Here are 100 books that Joe Simon fans have personally recommended if you like
Joe Simon.
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I read dozens of books about comic book history while researching my own book, and it turned me a near-obsessive on the topic. As weird as it sounds, I don’t really read comic books anymore, but I still read books about the industry.
I’ve never read an autobiography structured like this, and I had so much fun tearing through it. Instead of presenting his life chronologically, Gibbons decides to tell a bunch of anecdotes on topics organized alphabetically.
I loved this idea, which was basically the equivalent of “all meat, no filler.” I found the stories pretty compelling, too—and honest.
This comprehensive, in-depth, and personal journey through the eyes of one of the world’s most famous comics creators, Dave Gibbons, spans his earliest years copying Superman and Batman comics as a kid, to co-creating the bestselling graphic novel of all-time, Watchmen, and beyond.
Presented alphabetically, with informally written anecdotes that can be read from cover-to-cover or simply dipped into, Gibbons reveals unseen comics’ pitches, life as the first Comics Laureate, and going from being a fanzine artist to infiltrating DC Comics in the 1970s. The book covers everything from working on Doctor Who and meeting Tom Baker to being inducted…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I read dozens of books about comic book history while researching my own book, and it turned me a near-obsessive on the topic. As weird as it sounds, I don’t really read comic books anymore, but I still read books about the industry.
Uslan is the reason we have Batman movies, and he’s led a fascinating life.
I was especially interested in his time working for DC Comics in the 1970s—a transition time for the publisher when young, enthusiastic talent was allowed in after years of being mostly a closed shop.
Meet the man whose life-long quest to reclaim the true, cool soul of Batman wonderfully transformed today's comic book movies. Growing up outside of Asbury Park, New Jersey, Michael Uslan was obsessed with comic books. He'd be the first to grab the latest issues off the shelves of the three local comic book stores, including four copies of the now legendary Fantastic Four #1. His favorite superhero was the brooding, crime-fighting vigilante, Batman. Despising the campy 1960s TV show, Uslan became determined to bring the real Batman-dark, serious, burdened by a tragic past-to the silver screen. Undeterred by Hollywood's initial…
I read dozens of books about comic book history while researching my own book, and it turned me a near-obsessive on the topic. As weird as it sounds, I don’t really read comic books anymore, but I still read books about the industry.
Researching the early days of the comic book industry is hard. Extraordinarily, gut-punching hard. The records are scant, and everyone involved is long dead. This is why I was so blown away by this exhaustively complete record of the founding fathers of comicdom and their (often shady) exploits.
I found myself silently muttering, “How’d he find that??” on nearly every page.
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I read dozens of books about comic book history while researching my own book, and it turned me a near-obsessive on the topic. As weird as it sounds, I don’t really read comic books anymore, but I still read books about the industry.
Kupperberg was a writer and editor at DC Comics for decades, but it’s the chronicle of his early years as one of the hobby’s first BNF—big-name fans—that grabbed me here.
This autobiography paints a vivid picture of what it was like to be a comics obsessive in the days before the internet, giant conventions and mainstream acceptance, and everything that came with it, including the social isolation and the exhilarating hunt for back issues. It’s not a perspective I’ve found in many other books.
A 1982 DC Comics house ad for the first issue of Arion, Lord of Atlantis proclaimed, “Written by Paul Kupperberg! One of DC’s Most Versatile Writers!”. The next forty years of his career would confirm the ad’s label as the writer’s resume filled with credits that covered the spectrum of genres, mediums, and characters, from superheroes to romance, Batman to Betty and Veronica, Superman to Scooby Doo, and the Justice League to Johnny Bravo.. A one-time editor for DC Comics and the fake news tabloid Weekly World News, he is the creator of Arion, Lord of Atlantis, Checkmate, and Takion,…
I read bios and memoirs because I need to know what really happened. I read several bios of the same person; then piece together a sense of the truth. As a journalist, I understand that all of a person’s life won’t make it into the final story. Editors have a mission of their own; books are molded by exigent demands and social mores. That’s why The Autobiography of Malcolm X in 1965 had one view of its subject, and Manning Marable’s bio in 2011 another. I’ve read both and other accounts to formulate my own ideas about the man and his times.
Charlie Brown, Lucy, and “the gang” have fascinated me since I sat at the family table, fighting with my siblings for sections of the newspaper. My copy of this book is copiously highlighted because there was so much to learn about the artist’s life and technique. The opening pages reeled me in when the writer told of Schulz witnessing his mother’s excruciatingly painful death from cancer. I know cartoons have wisdom that goes beyond kids’ comprehension. This book shows how and why Schulz used all the elements of his life to write this strip. Peanuts and the comics of my childhood are why I use graphic novels like Maus in my classrooms. They have truths that hit on many levels.
