LES DANIELS' BOOKS

Les Daniels is a famous writer, author and ad hoc comic book historian. Among his many works (which we'll deal with on this post) are true accounts of the history of how the most famous characters, mostly from DC Comics, became the icons we know and love today.

DC COMICS - A Celebration of the World's Favorite Comic Book Heroes: This wonderful, oversized book is a very in-depth look at DC Comics. Its origins as National Allied Publications through the success of its movie an TV properties up to Smallville. Its a very informative book and gets you acquainted with the creators of all the great eras in comics, such as Siegel and Shuster, Carmine Infantino, Jack Kirby, Denny O'Neil and more guys who helped shape this industry. The cover is a little dull, sure, it's the big three and they're awesome, but still the purplish backdrop doesn't help bring out the characters' heroism, they're just posing in a kind of stiff way, but my main complaint is still the background.




SUPERMAN - The Complete History & SUPERMAN - Masterpiece Edition: These are 2 of a kind. The first one contains, as the name implies, Supes' complete history from Golden to Modern Ages, in a very cool tome featuring new art by Alex, reproducing the original pose from issue #1 of the Superman Comic from 1939 (top). The "Masterpiece" one is a giant box (below) with a huge bounty for fans of Big Blue and Alex Ross' art (hey, that's me!) Its contents are: The Les Daniels' history book, but only the chapters about the Golden Age, a reprinting of Superman #1 and a classic Superman doll designed by Alex, sculpted by Joe DeVito and painted by Chris Ware (right).





BATMAN - The Complete History & BATMAN - Masterpiece Edition: These 2 books' contents are pretty similar to the Superman books. The masterpiece edition this time contains a reproduction of Batman #1 and a figure of the classic Bob Kane Batman, designed by Ross and Chipp Kidd (the author of Mythology) and sculpted by Joe DeVito (below).






WONDER WOMAN - The Complete History & WONDER WOMAN - Masterpiece Edition: This is the last in this series of books. You know the drill, the complete history has 2 pieces of art which you can see below (left & right) in which Alex tries to re-interpret the myth of the Amazon sent to "Man's world" in one and then honors an old vignette (right) by fleshing it out with his art. There's also the figure, designed and sculpted by the usual suspects, Alex, Chipp and Joe. I don't know which Wonder Woman comic is reprinted here, my guess is issue #1. If you own this box, I'd appreciate your help in clarifying this matter.


IN MY COLLECTION: I only have the DC History book.
Note: The photos of the Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman figures were originally published in Mythology, photographed by Geoff Spear

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA NOVELS

This series of paperback novels came out a just a few years ago. The authors are well-known comic book writers. Nearly all of these covers by Alex Ross have a motif, they feature a close-up view of a character's most visible and recognizable costume part such as Batman's cowl, Wonder Woman's bracelets or Green Lantern's ring. The only exception would be the JLA book which features all the heroes. The books came out in the following order:

BATMAN: THE STONE KING by Alan Grant
WONDER WOMAN: MYTHOS by Carol Lay
THE FLASH: STOP MOTION by Mark Schultz
JLA: EXTERMINATORS by Christopher Golden
GREEN LANTERN: HERO'S QUEST by Dennis O'Neil
SUPERMAN: THE NEVER-ENDING BATTLE by Roger Stern

IN MY COLLECTION: Only the last 2 books. Get yours clicking on the links below.

ENCYCLOPEDIAS

THE DC COMICS ENCYCLOPEDIA: Originally published in 2003 by DK Publishing this super handy guide to all things DC is a great reference for old and new fans alike, it has amazing illustrations and data on every DC character from A-Z. Now the cover (above-left) is just amazing it features the DC heroes and villains posing for a company photo which is kind of funny to have The Joker in a picture between Batman and Wonder Woman. And even though the poses make some of the characters look a bit stiff, it is breathtaking nonetheless. In 2008, the publisher reissued this encyclopedia with new and expanded information and along with it came a new Alex Ross cover which you can see on the right. In this case, the heroes and villains have a more natural "fighting pose" and the blue hues make the characters look more natural, it's a big improvement over the previous one. I guess, they decided to update and expand all the book, even the cover. Check out the full wraparound covers below in high resolution.


