Superhero Comics of the Golden Age: The Illustrated History FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
It would be nice if Benton's series of comics histories ( Horror Comics: The Illustrated History , LJ 4/15/91; Superhero Comics of the Silver Age: The Illustrated History , LJ 11/15/91; Science Fiction Comics: The Illustrated History , LJ 4/15/92) had some kind of sequence, but the volumes seem to be coming at random. It is especially bizarre that he did the Silver Age (mid-1950s to late 1960s) two volumes before the Golden Age (late 1930s to mid-1950s). The Golden Age set the stage for the majority of comics published for the next two decades: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's Superman, Bob Kane's Batman, and Will Eisner's The Spirit were all created during the Golden Age. Historically, this period covers World War II, one of the most popular eras for superhero comics. Benton's research is impressive: he dredges up some really obscure stuff and uses a variety of interviews and articles as source material. Like the other volumes, it is frustratingly uncritical and only skims the surface of the era, but even that is valuable in such a pioneering time. Recommended for area collections; if you can't afford all the volumes, this is one of the ones you should get.-- Keith R.A. DeCandido, ``Library Journal''
BookList - Gordon Flagg
The latest installment in the Taylor History of Comics (the previous one was "Science Fiction Comics" ) focuses on the "Golden Age" of the 1940s, when the comic book as we know it came into being. Benton begins, naturally, with the appearance in 1938 of the very first superhero, Superman, created by two Cleveland high-schoolers. The Man of Steel inspired hundreds of subsequent costumed characters whose adventures were created in assembly-line fashion by enthusiastic young artists and writers toiling away in comics "shops." Most of this abundantly illustrated volume is a dictionary of characters (both the big guns like Superman and Batman and the also-rans like the Blue Beetle and Magno, the Magnetic Man) and another of their comic-book venues (from "Action Comics" to "Zip Comics"). World War II boosted sales of comics (simultaneously providing new story lines as the heroes took on the Nazis), but the end of the war did the opposite. By the early 1950s, the Golden Age was over and nearly all the superhero comics were gone, superseded, so to speak, by other genres, such as horror and science fiction.
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