‘DC Comics: The 75th Anniversary Poster Book’ – Robert Schnakenberg & Paul Levitz (Quirk Books)

Every so often a book crosses my path where I really have to think carefully about how I phrase my response to it. This could be for any number of reasons and one of these reasons is very much apparent in the DC Comics 75th Anniversary Poster Book. Here is a book where plot is non-existent; characters are mentioned only in passing (showing no development at all) while world building is a concept that has no place here. That’s all ok though as this book needs none of that at all; it’s a book full of posters from seventy five years of DC comics. Has it been that long? Apparently so...

So why do I need to think carefully about how I phrase my response to this book? Well, I concentrate on fiction here and (as far as I can recall) have never tackled a non-fiction work consisting primarily of pictures with some added commentary. There’s a first time for everything though so here goes...

‘The 75th Anniversary Poster Book’ is one of those books that will sit nicely on the coffee table, waiting patiently to be picked up and flicked through. What it isn’t is a book that you will tear through in one sitting; it’s far too big and unwieldy to be carried around and, if you’re anything like me, you’ll find the ‘picture, commentary, picture, commentary’ cycle verging on the monotonous and want to break it up with other reading.

If you take it in bite sized chunks though, the poster book is an informative read as well as offering the reader some lovely artwork to pore over at the same time. Schnakenberg knows his stuff and is able to give a detailed analysis on each piece and there the variety of comic titles and cover art on display surprised me. I didn’t realise that DC’s output, over 75 years, had been so extensive. I knew that there was a lot of Batman related stuff but comics like ‘Girls Romances’, ‘Weird Western Tales’ (Scalphunter arm wrestling with Abraham Lincoln!) and ‘The House of Mystery’ were all news to me. I certainly came away from this books knowing a lot more about DC Comics than when I first picked it up.

And that’s really all there is to say about this book in a review that markedly shorter than normal. ‘The 75th Anniversary Poster Book’ does its job but maybe doesn’t do a lot more than that, it’s not a book that’ll stick around in your head for days after you’ve finished reading it. What more can it do though other than what it says on the cover? Maybe you need to be a fan of DC Comics to really get something special out of this book...