Actually , I mean that question more widely than the above headline suggests , but it sounds better .
What , o Legionnaires , wee the first books collecting/featuring " real " comic book ~ & strip ~ material , drawing from different kinds/divisions of comics - and as well , books ABOUT/surveying comics as well ~ that you remember ? And , the history of them ?
I'm a trifle younger than the " High Silver Agers " around here and I remember ~ a FEW ~ books of ON various collecting-comics kind from early on ~ most notably , I guess from about the time I was 6 , the MMPBs of PEANUTS and DENNIS THE MEACE dalies , as well as the larger , I guess you would have to say TPBs , of Penuts material from Holt , Rinehart , Winston?? that were then split into those two-part MMPBs , " Hey , Peanuts ! " and the like...
And as well , that was when those MMPBs of DC and Marvel material , the FF one that reprinted the Doom/Namor/Baxter-Building-into-space and Impossible Man stories (Funny that that should've been reprinted when Stan apparently considered thre story/character such a misfire that te character was forbidden in the mags for years) and that red-covered Batman one , which reprinted the" Batmen Of All Nations " story IIRC...There were others in both of those lines/series , I know , but those were the only ones I had .
It seems like those must've been the first EVER US book market collections of " our " sorta funnybook stuff ~ Super guys 'n' gals .
More obscurely , there were several Tower paperbacks of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and one " High Camp Super Heroes " of the MLJ/Archie/Radio heroes .
I think in the mid-60s there were acouple of MPBs of EC material reprinted ~ Were they only ones of Ray Bradbury adaptations ?
I've heard of a cuple of - non-credited of course - early-60s kid's books of Carl Barks Donald Duck material ?
When I was (late 60s/early 70s) slightly older , I recall a few histories of comics in our local library , in the oversized section ~ I've forgotten their names .
Later , I found , in the normal-sized section , Coulton Waugh's post-WWII-era book The Comics , which I think may hold the distinction of being the first " real " comics survey/history , and written for a general/adult/well-read younger person level of understanding - Focusing on newspaper strips , of course , and as I think was the case with the oversize ones I remembered above , briefly covering comic books and being a touch/maybe more than faintly dismissive of them .
I'm aware of an earlier-in-the-40s book titled Comics And Their Creators , pparently written more to what we now call a YA level , and apparently somewhat based on a " If you are thinking of the comics as your carrear(Sp) " level - Plus , a couple boos sort of in that vein by , respectively , Robert Kanigher and Stan Lee ! Others like that ?
Yeah , our library had Seduction Of The Innocent , and I at least looked through the illustrations - Which , true to the comment by Jay Kennedy in that early-70s " Comix " book ( I believe the first (USA-format) book (1) focusing on comic BOOKS , (2) reprinting complete stories) ~ had nastydrawings/comments written in it by pens/persons unknown !!!!!!!!!!!
Do you remember this TPB history of comics that was put together in the UK and I think known as The Penguin Book Of Comics over there but a different name , as it was not published as a Penguin book , here ? I never had any version of it .
A lot of the books of comics in our library were the " more respectable " likes of magazine (The New Yorker , etc) and editorial cartoons , even text humor (817.7 Dewey Decimal !) books with lots of illustrations (I'm focusing on Roy Doty now) .
Peanuts was perhaps the first , in the 50s , big success with book reprints of " real " strips , in a " real " book ?
As far as " more respectable " newspaper strips go , I recall a couple of Lil' Abner books ~ ending to focus on the Schmoo story/fad ? ~ , maybe some others that have slipped from mind - Oh , and some reprint & original?? books of Walt Kelly's Pogo , a strip that I'm afraid I must confess has always been a blind spot for me , for all its generally agreed-upon canonical status , it has never done much , generally speaking , for me .
With all the slick continuity strips in the Post-War years you think there might've been more books of them but 've read , IRC , of one ~ just one ~ Steve Canyon book and nothing more ! Around the latish 60s?? , some of the most popular older continuity strps had not-that-purist by today's standards book collections ~ Buck Rogers , which IIRC I took from the library and , essentially , found unreadable , a Dick Tracy collection with an Ellery Queen intro that I've never read , a Little Orphan Annie one ~ Titled " Arf ! " ? - that I never fully read...At one point , I got an anthology of " Great Comics From The Chicago Tribune/New York News Syndicate " with Annie as he main cover picture and my only taste of such stuff as Harold Tee and this (I think it was originally in B&W in its original newspaper publication??) prose underneath illustrations " funny observations about people and mores " Trib-News feature that was identified after its creator , not any continuing characters , and was published during the 40s ( I remember a " now that WWII is over " gag among those " strips "0...This book printed lots of the trips really badly stretched/squeezed...Later on??I got 1 or reprints of what I guess were 20s/early 30s Little Orphan Annie books ~ " Fighting The World " ? ~ with a more " real " , less fully formed , Daddy....
