Books : The DC Comics Encyclopedia

In association with Amazon.com

Rating:

- A Must Have Book
Theres nothing bad to say about this book .
Anyone into D.C.comics either Expert or Novice should have this book in their collection . It is Alphabetized and very easy to read . Graphic Illustrations are wonderful and alot of people have put much time , effort and research into giving you the most information in the backgrounds of each Villan & Hero .

I Highly Recommend this book and Please get the Hard Cover edition . This is one for the coffee table or Book shelf for a long time.

I hope those that buy this enjoy it as much as I have .

Rating:

- This is a pretty deep source on DC Comics
As soon as I've laid my eyes on this encyclopedia, knowing more about it on the Internet, I decided to buy one copy for me. After all, you don't find such a book easily, not even at the best comic shops. This book doesn't intend to be a definitive guide, but a compreensive guide on DC Comics characters. Well, they surely did a very nice job. The illustrations are great and the information on each character is reasonable. Of course a few characters are missing, so what? This shouldn't be a problem. At least it's not a problem for me. Would you care for a piece of advice? Don't miss it. The DC Comics Encyclopedia will turn out to be a marvellous coffe-table book for the entire family.

Rating:

- Secret Files - the Deluxe Hardcover Edition
The complaints of other reviewers who feel that DC did an inadequate job at meeting expectations are, dare I say, utterly ridiculous.

DC has done a more than adequate job at covering over 60 years of comic characters and storylines. DC has firmly stuck to post-Crisis continuity, so any character that did not survive the reboot has been (understandably) eliminated.

As current comic continuity has become a fairly fluid commodity these days, it only makes sense that there is going to be some inaccuracies and missteps. The recent storyline unfolded in "Identity Crisis" is proof of that. No entry/storyline/origin is concrete any longer. As new writers jump on board and leave their marks on characters, details will often shift and change.

That said, the book itself is a fun read, with tons of fantastic color illustrations. There are a few errors here and there - but overall the book is nicely put together. It's been a long time since the days of Who's Who - and DC does a great job in recapturing the fun of reading such entries. Long time comic fans and fledgling fan boys will have a great time sitting down and perusing the entries in this book.

As usual, the Alex Ross cover art is outstanding. In short, you're basically getting a deluxe version of the yearly Secret Files comics.

If you are a reasonable person who can read comics with a grain of salt tucked firmly in your pocket - picking this up is a definite.

Rating:

- An encyclopedia of over 1,000 classic comic characters
Here's the perfect item of choice for that comic book fan who has all the issues: a definitive, color-packed one-volume encyclopedia of over 1,000 of the classic comic characters from DC Comics. This isn't your usual recap of issue covers - plenty of competing titles covering comics in general have these covers prominently displayed; it features never-seen-before artwork by some of the biggest names in comic book illustration, with all the famous heroes and villains under one cover. DC experts and participants have contributed heavily to The DC Comics Encyclopedia, a reference created by the collaborative team of Phil Jimenez, Daniel Wallace, Scott Beatty and which should be considered indispensably definitive.

Rating:

- OK for some, satisfying for no one.
It is almost an impossible job to create a useful encyclopedia of the entire 60-plus-year-old DC Universe, with as many characters, teams, places and stories as it encompasses. The Alex Ross illustrations are gorgeous and worth the price of admission alone, but it's an unsatisfying work overall. Dedicated comic book fans will be sorely disappointed by the lack of attention to detail in many entries and of the overall lack of depth and breadth of the coverage of the material. Neglecting to mention John (Hellblazer) Constantine, especially with release of the movie due in 2005, is inexplicable. For casual fans, unfamiliar with the DC Universe beyond the Superman and Batman movies and perhaps some of the animated series, this tome will be a bewildering jumble of information that lacks entries for some DC heroes familiar to the general public (such as the Wonder Twins or, more obscurely, Isis).

The DC Encyclopedia won't be a great gift for a person who is already deeply into comics; it will be one of those gifts that people buy for people who have serious interests in a subject of which they know very little, destined to sit on a shelf collecting dust.

But, if you're seeking to spark interest in comics with a young comics-fan-to-be, they might just be intrigued enough by the great illustrations and the array of heroes, heroines and villains to make his or her way to the comics' racks and check out what the DC Universe has to offer.

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