Supergods is the new book by Grant Morrison. However, if you were just expecting a normal, perfectly straight-forward history of the comic book medium you would be surprised, but I hope not disappointed, by its contents. This is the history of comics according to Grant Morrison – part history, part autobiography, part polemic, part manifesto and part bonkers. The subtitle (“What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human”. ) warns you not to expect a scholarly dissertation or dispassionate exploration of the superhero in popular culture. This book oozes passion for its subject and is rarely neutral on any issue.

Now this has to be said at the start: Grant Morrison can waffle. In fact it’s what we give up good money to read/hear him do. What he has to say is often interesting, but it is also verbose. A number of reviewers have described it as a page-turner, but I found that it was almost too easy to read. The author rarely uses one word if a dozen will suffice and you have to fight the urge to automatically skim forward to the next idea or new topic. Additional, I found myself skimming over large sections of new age material wherein Grant pinwheels into some sort of tranced-out manifesto. (I’m never really sure about what to make of Grant Morrison when he starts talking about mysticism or encounters with Egyptian gods , I just can’t shake the feeling that the entire routine is some sort of massive joke on his part).

The book is split into four ages (Golden, Silver, Dark, and Renaissance). The Golden Age section reads like a conventional history of comic books, albeit one filtered through the author’s professional opinions and parallels. Where it starts to diverge from a straight history is during the Silver Age section which is where the author begins to draw in autobiographical details – he was born while the first appearance of the Justice League, Brave and the Bold #28, was on the news stands (he name drops that he and Dan Didio are virtually the same age). A lot of the material in these first two sections is a celebration of the weird or outlandish parts of 50s and 60s superhero comics. He indulges in Mort Weisinger’s Superman oddities and describes the greatness of the cosmic Jack Kirby and Jim Stalin.

The third quarter of the book is titled the “Dark Age” and deals heavily with material from Watchmen to Image Comics. This is the period of Grant’s career as a fresh-faced young punk imported into an unsuspecting United States. The biographical parts explain his mental state when he was beginning some project or first encountering somebody else’s work. This section builds up the image of the “liberal fascist” superhero – the excessive unremitting violence of the grim n’ gritty Dark Knight/Punisher like characters.

The last quarter of the book is devoted to the fight back against the Dark Age archetype in works like Marvels, Kingdom Come, and the author’s own works. Morrison also explores the works of later British writers – including Warren Ellis and Mark Miller – as he develops his idea that the superhero should be a positive cultural symbol and not the left over thug from the Dark Age of comics. Its a laudable idea and one you can clearly see in his later works. However, in developing that idea he verges into a near polemic against the type of character upon which Mark Millar has built his entire career.

Morrison and Millar’s relationship started as a sort of Batman and Robin partnership, an experienced mentor and a fanzine writer, but their approach towards superheroes has diverged post 9/11. Millar’s heroes have became increasingly hyper-real (Ultimate, etcs) and have mirrored the Hawk ethos of the Bush era presidency (shock and awe, “you’re with us or you’re against us”) while Morrison’s heroes became more idealised (Sea Guy, Seven Soldiers) and iconic. Millar’s heroes were made to seem more real by being wrapping in a veneer of real world motifs and events. Morrison’s heroes achieved a counter nuance by embracing the “reality” and richness of their own fictional worlds.

Of course being a Justice League blog we’re interested in what Grant Morrison has to say about his time on the JLA. He describes his first editor, Rubin Diaz, as a “human fusillade of passion and positivity” who went to bat against the other editorial offices who were unwilling to relinquish their precious characters to the League. He is also gushing about his artists, describing penciller Howard Porter’s style as combing “the stocky solidarity of the Image artists with a snarling gigantism that came from Jack Kirby” and that inker John Dell was “the best inker in comics at the time” and that he had a “thick, creamy black line” which could “render incredible focal depth and create an illusion of 3-D”.

There is also an interesting anecdote about the origin of the cover to JLA #1 and now it was a direct reaction to Kevin Maguire’s signature Justice League International covers group:

Issue No. 1 of the relaunched Justice League of America in 1987 had depicted its characters from an overhead perspective, giving the reader an elevated position that allowed us to look down on a newly humanized and relatable group of individuals.

