Source: comicsalliance.com
1. The Comic Book History of Comics
If you only choose one book from this list to pick up, please do make it this one.
Fred van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey are both brilliant comics creators and the best educational comics creators in the business. Their first edu-tainment, Action Philosophers – a history of philosophy – is legendarily great, and their follow-up is one of my favorite comics ever. Originally published as Comic Book Comics, the work is a textbook on comic book history, running the reader from the invention of the newspaper cartoon to the digital landscape of the current day.
And all the while, it’s interesting and entertaining and really funny. Really funny. This thing will crack you up and teach you a lot. It’s not crazy in-depth about all of its subjects, but it’s more detailed than most other overviews, and it has a penchant for using anecdotes to make its points, instead of simply blazing through every event.
It’s drop-dead perfect, and you really should give it the time of day.
So there you have it, folks, a nice-and-pretty summer reading list for you. Get a stack, give ‘em a read, have some fun. Books are rad. I’m gonna go start one right now. Reading Rainbow and whatnot!
