A couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to find two full-length books in my P.O. box, apparently sent to me for review. I've never reviewed anything on this site before, but then, I didn't have a venue for free-form writing here, before starting this blog, late last year. Until then, I confined myself to writing what amounts to encyclopedia articles; and while the ones I do here often bear certain similarities to reviews (I'm not good at hiding the fact that I have opinions, so I don't try), full-fledged reviews were always beyond the scope of my site.

No more. In a blog, I can write any way I want, so I'll write a review if I feel like it. I only hope that after reading this, the nice folks at Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. aren't sorry they ever heard of me, because at $39.95 (or any other price, for that matter), I can't recommend their product. It pains me to say this, because any comics history work that prominently quotes me can't possibly be completely worthless.

Or so you'd think.

The two books in question are A Complete History of American Comic Books and Comic Books: How the Industry Works, both by Shirrel Rhoades, whose resumé includes having held a high-ranking executive position at Marvel Comics. This makes it possible for him him to claim "insider" status in the comic book industry. It's tarnished somewhat by the fact that his background is in corporate management, not comics, but nobody can deny he has it.

I'll start with the history volume, because that's where the Preface says to start. It owes its existence to logorrhea, the uncontrolled flow of words that inexperienced writers often fall prey to. When he'd finished his manuscript about the industry's inside, he found it about twice as long as it needed to be. No problem. He didn't have to pare it down, because Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. was willing to do it as two simultaneously-published books instead of one, thereby doubling their potential sales — at the expense of the reader, who has to spend twice the money and use twice the bookshelf space to get the same value.

And paring it down would have been easy enough. It would be a cheap shot to say he could have sliced out the entire first half of the manuscript, i.e., this book, but it's true. Rhoades seems to have picked up a basic outline of comics history, but he could have gotten that anywhere. He demonstrates little or no knowledge of the details, or of how it all fits together. As a history of comics, this offers nothing that can't be had elsewhere, both less expensively and more accurately.

But even taking the point of view that the book was worth publishing in the first place — it could easily have been pared down, because it's padded. There's a lot of verbiage (apparently derivative of The Comic Book in America, by Mike Benton, who is a qualified comic book historian), which is at least arguably useful in an historical work. But then it's padded out with examples, haphazardly taken from various periods of comics history, which are irrelevant to placing the genre in its historical context. Worse, they seem to have been gathered by ransacking Overstreet (the standard printed bibliography of U.S. comics) for titles, with the author merely guessing what genre they belong to.

For example, Rhoades correctly identifies Powerhouse Pepper as having been created by Basil Wolverton, but lumps it in with Millie the Model and (of all things) Brenda Starr, as part of a "glamour queen" sub-genre of romance comics. I trust Toonopedia™ readers can see what a howler that is — and if they don't catch it at first glance, can click on the link and see that whatever Powerhouse Pepper may be, he is neither a glamour queen nor the protagonist of romance stories.

I admit to a small bit of reader manipulation here. I made sure I wrote my article on Konga before posting this review, so even if you don't know the character, you can see for yourselves that he is not, as this book claims, a jungle hero like Jo-Jo or Ka-Zar.

These aren't minor glitches, like his assertion that Nyoka the Jungle Girl originated in comics (dating back to 1945, also incorrect) — that one can easily be overlooked, because it's just getting a few minor facts scrambled. But the misidentifications in the last two paragraphs indicate an author working from a little knowledge and a lot of guesswork. It's the guesswork, which renders all of his information suspect, that makes the book worthless as history.

Any knowledgeable reviewer could pick apart the whole book. For example, he identifies Fredric Wertham, author of the anti-comics book Seduction of the Innocent, as having spearheaded the entire movement toward comic book censorship. In reality, of course, he jumped on a bandwagon already growing in popularity, then used specious "studies" to make himself the most prominent element of it. And Rhoades spends several pages, right at the beginning, pinpointing the exact beginnings and ends of various "ages" of comics, such as "Golden" and "Silver" — which are subjective at best; and anyway, are of more interest to dealers in superheroes than to those who care about the entire spectrum of comics history.

But I think I've made my point that despite having been part of the industry for a few years, Rhoades isn't qualified to write its history.

I assume he's better qualified to have written the second part of this work. I'll know more when I've read it, which I may have a chance to do in a few weeks. But don't buy the first, no matter how much interest you have in comics history. All you'll get from it is misinformation.

If you have something you'd like me to review here, and aren't put off by the obvious fact that I speak my mind and don't do puff pieces, send it to me at P.O. Box 55148, Phoenix, AZ 85078. I don't guarantee I'll actually review it (and even less, like it), but I'll give it full consideration.

— DDM