Biff Bam Pop’s Holiday Gift Guide: DC Comics: Year By Year A Visual Chronicle Updated Edition

Our friends at DK Publishing produce some truly amazing books but they’ve outdone themselves this year with their 2012 version of the slipcase hardcover: DC Comics: Year By Year A Visual Chronicle Updated Edition. Not only is it a great looking tome, but DK has actually made some sense of the DC Universe’s intricately tangled (and fanboy infuriating) eight decades worth of story continuity while laying the groundwork for the next set of important stories to unfurl.

It’s a lovely sight to behold!

Written by a veritable super-powered team of authors, researchers and archivists, Daniel Wallace, Alan Cowsill, Alex Irvine, Matthew K. Manning and Alastair Dougall present over 360 pages of heroic full colour comic book history within these oversized covers! Organized sequentially from comic books published by DC Comics in the 1930’s through to this very year, DK doesn’t just shed light on those publications but also on the eras in which they were produced and by the legendary writers and artists that produced them.

Beginning in the era of the great depression, the 2012 DC Comics: Year By Year A Visual Chronicle Updated Edition recounts the story (in easy to read and accessible side-bar format) of the pre-DC Comics founding of National Allied Publishing in 1934 and their release of the tabloid-sized New Fun #1 in 1935. It’s an amazing story that takes us through various years in a month-by-month trail of sequential art breadcrumbs.

This is a history book as much as the narrative of a pop-culture publication company, as we traverse the golden age of comics and the first appearances of world-renowned characters Superman, Batman and The Flash. It takes readers through the Second World War and the establishment of superheroes in the consciousness of people all over the globe. It expounds the importance of the comedy, western and romance genres in comics. It ushers us through the 1950 and 1960’s and into the realm of science fiction and comic books aimed at young girls. It escorts us through the fields of horror, fantasy, war stories, peace, love and happiness, and traces the entirety of the silver age of comics.

DC Comics: Year By Year A Visual Chronicle Updated Edition goes in depth on the comics employing the gritty realism of the 1980’s and the new types of publication formats of that era, including the rise of the graphic novel. It details the market-crushing business ploys of the 1990’s, the beginnings of creator-owned projects in that decade and takes us up to date with DC’s New 52 era, just begun last year.

Whether you’re interested in specific comic book issues, publication dates, writers, artists, comic book characters or industry trends, the 2012 edition of DC Comics: Year By Year A Visual Chronicle Updated Edition has it all. It’s brimming, from cover to cover, with colour art from the covers of all those great and historic comics and posters.

Anyone interested in pop-culture, let alone comics, would absolutely love this book!

DC Comics: Year By Year A Visual Chronicle Updated Edition can be purchased directly from DK Publishing or via Amazon and is highly recommended this holiday season – just make sure you get the 2012 version. You’re going to want that new material!