Only a day away...

While the commercial and occasional critical success of comic-related projects in the mass media has legitimised comics to a certain extent, it's also gratifying to see the number of books and magazines devoted to comics continuing to increase. As well as the usual price guides, there are encyclopedias, tomes devoted to publishers, characters and creators and numerous other books of varying interest. Moving home would have been relatively easy if not for all the comics, CDs, DVDs and books I have, and a fair number of the latter are comic-related (I don't tend to keep novels anymore unless I really like them--hence I Am Legend, The Stand, etc among the few I've clung on to). A quick count of my bookcase reveals I have over 70 books relating to comics, most from TwoMorrows.

I think I first became aware of TwoMorrws when I began buying an excellent but short-lived mag called Comicology, which led to me trying out a few later issues of Comic Book Artist. There are pages of ads for their other mags and books in each issue and while most of the early stuff was devoted to the Golden, Silver and early Bronze Age comics and creators, eventually more product appeared that was up my alley. Back Issue was a mag I picked up initially just on trial but has now become a favourite read of mine (and there will be an issue soon with a feature by myself in!) and the Modern masters series of books have been interesting too. The Companion series of books so far is mostly devoted to DC fare, with the Legion and Titans issues being my own dips into the series.There are also more offbeat books, such as the fun Comics Gone Ape, a book about monkeys in comics!

Not everything will be to everyone's taste (I personally find Alter Ego and Draw dull dull dull), but if you're interested in reading about comics, take a look at their website and see what strikes your fancy...