Charles Schulz, the most widely syndicated and beloved cartoonist of all time, is also one of the most misunderstood figures in popular culture. Now, acclaimed biographer David Michaelis gives us the first full-length biography of Schulz: at once a creation story, a portrait of a hidden genius, and a chronicle contrasting the private man with the central role he played in shaping the imagination of a generation and beyond. The son of a barber, Schulz was born in Minnesota to modest, working class roots.In 1943, just three days after his mother's tragic death from cancer, Schulz, a private in the…
I am the author and illustrator of the baby book listed below. As a mom of a 1-year-old, I am no stranger to kids’ books. After 1 year of going through my baby’s bookshelf and finding my own personal favorites, I realized that the common theme amongst all of my favorites is that all my selects happen to rhyme. Therefore, when I set out to write my own book, it was a given that this would be a rhyming story. Since then, I have been reading and researching all of the rhyming books to create my own. After all this research, these top five books are my top picks.
The only book you need! Compiled over several short stories, you can pack just this one book with you on a trip and be set for your entire trip. It is so fun to have short stories as an option—you can read one if the baby is tired or five if the baby needs time to wind down before bedtime.
Shel Silverstein, the New York Times bestselling author of The Giving Tree, A Light in the Attic, Falling Up, and Every Thing On It, has created a poetry collection that is outrageously funny and deeply profound. Come in...for where the sidewalk ends, Shel Silverstein's world begins. This special edition contains 12 extra poems. You'll meet a boy who turns into a TV set, and a girl who eats a whale. The Unicorn and the Bloath live there, and so does Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who will not take the garbage out. It is a place where you wash your shadow…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I’ve spent my entire life dealing with mental health issues, and overcoming them took me on a long journey of learning about the mind and how to make it work for us rather than against us. I’ve explored almost every modality out there and developed my own hypnosis modality as a result. Books like these were a key part of helping me figure out how to overcome my challenges and live life to the fullest, achieve my goals, and reach success.
I would never have thought that the weird path that led me to running my own business would make sense to anyone else… until I read this book.
The idea of creating a “talent stack” made immediate sense to me and resonated strongly because it’s exactly how I’ve lived my life. Finding unique skills and talents and blending them into a mix that nobody else can duplicate has been the key to unlocking so much in my life.
Blasting clichéd career advice, the contrarian pundit and creator of Dilbert recounts the humorous ups and downs of his career, revealing the outsized role of luck in our lives and how best to play the system.
Scott Adams has likely failed at more things than anyone you’ve ever met or anyone you’ve even heard of. So how did he go from hapless office worker and serial failure to the creator of Dilbert, one of the world’s most famous syndicated comic strips, in just a few years? In How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Adams shares the…
I have been passionate about making, reading, and studying comics for my whole life. When I first encountered autobiographical comics, they were all by women who I looked up to for their ability to tackle their lives with both words and images. This is a small list and biased towards the cartoonists I first encountered in the world of female autobiographical comics. There is so much more out there. I love how the flexibility and history of the comic form have allowed for so much blending of genres and styles.
Keiler Roberts has a number of books featuring vignettes from her daily life. All are incredible. This is a personal favorite, cleverly balancing medical scenes about her MS treatment and diagnosis, her work as an art teacher, her life with her daughter and husband (and their family rats), and private moments with herself.
Pet deaths and parenting, embarrassing childhood memories and mental illness, Roberts documents her daily life’s minutiae, its up and downs, with the deftness of an observational comedian. Her comics demonstrate that sometimes life can deal you a punch to the gut, but it doesn’t have to be devoid of a punch line.
One of my favorite childhood pictures, circa 1967, shows me in the Batman costume I got for Christmas. And one of my sharpest memories from that time was seeing the Batmobile at a local auto show. Yes, I was a Batman fanatic, thanks to both the TV show and the comics. That passion faded somewhat as I grew older—I can’t rattle off the names of all the villains or discourse on the styles of the different artists and writers who have told his story. But having the chance to write What Is the Story of Batmantaught me a lot—and helped me feel like a kid again.
OK, I have to say this upfront: a lot of comic-book aficionados don’t care much for Bob Kane, Batman’s co-creator. He took too much of the credit for coming up with the Caped Crusader, at the expense of writer Bill Finger. And there are details in the autobiography that seem to stretch the truth. But I wanted to get Kane’s perspective on Batman and his development over the years. As a bonus, the book has complete color reproductions of several early Batman adventures.
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I have been passionate about making, reading, and studying comics for my whole life. When I first encountered autobiographical comics, they were all by women who I looked up to for their ability to tackle their lives with both words and images. This is a small list and biased towards the cartoonists I first encountered in the world of female autobiographical comics. There is so much more out there. I love how the flexibility and history of the comic form have allowed for so much blending of genres and styles.
I owe so much to this book. Aline Kominsky-Crumb pulls her art and comics from multiple decades of her life into this huge collection, making an incredible mixed-media autobiography that captures so much of who she was. Her unfiltered honesty set the bar high for what autobiographical comics could be.
Aline Kominsky-Crumb, one of the earliest female cartoonists, presents a collection of her own highly inventive and daring artwork from over four decades, along with unusual photographs and memorabilia. The road to becoming an underground- comics legend begins with Komisky-Crumb as a nice jewish girl from Long Island, carries her to Greenwich Village in the 1960's, and to California, land of hippy cartoonists, and on to a more or less sedate life with hubby(equally legendary R. Crumb) and daughter, Sophie. Her funny/sad tales show a woman bewildered by her place in society and determined to find her own way. These…
