Chronicles the legendary super heroes, monsters, and caricatures that have told the story of America over the years and the ups and downs of the industry that gave birth to them

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 captures the fun and excitement that have made comic books popular since the early 1930s. Fabulous covers, complete interior pages and dramatic panel enlargements help to tell the story of this vibrant, exciting publishing phenomenon from superheroes to femme fatales to satire comics. Illuminating essays add insight into notable creative figures, characters and unusual comics.

A history of American comic books told almost entirely through reprinted comic book covers.

Definitive presentation of a touchstone alternative comic, long out-of-print and now more vivid than ever.

The classic era takes us from the 1930s to the 1950s and the decline that set in with the self-censorship imposed on the publishers by Congress and the churches. This tells the story of the publishers, the artists and the industry--its successes and its disasters, its worth as an art form and the fears its excesses provoked.

Everyone who was invited to the house knows Walter-well, they know him a little, anyway. Some met him in childhood; some met him months ago. And Walter’s always been a little…off. But after the hardest year of their lives, nobody was going to turn down Walter’s invitation to an astonishingly beautiful house in the woods, overlooking an enormous sylvan lake. It’s beautiful, it’s opulent, it’s private-so a week of putting up with Walter’s weird little schemes and nicknames in exchange for the vacation of a lifetime? Why not? All of them were at that moment in their lives when they could feel themselves pulling away from their other friends; wouldn’t a chance to reconnect be…nice? With Something Is Killing The Children and The Department of Truth, James Tynion IV has changed the face of horror in modern comics - now get ready for his most ambitious story yet, alongside his Detective Comics partner Álvaro Martínez Bueno!