What's up everyone, Scott here, from the popular YouTube channel, Nerd...StorianExplained!
And we here at NerdStorianExplained, like to talk about comics of course, but we also talk alot about books.
And you guys have been asking me for a while now to do a video where I recommend some reading material
where you can research comic books and superheroes. And I figured since right now is the time of year when
everyone's in their shopping mentality, I figured... might as well make that video right now. There will be links to
every book we're talking about in the description down below. They are affiliate links, which means
that they don't cost you anything extra than they normally would, but we also - - it has the benefit of giving
us a little bit of a kickback. Which means even if you're not gonna buy these books right now, today,
if any of these sound interesting and you're gonna buy them in the future, come back to this video,
click on the links in the description, and, uh, it helps us out and we appreciate you.
So let me go ahead and jump in with some super obvious picks. Of course, if you wanna know a lot about
Marvel, I've gotta recommend "Marvel Comics: The Untold Story" by Sean Howe. We have gotten
so many video ideas out of this one book! It's enormous! Did you see that?!?
See how many pages there are? SO MANY PAGES!
It's a whole forest of pages! We haven't even scratched the surface of all the information that this book holds.
It is such an in-depth and rich story, if you really wanna know the inner workings of Marvel from back in the day
all the way to present day, pretty much, I mean, this book doesn't automatically update with every new thing,
but... It's pretty close. I gotta be honest with you, I haven't even gotten all the way through the book yet
it's real long! Can I stress that again?! I would also recommend the audio book version if you're like me,
uh, and you just need someone to read you stories at night. Next up we have
"Was Superman A Spy?" by Brian Cronin. Now, this book seems shorter - - It is shorter! - -
uh, but there's arguably just as much, or if not more, information in this - - more interesting information in this
than in the Marvel book. So what this book does is it tackles a lot of comic book urban legends, and myths
uh, and either busts them, or confirms them to be true. Once again, this is a book we have gotten a ton of video
ideas out of. It's very well written, very well researched, uh, and I've [laughs] I've dog-eared just about
every single page in here because it's so interesting and so fascinating. Absolutely pick u- -If there's one
book on this - - in this video that - - that you want to start off with, if you wanna know the history
of comic books, and just fun little trivia, and interesting little facts to impress your friends, this is the book
for you! And unlike the Marvel book, this tackles Marvel, DC, and a whole bunch of other stuff. So...
Definitely worth a look. Now, the next couple books are actually a trilogy written by Tom DeFalco.
Uhh, this is "Comics Creators on: X-Men", "Comics Creators on: Spider-Man", and "Comics Creators on: Fantastic Four".
So these books are written interview style, which is Tom DeFalco sitting down with comics creators like Stan Lee,
Roy Thomas, John Byrne, a bunch of other people, and just talking to them about their - - their work on
The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, or X-Men. So what I love about these books is, because they are written up interview style,
they're very quick to go though. Right? They look pretty hardy. Pretty decent size books but you can actually finish this
in probably a day. And one of my favorite things to do with these books is actually, if you're reading like - - uh - - Claremont's
run of X-Men. Right? To actually go to the Claremont interview in hear, read along with it, so you can see exactly what he was thinking about when
they were - - uh - - creating the comics they were working on. It's so much fun and you get a ton of information from these books.
Uh, All, once again, all of these books so far are just talking about the history of the comics and comic book
industry. So that's your route, if that's the route you wanna go with, which is the stuff I find super fascinating,
absolutely, these books are just absolutely worth your money. what's also interesting about those books is you
get a couple contradicting stories because it's everyone trying to remember back to when they were working on a
book. And you get the artists and the writer in two separate interviews talking about the same comic book
and telling different stories about how it came to be, so, just kinda have to judge for yourself. Now for something
Completely different. We've got "Super Graphic". Now, all of these books so far have mostly just been
words. And what do we like here? We like comic books, we like images and pictures, right?
I mean, obviously words are great too, but let's - - let's - - How about a book where it's mostly just pictures.
This is "Super Graphic" by Tom Leong, and it is so much fun! It's just how it sounds
It is a book full of info graphics about superheroes, and comic books, and - - uh - - it's really funny, it's really intresting.
There's no shortage of Helvetica font in here. It has both very silly charts and - - uh - -
very in-depth graphical - - like this is one of how many people died in The Walking Dead comics and when.
Uh, and you can kind of see the progression there. Here's a very complicated one on the many affiliations in the Marvel universe.
Here's one about team colors. I mean, the list goes on and on. This is - - it's just a fun book to have, you can put it on your coffee table.
Uh, have people check it out, just skim through it. You're always going to find something when you just randomly pick a page,
it's - - it's a bunch of fun. If you're interested in something science-y, the classic book I have to recommend is
"The Physics of Super Heroes". Let me tell you a true story, guys. I took physics in high school and I got a 4 percent in the class...
Of the WHOLE semester... 4 percent. I did half of the first assignment, and that was it.
So I don't really know too much about physics, but I've done a couple physics videos and it's almost entirely
thanks to this book. It's written by James Kakalios. It is probably the standard when it comes to talking about super hero science.
It talks about all sorts of stuff from Spiderman to Magneto, uh, Kitty Pride, Cyclops - - I think.
