This lavish, full-color, coffeetable-style volume celebrating the comics medium was a dozen years in the making. Via alphabetical entries, the authors take an idiosyncratic look at everything from creators, characters, and companies to conventions and collectors. Drawing on their years of expertise in the field and on interviews with hundreds of comics veterans, Mike Richardson (Dark Horse Comics' publisher) and Steve Duin (columnist for the Portland Oregonian) provide the inside scoop on the early days of comics in the 1930s, the studio days of the 1940s, the crisis in the 1950s, and the resurgence in the 1960s. And the book offers plenty of behind-the-scenes info about comics in more recent decades as well. You'll find R. Crumb side by side with crime comics, Li'l Abner brushing elbows with Little Annie Fanny, and Superman nose-to-nose with Spawn. This book is a must-have for anyone with a love for comics.