At my request, Howard Porter drew our first cover shot of the JLA from below, endowing them with the majesty of towering statues on Mount Olympus, putting readers at the level of children gazing up at adults. JLA was a superhero title kids could read to feel grown-up and adults could read to to feel young again.

What I found interesting was that Morrison’s thesis, of the positive power of the superhero, tends towards the old DC archetypes. I therefore find it interesting that every illustration in the book (well, the Kindle version I read) is a DC comics picture and that the hard-cover premièred on DC’s corporate blog despite it not being a DC book.

Supergods will not be to everybody’s liking. It’s not going to be a complete history in the same manner as The Comics Book Heroes – the history book co-written by Gerard Jones, Morrison’s predecessor on the Justice League – and I’d even suggest that you’d get more out of this book if you were at least aware of the general scope of the subject already. Where it does entertain is in Grant’s personal anecdotes or descriptions of his own works. I have no doubt that both he and those he mention within are going to be questioned about his version of events for years to come. Whether you believe it tells you anything about “Being Human” is another matter, but it will certainly tell you a lot about Grant Morrison.

The Age of TV Heroes By Jason Hofius and George Khoury – Published by TwoMorrows Publishing – ISBN 978-1-60549-010-6

The first thing to say about The Age of TV Heroes is damn!, that’s a nice cover. Alex Ross renders DC’s four iconic TV heroes – George Reeves (The Adventures of Superman), Adam West (Batman), Jackson Bostwick (SHAZAM), and Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman) – so brilliantly that I suspect it’ll be one of the major selling points for this book.

The remit of the book is very tightly focused – this is a book about live action television superheroes, specifically adaptations of comic book superheroes although a few other series get a mention in the extensive time-line that opens the book. Each subsequent chapter focuses on a particular significant character or property so Adam West’s Batman get’s his own chapter, but George Reeves and Dean Cain’s Supermen share a chapter. Interesting Superboy (The Adventures of Superboy and Smallville) is handled separately from Superman.

For reference the chapters are:

1. A Comic Book-To-TV Hero Timeline
2. Superman/Lois & Clark
3. Batman
4. Shazam!
5. Wonder Woman
6. Spider-Man
7. Legends of the Superheroes
8. Captain America
9. Doctor Strange
10. The Incredible Hulk
11. Swamp Thing
12. Superboy/Smallville
13. The Flash
14. Vampirella
15. The Tick

Yes, you did read that right, there is a chapter on Legends of the Superheroes. There are also three “commercial breaks” focusing on the “TV Hero Movie Show Hosts”, “Salute to the Super Heroes” (the water ski show), and The Greatest American Hero. Some of these chapters are more interesting than others depending on your tastes.

The Age of TV Heroes is full-colour throughout and makes excellent use of contemporary photographs (publicity and candid) and occasionally comic-book artwork. Most of the chapters include quotes from interviews with one or more producers/actors from each show. The writers have also tried to shape the development and decline of each show into a narrative. Together this lifts the book above the usual bargain basement TV history books which are usually too cheap to get the creators’ help/input. That said the over all design of the book isn’t terribly consistent and bounces around from style-to-style each time you turn the page. Yet somehow this style does seem to strangely suit the TV superheroes.

Some of these shows have received more press that others. The pathos and tragedy surrounding The Adventures of Superman means that it’s hard to being much new to the topic. Nevertheless, that chapter does benefit with plenty of quotes from a Jack Larson (Jimmy Olsen) interview. The sections on the Legends of the Superheroes and the Salute to the Super Heroes are probably unique in covering these properties in-depth.

The Blue Beetle CompanionBy Christopher Irving – Published by Two Morrow Publishing – ISBN 978-1-893905-70-2 – 128 pages

The Blue Beetle Companion is as odd a book as the characters it documents. You never lose the sense that its really a collection of magazine articles that have been reformatted and reworked as a book. The largest part of it focuses on an obscure golden age character who most people have only heard about because another character took over his identity. Even through Ted Kord or Jaime Reyes appear on the cover of this book it’s really about the Dan Garret/t Blue Beetle and his origins in the 1940s.