THE MARVEL ENCYCLOPEDIA: Marvel decided to update their Marvel Universe handbook in 2002 and came up with this encyclopedia also published by DK. Now this one was called volume one, others followed but none with Alex's art. This volume features a very simple looking cover of an angry Hulk and a swinging Spider-Man but in reality, the cover features lots of Marvel characters in one of those George Perez-esque covers, Alex is so fond of doing, which you can see below. Now this cover looks awesome, there's a lot of action to it, but I'm not very fond of the color palette Mr. Ross uses on this one, it uses too much magenta-neon colors which make a few characters look weird, like Wolverine and Doctor Doom across the top of the art.



IN MY COLLECTION: None of these books are part of it, but I do have a poster of the cover of the Marvel Encyclopedia.

MYTHOLOGY

THE DC COMICS ART OF ALEX ROSS


















Writer Chip Kidd and photographer Geoff Spear brought us this amazingly wonderful book which is or has to be, in my humble opinion, the cornerstone of every collection of Alex Ross' art, along with Wizard's Alex Ross - Millennium Edition Special. This tome, published in 2003, truly honors its title, not only does it deal with those mythological heroes but it's also THE guide for the art of Mr. Ross at DC. It has EVERYTHING! I mean that, whenever I'm doing research on some of his art for this blog I turn to this book. Also, apart from having those wonderful front and back covers (left and right respectively) on the dust jacket, it also has a magnificent George Perez-like wraparound cover beneath that with the image you see below of all the DC heroes versus all the DC villains.



Not happy with all these goodies, well there's more, like a Robin origin told in the same 2-page spread style of the oversized books AND a new Superman - Batman team-up story written by Kidd and fully painted by Alex, some of its art can be seen below.


After the success of this book in it's hardcover version, came the obligatory, and cheaper, paperback edition (left) which reprints all the material we've already talked about with a new cover which isn't as great as the original one, this one makes Superman look like a robot or something. Then came a revised or special edition in 2005, this one had more art, to cover what Alex did during the next years such as some justice sketches, we can call it a revised and expanded edition. The cover reprints an image from a very popular poster of the JLA. What's also cool about this edition is the inclusion of a Shazam paper doll painted by Alex for this edition only, so you can play with it. (NOTE: DO NOT play with it! It's NEW art by Ross! What are you thinking?!?!?!)


Finally, people enjoyed the Superman and Batman covers so much, that DC asked Alex to continue the trend of these in-your-face poses, for posters and lithographs. Below - Left to Right: Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and The Flash.

MAD ABOUT SUPER HEROES

It was difficult for me to catalog this "book about a magazine", so I guess we'll consider it a book. So, this book is a compilation of all the times MAD magazine has made fun of Super-heroes and their movies and TV shows. It has plenty of classic spoofs, from Superman to the Batman movies and, most recently X-Men and Smallville. The cover follows the irreverent motif with Alex's Superman and Batman looking curiously at MAD's mascot, Alfred E. Neuman, and his "super" costume.
I like this cover, although the heroes' poses look a bit stiff, but I guess that's the point in this parody, to make them look like cardboard cut-outs, so Neuman looks more real than them.

IN MY COLLECTION: Of course.

THE KINGDOM COME NOVEL

In 1998, to cash in the success of Kingdom Come, Elliot S. Maggin, a renowned comic book writer, took on the job of making this novelization of the Kingdom Come story by Mark Waid and Alex Ross for those of us with longer attention spans.
This 340-page novel has some positive points and some negatives too. On the plus side, the book gives more descriptions of characters we saw in KC but didn't know the name, like Braintrust or Americommando, and it also explains how that exoeskeleton Batman has, actually works! But the negative is that the book tends to get a bit boring, it drags some unimportant events yet the really important parts in the comic are dealt with too briefly.


But what puts this book on the plus side again is the art, not only do you get the dust jacket (pictured above) with new art by Alex, but you also get 4 new color illustrations (below - top row), which represent 5 very important moments from Kingdom Come, re-visualized and 5 black and white ones of the 5 most important characters on this story Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Shazam (below - bottom row) and Norman McCay (left) exclusively on this tome, which I have scanned for your viewing pleasure.






There are 3 different versions of this book, all 3 with the same cover: The hardcover, which is IN MY COLLECTION, a paperback version with the same interior art, only smaller and an abridged, audiobook version, which contains 2 audio cassettes with narration and performances by voice actors of key dialogue from the novel. I'd like to get the last one, just out of curiosity...