Taschen Teases “75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking”

By John Freeman on April 6, 2017

Specialist publisher TASCHEN has just trailed the a new edition of the award-winning 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking by Paul Levitz – a gorgeous-looking book crammed with art and covers spanning the US comic publisher’s output across the decades that will be published next month.

In 1935, DC Comics founder Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson published New Fun No. 1 — the first comic book with all-new original material — at a time when comic books were mere repositories for the castoffs of the newspaper strips. What was initially considered to be disposable media for children was well on its way to becoming the mythology of our time — the 20th century’s answer to Atlas or Zorro.

More than 40,000 comic books later, TASCHEN has produced the single most comprehensive book on DC Comics. More than 2,000 images—covers and interiors, original illustrations, photographs, film stills, and collectibles — are reproduced using the latest technology to bring the story lines, the characters, and their creators to vibrant life as they’ve never been seen before.

Telling the tales behind the tomes is 38-year DC veteran Paul Levitz, whose in-depth essays trace the company’s history, from its pulp origins through to the future of digital publishing, alongside year-by-year timelines and biographies of DC legends.

Paul is a comic book fan who has worked as editor/publisher of The Comic Reader, editor of the Batman titles and others, writer of more than 300 stories— including an acclaimed run on Legion of Super-Heroes — and a DC Comics executive, finishing his 38-year stint with the company as President and Publisher. He returned to writing in 2010 with a new series of Legion stories and other projects. Four of his books have been New York Times best sellers.

The original XL edition of 75 Years of DC Comics was winner of the 2011 Eisner Comic Industry Award for Best Comics-Related Book of the Year. This new edition brings you all the same DC glory in a more compact format.

Photograph from National Periodical annual report, 1964. “The group of youngsters seated here against the colourful background of the United Nations symbolize the universal appeal of the entertainment magazines published by National Periodical… Children pay for them with pennies, pence, centavos, drachmas, pfennig, lire, rupees, markkaa, cuzeiros and dinars in some 48 countries.”— Jack Liebowitz, from the 1964 President’s Report.

• Buy 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking from amazon.co.uk – using this link helps support downthetubes

Details

75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking
By Paul Levitz
Hardcover, 25 x 34.2 cm, 720 pages

Comic artist Neal Adams in the 1960s

ISBN 978-3-8365-5456-5
Edition: English

ISBN 978-3-8365-5457-2
Multilingual Edition: English, German

ISBN 978-3-8365-5458-9
Multilingual Edition: English, French

ISBN 978-3-8365-6550-9
Multilingual Edition: English, Spanish

English edition with German, French or Spanish translation in a booklet

• Read a tie-in interview with comic artist Neal Adams, who reinvented and reinvigorated Batman in the 1960s

About the Author
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John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.