The greater share of this book goes to a biography of a gentleman called Victor Fox. There is a – probably apocryphal – story that Fox was DC Comics’ accountant at the time that Superman launched. He is said to have taken one look at home much money DC were making and promptly quit to start his own comic book company. The DC connection may have been apocryphal, but his get rich quick attitude to starting a comic book company wasn’t. His shenanigans and adventures sound like they’d fit right at home with the escapades of the JLI’s Blue Beetle and Booster Gold.

Fox would copy anything if he thought he could get away with it and make money at it. His comic book company produced a series of features that deliberate ripped-off other characters – the first one was so close to Superman that DC sued. Fox’s knock-off of the Green Hornet was called the Blue Beetle. Except that this Blue Beetle doesn’t have much in common with the more well-known technologist Ted Kord or high school student Jaime Reyes, or even for that matter the archeologist Dan Garrett. Fox’s Beetle was a rookie police man/detective/secret agent (they couldn’t decide) called Dan Garret (one t). He occasionally looked like the later Garrett, but there was no magical scarab or for that matter consistency.

Christopher Irving presents a story of how Fox would try almost every possible avenue to promote the Beetle with steadily decreasing results. Radio, newspaper strips, promotional days, having the character appear in your home town (so that’s where JMS got the idea). You name it Fox tried it. And in almost every case they were short-lived and not very good. Irving goes through each of these 1940s twists in detail and there is a descent amount of reproduced material – Fox never cared much for copyright so the early stuff is in the public domain.

What did surprise me was the weighting of the 1940s stuff versus the Silver Age and Modern material. The material on Charlton (from whom DC bought the character) starts on page 99 and this is a 125 page book – that’s 80% of the space. The brevity of the Charlton Comics section and the DC section really doesn’t do the later characters justice. Indeed, it would have been great as several chapters from a larger Charlton Comics companion or even a Fox Comics Companion. Don’t get me wrong, what is there is good, it’s just brief. This is a Two Morrow’s publication so you’d have thought they could have reproduced an interview or two from Comic Book Artist or some where similar. And the most surprising part was that Nite Owl – who was closely based on the Beetle – barely gets a paragraph.

The Blue Beetle Companion is a very good book in as far as it goes – I just wish it could have gone further.

Superman vs. Hollywood: How Fiendish Producers, Devious Directors, and Warring Writers Grounded an American Icon By Jake Rossen – Published by Cappella Books – ISBN 1556527314 – 353 pages

Jake Rossen’s book, Superman Vs. Hollywood, chronicles Superman’s exploitation outside of his traditional comic book home. Superman has always been a character who has spanned different media. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s original designs had been for their character to first appear in a newspaper strip, but economic necessity meant that they had to fall back to the less prestigious comic book medium. Then, as soon as it became clear that those comic book stories were a success, Superman’s publishers began concerted efforts to push Superman into almost every conceivable medium possible.

The book’s first chapter rattles through the radio show, the Fleischer cartoons, and the Kirk Alyn serials at a pace. It is a pity that Rossen doesn’t spend more time on these as they’re the part that I’d loved to have read more about. Nevertheless, each of them gets a fair and fascinating hearing. The second chapter covers the events surrounding 1950s The Adventures of Superman TV show and the eventual fate of its star George Reeves. The third chapter spends a bit of time covering the attempts to keep the TV franchise going and the rise of the TV cartoon.

It’s with the fourth chapter that the book really gets into its stride and focus – the Christopher Reeve motion picture version of Superman. We’re taken through the various adventures of the Salkinds, Richards Donner and Lester, their script writers and actors. The production of Superman the Movie and its sequels and spin-offs takes up the next eight chapters. Personally, I found these sections to be the most interesting. Rossen doesn’t spare anybody from his withering critiques, but I found his history to be more balanced – particularly over producer/director clashes – than a number of other works.

There is a break of a couple of chapters to discuss Superboy and Lois and Clark. Then its back for the strangest section of the book – the fiasco of Warner Brothers trying to get Jon Peters to relaunch the Superman film series. The back story is fascinating and it dominates the last third of the book (inter cut with pieces covering Smallville and Superman The Animated Series). That of course ends up with the production of Superman Returns.

A causal fan will be aware of the general outline of this history, but even the most obsessive fan will be surprised by some of the details that Rossen has managed to unearth. He takes all the adaptations and presents then in context with each other. This is a real page turner and its very easy to rattle through this book at some speed. It is a little light on photographs and illustrations given that it’s a book about a visual medium, but its a prose discussion not a glossy coffee table tome.

