Illustrated History

The Los Angeles Review of Books discusses books that curate comics.



From the piece...



The less the books focus on comics per se, the less useful they are. In a common annoying trope in cultural history surveys, Walker wastes pages on potted and worthless surveys of what was going on in the culture at large, of the “it was an era of flappers and video games, of flagpole sitters and Watergate, of hippies and the Space Race” variety.



And despite the joys of looking at the pictures, the actual comics history part of both books is too tight and quick to provide much insight or pleasure; the criticism is non-existent except for a random sentence here and there, some astute and some bizarre (Robinson overuses the word “quixotic” to describe strips, and never correctly); and little in the way of interesting stories or anecdotes help bring either the creators or their business alive. For that sort of detailed narrative history, the comics fan might want to check out the out of print, but available through the usual online sources, Comics Art in America by Stephen Becker (Simon and Schuster), though that book’s story stops in 1959.