I saw the hard-cover of All In Color For A Dime advertised in the NY Times' Sunday book review section , as my parents bought that paper every week . I bought the Ace MMPB in '71/'72 and I count the beginning of my being " a fan " from it ! t my " final baptism " of being a fan ,the 1973 Phil Seueling NYC Con , I got that Frank Jacobs biography of Bill Gaines...Of course , I had any Mad paperbacks , reprint and original ones , and one gift Ma HC , likewise a Peanuts one...I always daydreamed about ordering every one of the Mad paperbacks advertised in every issue of Mad , and having them all come in a big big box (Though I had many already)...
'72/3?? brought those, which I got Batman/Superman " From The 30s To The 70s " books, which I got given (I got given that Hogarth illustration of the first Tarzn book , too , this one maybe asuprise/not requested by me??) ~ Later , I know , a Shazam! one in that series (I think that one may came after was a more fully seasoned " fan " ~ I was amazed to find out about the original grey Hulk , and see just the cover repro of him that way , nothing more , in Stan's book though !
I never got the couple of Green Lantern/Green Arrow MPBs , I did get the two Jack Oleck/Berni Wrightson prose with ilustrations House Of Mystery ones , the more underground/indie/alternative-y stuff of that time tended to be above my level/not seen by me .
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When I got back into comics around the mid-90s collections of recent comics were pretty rare. So the first ones I ran across were DC "events:" Batman: A Death in the Family (the 1988 stunt in which call-ins to an 800 number decided the Jason Todd Robin's fate), and the trio of Death of Superman trades. The Batman copies had all been around awhile, and had a cover price of $4.99 or something like that.
When I was first seeking out older material there were the mass market paperbacks of early Mad comics and EC horror and science fiction. Pretty sure I still have the EC ones but I can't answer your question unless I dig them out. The first MMPB reprint I ever bought was of Marmaduke strips, which at my then-age seemed hilarious. At some point I tried to collect the trade paperbacks of the Pogo strips. Peanuts was probably available too, but I wasn't interested.
One of the first TPBs I ever saw was The Great Comic Book Heroes by Jules Feiffer (see here). It featured inaugural stories of many Golden Age superheroes ... although, as the status of Captain Marvel was still in litigation when this book was published (1965), it includes only the first page of the first Captain Marvel story.
It has been reprinted is a smaller size, but I cherish my original tabloid-size version.
...Thank you . Even as I wrote the entry , I remembered the Feiffer book , but it didn't make it to my fingertips !
I remembered it later on .
The book printed a page-ish of the Cap M. origin , yes , but not the first pages , the " eat " of explaining the concept an showing the transformation . DC (known as National Periodical Publications then) was thanked .
A years-later reissue of the book reprinted Feiffer's lengthy , sandwiching , essay . It took me years to get around to fully reading that part . Did you ever read it ?
The book got excerpted in Playboy Magazine then , too , apparently , giving it much attention .
ClarkKent_DC said:
Emerkeith Davyjack said:
I think you may be mixing up two different collections. Fantastic Four #6 and #11 were reprinted together in Marvel Treasury Edition #2, cover-dated Dec 1974, along with FF #48-50. Between 1977-1979, Pocket Books released several 4 inch by 7 inch books (is this the size of the MMPBs you are referring to?) reprinting mostly early Marvel stories. FF had one volume and it reprinted the first 6 issues, but not the Impossible Man story from #11.
...No , John , I'm thinking of mid-1960s MMPBs , in B&W , with the panels spread out over 2-3 pages , not one comics page per paperback page .
John Dunbar (the mod of maple) said:
John Dunbar said:
.... 4 inch by 7 inch books (is this the size of the MMPBs you are referring to?)
"Back in the day" the 4 inch by 7 inch paperback books were just called paperbacks. In today's usage they have come to be called mass market paperbacks. The (usually prose) paperbacks that are 5 1/2 by 8 1/4 inches are now referred to either as trade paperbacks or simply paperbacks. Amazon calls them paperbacks and calls the smaller ones mass market paperbacks, which I gather is the industry standard description.
I wasn't crazy about the larger size at first but prefer them today because they actually will lay open on a flat surface. You don't have to hold them up in the air.