Google Books Preview

Back in the 1970s Michael Fleisher wrote a series of encyclopedias themed around the DC trinity of characters. As part of the Showcase reprint line the Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman volumes were recently re-released. Each of the encyclopedias contained detailed notes on pretty much every character and fact mentioned in the comics. Everything was heavily cross-referenced and there were multiple citations for anything quoted. They were an amazing work that preceded the later and more populist Who’s Who series. The Fleisher Encyclopaedias have a cut-off date of around 1970 so lack anything from the later Earth-One period. Original copies could go for hundreds of dollars on e-bay and they were out of print for three decades.

DC have now produced an all-new up to date set the Encyclopedias. The Robert Greenberger’s Essential Batman Encyclopedia (Ballabtine Books) is essentially an updated version of the Fleisher Batman Encyclopedia (in spirit if not in actual copy). The Batman volume covers material up to and including post-Infinite Crisis, the start of Grant Morrison’s run on Batman and Paul Dini’s run on Detective Comics. It is 388 pages of dense three-column type and makes liberal use of black-and-white illustrations taken directly from the comics. There are also a couple of sets of glossy colour plates to showcase the heroes and the villains.

The majority of the entries are character based, but unlike the recent DC Encyclopedia there are also entries for prominent places, events, and themes. Unlike the Who’s Whos no attempt is made to list character statistics unless they’re established in the canon in which case they’re mentioned in the body of the text. I found this Encyclopedia to be more meaty than 2004′s DC Comics Encyclopedia. That was a nice guide to the DCU, but was rather unsatisfying as a reference work.

The centre of the book is of course the core Batman titles, but content from Nightwing, Robin, and even Outsiders and Birds of Prey is included (albeit to a lesser degree). Acknowledgement is made of the fluid nature of comicbook continuity and it’s pointed out when and where significant changes have occurred to a character. For example, there is only a single Poison Ivy entry, but her Earth-One origin and history is told before its noted how it changed following the Crisis.

What has surprised me is the relatively quiet reception the book has received. Greenberger has talked to the Comic Reporter’s Tom Spurgeon and The Pulse’s Jennifer Contino about the project. He told Spurgeon that,

I’m a trained journalist and experienced writer and editor who happens to love comic books. Say someone who wrote the Batman comic wrote this book. Their approach might not be as easy given the different writing training and experience. Having read the titles continuously since 1964 means I’ve read it for over half its run which gives me a good global perspective. I also can easily explain the parallel worlds and put each era into perspective which helps a great deal to the book’s clarity.

His journalistic training show in the book, Greenberger’s writing is concise and easy to read, but never repetitive. He has a particular knack for cutting to the most essential parts of a character’s narrative and is not afraid to note where two stories can’t be reconciled. The focus on Batman’s canon doesn’t exclude mention of the wider DC Universe. However, it is slightly frustrating when the history of borderline characters is only partially recounted (e.g. Clock King’s involvement with the Injustice League isn’t mentioned). However, that’s just fan nitpicking.

The Essential Batman Encyclopedia is a fantastic book and is easily the best DC Comics reference work to come out since the 1990s loose-leaf Who’s Who. Two other volumes are planned, a Superman one by Martin Pasko and a Wonder Woman one by Phil Jimenez.

JUSTICE LEAGUE COMPANION (Vol. 1); $24.95By Michael Eury – Published by TwoMorrows Publishing – ISBN 1-893905-48-9 – 220 pages

The Justice League Companion is a 220-page exploration of the 1960s and early 1970s Justice League of America. The first chapter starts with a detailed overview presented in a FAQ format and then goes into an odd mix of short tangent articles and interviews. The second chapter is a collection of light biographies of the characters and various checklists. The third chapter covers the series creators and includes interviews with Murphy Anderson, Joe Giella, Denny O’Neil, and Mike Friedrich. The fourth chapter looks at merchandising while the fifth chapter is an index of the first 100 issues.

The late 1950s and early 1960s saw the birth of hardcore comics fandom around fanzines such as Jerry Bail & Roy Thomas’s Alter Ego. The core of this community were corresponding with the professional writers and editors. Ironically many of them later became the new generation of creators who replaced old timers they’d been corresponding with. This companion is really an examination of the Justice League as seen through their eyes.

