I remember when this massive tome came into view. The Great Superman Book was an unusual item for its time, an enormous book dedicated to a single superhero. We are awash in all manner of books about all aspects of comics, superheroes and such, but in 1978 that was not even remotely the case. The success of Superman The Movie had created a swell of interest in Superman and comics in general, as did any such high-profile event which brought attention to the tiny ghetto of comics. I had a copy at one time, but I traded it away many moons ago when I for some reason felt it necessary to trade away most of my DC collection. But here is an article about how the late Michael Fleisher went about creating this impressive volume. It speaks to a time, now in the relatively distant past when such work was much much harder than today. Tomes like this one were really very valuable in a world sans the internet with its avalanche of data on every conceivable subject, the Son of Krypton included.
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I just dug those out recently. That's the third volume in a series. Volume One was Batman, and Volume Two was Wonder Woman. The two previous books were both labelled as The Encyclopedia Of Comic Book Heroes, Volume # __________
ReplyDeleteNo clue why they changed format for the third volume.
All three were pretty huge books, but Superman was the biggest with over 500 pages. Batman had just about 400 pages, and Wonder Woman got a little under 300.
As you noted, these sort of books were a rare source of information gathered by those with access that few had in those pre-Information Age days. Their value at the time is hard to appreciate in today's world.
I had all three at one time too. The others were a bit difficult to find when I finally learned of their existence. I might've ordered them from Bill Plant, something I rarely did.
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According to the article in your link, all three volumes were reprinted a few years ago. I'll maybe track them down one day - the Superman book at least.
ReplyDeleteYeah. New editions, with snazzy matching covers did come out a while back. I didn't pick them up, but they look good and I'm sure the paper quality is better than the original Superman book at the very least.
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