Based on interviews with Stan Lee and dozens of his colleagues and contemporaries, as well as extensive archival research, this book provides a professional history, an appreciation, and a critical exploration of the face of Marvel Comics. Recognized as a dazzling writer, a skilled editor, a relentless self-promoter, a credit hog, and a huckster, Stan Lee rose from his humble beginnings to ride the wave of the 1940s comic books boom and witness the current motion picture madness and comic industry woes. Included is a complete examination of the rise of Marvel Comics, Lee's work in the years of postwar prosperity, and his efforts in the 1960s to revitalize the medium after it had grown stale.

Lord Apocalypse has come to lead muntantkind into the future and only the strongest mutants will survive him and his new Horsemen.

It is set in a world full of danger and hope. It is a world very much similar to ours and bridges and supernatural. An ordinary family are turned extraordinary as they are separated and thrust apart. As Alex and his family struggle to reunite, they face numerous perils, disasters, supernatural events and even the apocalypse.

Expecting to become a supervillain on his 16th birthday, Damien Locke, son of one of Golden City's most notorious supervillains, is horrified to discover that he may instead be destined to become a superhero.

No Marketing Blurb

Contributions by David M. Ball, Ian Gordon, Andrew Loman, Andrea A. Lunsford, James Lyons, Ana Merino, Graham J. Murphy, Chris Murray, Adam Rosenblatt, Julia Round, Joe Sutliff Sanders, Stephen Weiner, and Paul Williams Starting in the mid-1980s, a talented set of comics artists changed the American comic book industry forever by introducing adult sensibilities and aesthetic considerations into popular genres such as superhero comics and the newspaper strip. Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen (1987) revolutionized the former genre in particular. During this same period, underground and alternative genres began to garner critical acclaim and media attention beyond comics-specific outlets, as best represented by Art Spiegelman's Maus. Publishers began to collect, bind, and market comics as “graphic novels,” and these appeared in mainstream bookstores and in magazine reviews. The Rise of the American Comics Artist: Creators and Contexts brings together new scholarship surveying the production, distribution, and reception of American comics from this pivotal decade to the present. The collection specifically explores the figure of the comics creator—either as writer, as artist, or as writer and artist—in contemporary US comics, using creators as focal points to evaluate changes to the industry, its aesthetics, and its critical reception. The book also includes essays on landmark creators such as Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware, as well as insightful interviews with Jeff Smith (Bone), Jim Woodring (Frank) and Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics). As comics have reached new audiences, through different material and electronic forms, the public's broad perception of what comics are has changed. The Rise of the American Comics Artist surveys the ways in which the figure of the creator has been at the heart of these evolutions.

This historical epic, set in the world of 300, tells of the upsurge and decline of the Persian King's empire, and the ascent of the Grecian realm through Alexander. Written and illustrated by comics luminary and legend, Frank Miller (Sin City, The Dark Knight, 300), and colored by Alex Sinclair (Batman: The Dark Knight III: The Master Race), this companion to Miller's epic masterpiece, 300, brings the historical story of Xerxes to the graphic novel audience with grit and visual style! The ongoing Greek rebellion against Persian tyranny reaches a turning point after the destruction of the city of Sardis and the later battle of Marathon: on a military campaign to vanquish the city of Athens and silence the Greeks once and for all, Xerxes, Persian Prince, watches as his father, King Darius, falls in battle . . . The mantle of king is passed and while his newly-inherited fleet retreats toward home, Xerxes' hatred is cemented toward Athens--and his incentive to build the Persian empire is fueled. Xerxes becomes the king of all countries--the king of Persia, ruler of Zion, and Pharoah of Egypt--and his empire is unlike any the world has ever seen, until . . . The mantle is again passed, the god king dies and Darius III continues as the king of all. But then, from the west, a tiger force strikes in Asia Minor and is on a course for collision with Persian forces. This will be the beginning of the end for Persia and the launch of Alexander the Great's rise to power!