Comic Book Creator, Joe Simon

Comic Book Creators, Joe Simon

I recieved a copy of “Comic Book Creators, Joe Simon” by Sue Hamilton. I mentioned this book in an earlier post. It is of six books on different comic book artists. The others are Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, John Buscema, John Romita and Joe Sinnott. I am told that these books are meant for “accelerated readers”. I believe this means that thy are expected to be young but advanced readers for their age (perhaps 10 to 12 years old).

This is a thin book, 32 pages including index and glossary. It outlines Joe’s career from its start until today. Much of this history is covered by “The Comic Book Makers” by Joe Simon and Jim Simon. Actually I am sure Joe’s book was the source of the biography presented by Sue Hamilton. So I do not think there is any historical information that adult reader would get from this book that they would not be found (with a good deal more) in “The Comic Book Makers”. There are a number of excellant photographs. Again most of these photos can be found in Joe’s book. But the printing for Hamilton’s book is really excellant and the resulting quality of the photos is much better then those in “The Comic Book Makers”. There are some that have not appeared in print before. My favorite is one of a 16 year old Joe Simon drawing a portrait.

I did get a chance to examine the other five volumes in this series. Their quality and content matches that of the Simon volume. Fans of the other artists might consider buying their volumes for the photographs alone. I intend to pick up the Jack Kirby and Stan Lee volumes.