The opening FAQ format is interesting, but it doesn’t really make up for a lack of a solid essay about the League’s genesis. Without that some of the minutia that the writers address exists without context. The context that the Companion does do rather well is the context of the League stories to the wider social and political landscape during the 1950s and 1960s.

I personally found the more interesting parts of this Companion to be the selection of new interviews, but I was slightly disappointing was that they didn’t reprint old interviews with the creators who are no longer with us (Gardner Fox, et al). Interspersing most of the features are a range of original artwork, commissions, convention sketches, and contemporary photographs than make you wish they’d been able to publish the book in colour.

There have already been two excellent, but now out-of-print, Justice League reference works – Mark Gruenwald’s Amazing World of DC Comics #14 and ICG’s Official JLA Index. And while the Index‘s indexes and Gruenwald’s essays are better than those found in this Companion they are relatively hard to find making the Justice League Companion the best in-print reference guide to the background and origins of the early Justice League.

TwoMorrows have produced a range of Companion books. On my book shelf I’ve got the Teen Titans, Legion, and All-Star Companions. The Teen Titan and Legion Companions are basically interview collections with almost no essays or indexes and are arguably the more modern works. The All-Star Companion suffers from being rather dry and overtly fanish, but it is still an excellent read. This Justice League Companion is more like the latter than the former – a bit too fanish for the main stream, but it is a wonderful reward for those that have read the original comics and a good companion piece to the new black and white Showcase reprints.

Men Of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic BookBy Gerard Jones – Published by Basic Books – ISBN 0465036562 – 384 pages

The first few decades of the 20th century saw mass migration of persecuted European Jews out of their traditional homes and their relocation to the United States. Many settled in the heart of New York and came to dominate the financial life of the city through a network of mob connections. Other Jews moved to the suburbs or to industrial towns like Cleveland and integrated into small town USA. The growth of Pulps and comic books brought both groups together — the streetwise city centre Jews (the “Gangsters”) controlled the distribution and managed the publishing companies, while their suburban cousins (the “Geeks”) were the editors and writers who created the stories that fuelled the new media. This book follows the life experiences of major players from each community and shows that while they may have needed each other, they never really understood each other.Gerard Jones is no stranger to the world of comic books. He has written for most of the big companies including a long running stint on the Justice League franchise and he has the distinction of being the last writer of Green Lantern before the creation of Kyle Rayner. He has written an earlier history of the comic book industry, with Will Jacobs, called The Comic Book Heroes, but this new book takes a different track and is a far more personal history of a smaller number of key players. Jones also wrote Killing Monsters (with Lynn Ponton) a book which stands up for a certain measure of violence within a children’s fantasies as a safe way for them to explore the darker side of their developing emotions.

By Gerard Jones’s own admission this book is a biography and not a bibliography, it’s more about the real world Golden Age players than their brightly costumed alter egos. It should technically be described as a comparative social biography of Superman’s creators (Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster) and Superman’s publishers (Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz). The introduction is dynamite and really sets the scene for where Jerry Siegel was on the day Superman The Movie was announced. The first act paints a broad picture of 1920s and 1930s New York and Cleveland, and illustrates how different social conditions shaped the lives of very different groups of immigrant Jews.

The dense, dangerous world of early 20th century New York is perhaps the most emotive and Jones expertly draws the reader into the world of the street gangs and Prohibition era alliances that gave birth to the Jewish dominated New York mob. His portrait of Harry Donenfeld is as an opportunistic, if charismatic, rogue and he portrays Liebowitz as a humourless straight man – a real-life double act. By contrast Cleveland comes across as an icon of suburban American life and we get a real sense of Jerry Siegel’s childhood – including the revelation that Siegel’s father had been murdered. Of the four leads Joe Shuster remains the most enigmatic.

Woven through the these histories are the side stories of the elder and younger Gaines, Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Julius Schwartz, Mort Weisinger, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, and a host of other names. Most of them were from the same generation, most of them were Jewish and most of them were drawn to New York by a powerful new medium. Something Jones doesn’t do is to carry the sense of the Jewishness much further. He uses it to give us a sense of the New York scene and to show the growth of the businesses on the edge of the mob, but it isn’t followed through and all we are left with is links between former mob businesses. It would have been nice to have more of a sense of how the strong Jewish roots of the industry became eroded.

