We’ve been waiting a long time for this.
DK books, long since publishers of some excellent reference books about the Marvel and DC comic book super heroes have finally turned their attention to the Justice League (coincidentally, just as the blockbuster movie is about to be released.)
Regular readers and fans of these books will be familiar with the layout, which is literally EVERYTHING you need to know about DC’s ultimate super team. The book hits the ground running with a timeline that starts with the origin of the team which wasn’t revealed until Justice League of America issue 9, told as a flashback as the team had already been introduced a couple of years earlier.
The timeline guides us through the various line-ups, changes and notable issues from the swinging sixties through to the Rebirth storyline even colour coded to differentiate the various major story arcs that the industry is prone to these days.
There are detailed biographies of all the major players, both heroic and villainous to bring us up to date from the silver age origins to the current issues. But the real meat of the book is the immense selection of key issues with plot synopsis that are tied in to the colour coded sections in the introductory timeline. It’s almost impossible to gather together a full collection of this iconic title and its various spinoffs such as the reinvented Justice League of 1987, but this volume is actually the next best thing for filling in the gaps for those of us who either dropped out of reading comic books for a few years, or those who just weren’t around back in 1960, when the League first got together as a tryout strip in The Brave and the Bold.
As an introduction to the source material for a whole new audience who have only seen the Justice League film and are dipping their toes into the comic book universe for the first time, or to long time readers who want a nostalgia trip, this is an absolutely ideally accessible reference book and an ideal stocking filler for Christmas.
JUSTICE LEAGUE – THE ULTIMATE GUIDE / AUTHOR: LANDRY Q.WALKER / PUBLISHER: DORLING KINDERSLEY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