And if you're worried, like i was, that you're not gonna understand a lot of this stuff because you didn't pay attention too much in physics class,
fear not. This book makes it incredibly simple to understand. I don't think much needs to be said about this book, I think a lot of you guys have already heard of
it, and if you haven't bought it, now's your chance, pull the trigger, get it, so good.
We've got another two-parter coming up. This is, a classic again, this is "Understanding Comics" and "Making Comics" by Scott McCloud.
There's a third one in this series that I have over there, but really, I think these are the two that are the most interesting to me.
So, if you're really into our show, Comicana, for example, that dives into how comic books are made, kind of the tips and tools and tricks that that some artists and writers use.
These two books really dive into a lot more detail about the art form of comic books. And the Best part about this book is that it's a book about comics, written and drawn
in comic book format so it's a comic book about comic books. You can visually see, uh, the - - the story telling devices that artists and writers use presented, literally, in front of you in the comic book form.
If you don't have these books, I highly recommend them. They might be up there with "Was Superman A Spy?". There's - - you'll never see comic books the same way
again. At least I know I didn't. Next up we've got a pair of books. I'll talk about these individually actually. Uh, we've done videos about both of these books before.
These are both by Robin S. Rosenberg and this first one is "Superhero Origins". A while ago I did a video that talked about how to write origin stories, the three types
of origin stories that there are, and that all came from this one book, and let me tell you something, guys, a lot of that video came in just the first couple pages.
You can see all the stuff that I've highlighted just in these first couple pages, and then there's so much more of the rest of this book I haven't even touched on yet.
There's so much interesting stuff in here, uh, they talk about very specific character origins like Wolverine, uh, Wonder Woman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and they
really break it down, almost philosophically, uh - - psycho - - psychologically. They, uh, they give you examples of exactly what these character's origins say about them as heroes.
And they cover a lot of the different origins. As you know, superheroes in comic books have had many different origin stories told and retold
uh, so they do a really good job of addressing all of that as well. Super good book! Highly recommend it, I'm probably going to revisit this in the
future. They have a fantastic chapter about Wonder Woman that I might - - I might make a video about.
After that, we have "What Is A Superhero?", this kind of explains itself. This is also by Dr. Robin Rosenberg, and, uh, I made a video about this as well
with an interview with, uh, with her as well. So, uh, this is a collection of essays from comic scholars and comic book creators who, basically, were asked a very simple question.
"What is a superhero?" and what's fascinating is that everybody had a completely different answer that ranged from, uh, the philosophy of language, can we even
define what a superhero is; To just Stan Lee saying a very simple explanation as like [as Stan Lee] "A superhero is someone who does good things in a way
that a pers - - a normal person couldn't. [Normal voice] So it's - - it's very interesting to have some incredible minds in this book that, uh, I've pulled from a lot.
In a bunch of videos, actually, not just the "What Is A Superhero" video but, uh, the, uh, New York, "Why Superheroes Live In New York" video.
That essay, uh, came from this book. So if you want a book that asks a very simple question, and gives you about a million different answers, and makes you
question it yourself, then, uh, I highly recommend this one. And then, the last physical book I have, right here in front of me, is an enormous one. It's a
companion piece, actually, to a PBS documentary. This is "Superheroes: Capes, Cowls, and the Creation of Comic Book Culture". This book basically tells the
history of comic books and superheroes. Gives you a lot of different information, and of course pictures. We all like pictures, I like pictures. Uh, lots of pictures, uh, lots
of, uh, you know, interviews with different people, and it's just all around - - If you want a very, kind of, uh, condensed, very easy to look at
visually appealing kind of book that brings you through the comic book history, uh, of the industry and everything. This is absolutely the route to go.
Uh, we'll have links to this and all the other ones in the down below. Also check out this documentary if you haven't yet. It's super good, it's a three part documentary
uh, and I think it's hosted by Liev Schreiber. Who - - whose performance in the documentary is almost like he doesn't want to be there.
Uh, so I think that alone is worth checking out.
This is the Hamiltome. It has nothing to do with comic books, I just like Hamilton and I needed to make a reference to it. Thanks guys!
I also have a couple other suggestions I wanna get out there that I don't have physically in front of me. If you want more philosophy superheroes then I can't
recommend the series enough that goes into "Avengers and Philosophy", "Spiderman and Philosophy", "Batman and Philosophy". All those books are fantastic, I've used
them for many different videos in the past. I usually have those in either e-book or audio book format. Um, which some of the audio books, by the way, are read by our
buddy, Mark D. White. Also speaking of Mark D. White, I have to plug his book "A Philosopher Reads...Marvel Comics' Civil War".
I, unfortunately, don't have a physical copy of it, but I do have a digital copy of it and it is SO GOOD! It's so good, you guys. Uh, and we talked about a lot on a podcast
interview with him, uh, and his work is just really great. I just - - I love the man. He is - - he is near and dear to my heart
and, uh, I'm not ashamed abo - - I'm not - - I'm not ashamed of that.
This is, by no means, a comprehensive list. this is just a very quick list of books that I've used a lot. I would love to know from you guys what other
books would you recommend for me, or other comic book researchers out there. And, once again, links to ALL of these books are in the description down below, they
are affiliate links, we get a little kick back from it. So even if you're not buy them today, you can buy them at a later date and also use those links and we get a little bit
of, uh, little bit of help. I hope all of our American viewers had a fantastic Thanksgiving. We will see you next week for more videos
but until then...
Keep reading.