The same cast features prominently in the middle act of the book which chronicles the 1940s and the maturation of the medium. They are also followed through the last (third) act which deals with their post-1940s history. Jones glosses over much of the Silver Age and instead concentrates on how the first generation of comic book players faired in the post Comics Code world. The thread that ties the entire narrative together is Superman. From his inception, his influences, and his sale to the subsequent play and counter play between Siegel and Donenfeld. Jones never demonises either party and he aptly demonstrates how completely different life experiences created two people who simply didn’t understand each other. Each party feeling fully justified to claim Superman as their own.

Jones’s book is a rich look at the real world figures who inspired Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. A lot of the early material is based on extensive interviews with the surviving players and almost as importantly interviews with people from outside the comic book industry that knew the players. His writing flows easily and holds your attention, although the more well read fan may find themselves occasionally skimming through the more famous sections (a danger, as Jones often reveals new details). He digs into the industry’s self reinforcing mythology and strips it away to show the real people and their personal struggles.

Most comic book histories, many of them excellent, are based on first hand accounts from the surviving editors and artists (“the Geeks”) collected by fan historians (themselves “Geeks”) that are often focused more on the creative process than on the social history. Jones’s book focuses equally on publishers and the creators, and as I comic fan I was at times far more interested in the, to me, hitherto unknown world of Donenfeld and Liebowitz. This isn’t an apologist work, but it is balanced towards a wider audience than most comic book histories will reach.

The DC Comics Encyclopedia – The Definitive Guide to the DC UniverseBy Scott Beatty, Bob Greenberger, Phil Jimenez and Dan WallaceFirst edition — ISBN 0-7566-0592-X — 350 pages — hardbound

I think the most important thing to point out about this book is its target audience. This book isn’t aimed solely at the hardcore comicbook audience; it is a populist coffee table tome aimed at the casual reader and squarely aims for breadth rather than depth. People expecting something equivalent to the current Marvel Handbook will be disappointed. This, however, should not detract from what is certainly the most comprehensive official survey of the DC Universe since the original 1980s Who’s Who.

The format of the Encycopedia is quite well laid out. Each character gets space according to their importance with the JLA icons receiving double page spreads while second tier characters (Lois Lane, Hawkman, etc) only get a single page. All other characters get fractions of a column or page depending on their perceived importance. Strangely the multiple incarnations of the superstars are relegated to shared entries, e.g. all three Flashes share a single double-page entry. The smallest entries are roughly equivalent to a typical Secret Filse profile while many are more similar to the length of the original Who’s Who entries. The differing length of entries means that a little alphabetical juggling is needed to accommodate them neatly on the page, but this isn’t a problem once you get used to it. The full index is a welcome addition.

The entry selection is skewed towards recent continuity with a cut-off prior to the recent reboots of the Doom Patrol, the LSH and Firestorm. I’d guess that this book has about twice the number of entries as the original Who’s Who, but there are still noticeable exclusions from this book as it squarely deals with the post-Crisis DC Universe and brushes aside pre-Crisis and Vertigo characters. I’m sure the authors could have easily filled up a second volume, but the package price would have been prohibitive for most readers.

If this book has a weakness then it has to be the lack of context given to the DC Universe. All these wonderful entries are presented without a real sense of how they fit together – would it really have been so hard to include a capsule History of the DC Universe or a few appendices of timelines and membership lists.

The illustrations are lifted from across much of the DC back catalogue and also show a definite bias towards modern material. The pages are not as glossy as previous DK books, but the art is reproduced cleanly and even looks to have been shot from the original artwork. One slight quibble I have is that individual artwork is not attributed; instead there is a single list of artists in the back of the book. Ironically the better half of Alex Ross’s serviceable wrap around cover is on the backside of the book.

Overall this is an amazing catalogue of the inhabitants of the DC Universe. It won’t satisfy the most stringent of continuity fans and there are some noticeable exclusions, but that doesn’t really matter. This is a coffee table book designed to introduce casual readers to DC Comics’s amazing Universe and to act as a guide to their more obscure characters — you’re going to be using this book to look up  Mainline or Genius Jones, not Superman or Batman.