Product Description

"Great British Comics" offers a feast of striking cartoon graphics, a celebration of Britain's perennially popular comic heroes and their acclaimed creators, and a guide to collecting for everyone who remembers fondly the comics they grew up with. British comics are truly world famous, as well as being read by millions across the UK. Since the 1980s, there has been a British invasion of writers and artists into American comic books, revitalizing everything from Batman to X-Men and originating uniquely British characters of their own, such as Modesty Blaise and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Divided into chapters by themes such as schooldays, animals and the future, the book will chart the careers of familiar favourites such as Dennis the Menace and Dan Dare across the decades from the 1920s to the 1990s. The lively, informative text will be richly illustrated with toys, badges, merchandise and collectables, as well as comic-book covers, pages and annuals.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #118341 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

About the Author
Paul Gravett is a freelance journalist, curator, lecturer and broadcaster who has worked in comics publishing and promotion for over 20 years. He has curated numerous exhibitions of comic art, from the history of British comics for France's National Comics Centre to the annual Comica festival for the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. He is the author of the best-selling Manga and Graphic Novels: Stories To Change Your Life.

Customer Reviews

Gentlemen, we have a winner...
Most general books about comics tend to specialize or be skewed towards a certain genre, audience or era - think 'superheroes', 'alternative', '1960s'. It's a rare beast that eschews such temptations and goes all out for the historical sweep, without seeming superficial or conversely dragged down by the weight of facts and figures. Fortunately, comics historian Paul Gravett wears his extensive learning lightly and weaves an extremely readable overview of a dense field, aided by inviting layouts from the talented Peter Stanbury.

So who should buy this book? Just about anyone with an interest in British comics will get something out of it: the melange of visuals from a century and a half of comic strips will draw in the casual browser, while its authoritative blend of comics culture and history will appeal to the comics' cognoscenti.

Put simply, this is the best primer on British comics I've ever read. Put it on your shopping list now.

An essential book about comics
It's been quite a while since a book as thorough as this has been written on home grown comics, but Great British Comics has been worth the wait. Paul Gravett and Peter Stanbury should be proud of their work here, for it's about the most definitive book on UK comics that's been published.

Some previous books on the genre have only shown the covers to the comics, but this book also showcases the strips themselves, with numerous crisp reprodictions, some even taken from the original artwork, warts and all. Pleasingly, newspaper strips are also included, as are independent comics, two areas which are sometimes overlooked when people write about British comics.

Most importantly, Great British Comics shatters the often-heard myth that "the British comics industry is dead", as it includes examples of strips that bring us right up to date. What this proves is that although some people only consider "traditional comics" to have any merit, British comics have always evolved with the times so each generation has its own idea on what these "traditions" are, from Victorian tabloid comic/ story papers to today's slick comic / magazine hybrids.

The book also contains a timeline designed by Stanbury which shows the lifespan of various titles over the past 100 years. Plus there are several photographs which help give a cultural reference to certain eras, such as the full page photo of kids queueing for rationed comics outside a newsagent in 1943!

An essential book for anyone with an interest in comics.

Comprehensive and inspiring
I have a few books on comics in general, and 'Great British Comics' beats all of them hands down. It is wonderfully written - not scholarly, not dumb, but perfectly readable, intelligent and also very positive about its subject matter, showing no snobbery or bias towards any one particular area. And talking of that, the diversity of genres and styles is quite astounding - British comics are incredibly rich in history and it is fascinating to see the quality of early strips and their development through the years. But they also have a rich future from the look of things, and Paul Gravett is enthusiastically upbeat about a medium that many thought lost along with their distant childhood... "Oh yeah, I remember comics! Do they still make them?". There is a current scene and it's alive and kicking, and there are plenty of examples here. Graphically the book is excellent - there's plenty to look at, and it's not just a gallery of impressive covers as is quite often the case with books of this nature, but actual strip pages - the storytelling itself, which is what comics are. Overall the book is an inspiration.