jumbo Comics #48 with its fabulous Sheena cover; Frankenstein Comics #1; and Santa Claus Funnies in Four Color #128. I was especially pleased to see Isabella did not overlook many of the great 50s and 60s humor comics like The Adventures of Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope. Disney Comics are well represented as well.
Could I argue on a few things with Isabella? Sure..like how the new Millennium section gets a longer section than the 70s, 80s, or 90s and the decade is not even over yet. Still, the 60s gets it due justice as arguably the comic book industry's most important decade with fifty pages of content. Sure we can say there's books that should have been included. 1974 saw the first appearances of two of Marvel's most popular characters of the past 25 years, The Punisher (Spiderman #129) and Wolverine (Hulk #180) and neither are included. But hey, that's what makes books like this so fun.
Isabella even gives you tips on how you can find these must reads. I'll give you a tip , too, be a millionaire!
Fire up the Batmobile. This is gonna be one sweet ride. ^ In this book, "America's most beloved comics writer and columnist" selects 1,000 comic books you must read. The covers of the comic books are shown, along with a brief description of the contents of the comic in question. This is a hardcover book with high quality paper and all the covers are printed in color. A really fun book that highlights a lot of quality comic books from the beginning of the comic book era to the present. But it would cost you a fortune to actually buy all the comic books featured here, if you could even find all of them.
Clownishfellow ^ Not what I expected; however it is an enjoyable reading experience bringing back memorie3s of comics I read a looong time ago
1000 Comic Book Covers ^ For some reason, I thought there would be at least excerpts from these comics within these pages. I guess that is wishful thinking. All this contains is 1000 pictures of comic book COVERS with comments as to why the author liked them. It may be entertaining from an artistic point of view to see how covers have changed over the years, but not terribly engaging beyond that. I was disappointed and may send it back.
Anything Goes Trivia
Last Kiss
Megaton Man
Trevor
