Comics Sketchbooks: The Unseen World of Today's Most Creative Talents by Steven Heller

A hefty coffee table book packed with the studies and notes on sketchbooks from 82 of the foremost comic book artists working in the field today. It is a generous work, artists showing how the pristine work that we read in their comics comes to the page. And it is inspiring, showing how different artists work their way from idea to finished product.

Judge Dredd The Art of Kenny Who: The Cam Kennedy Collection by John Wagner, Alan Grant, Gordon Rennie and Cam Kennedy

I simply have not laughed this much at a comic in ages.  Judge Dredd is Mega-City One's infamous police officer, the 2000AD parody of American policing culture, a man who is judge, jury and executioner (frequently) in a futuristic police state city, the man who's famous tagline is 'I am the Law!'.   Kenny Who comes to Mega-City One from the Caledonian Hab Zone to make his fortune as an artist for Big 1 Comics.  An innocent abroad in the predatory city he quickly brings himself to the attention of Dredd, getting himself bitten by a rouge human and ending up in jail after threatening the Senior Editor of Big 1 Comics and smashing the robots who it turns out are actually drawing the comics.  It's a merciless parody of the big American comics publishers, of stereotypes of Scots and just brilliantly illustrated by Kennedy.  And that's just one of the stories in this collection, pages of artwork that are so far from the standard grid plan.

Tintin: Herge and his Creation

A wonderful book, taking George Remi's creation Herge and the Tintin books in chronological order, showing how they reflected Herge's growing talent and critical contemporary events.

Metamaus by Art Spiegelman

I learned so much in this book. I knew that Maus had affected me deeply and that it wasn't just to do with the subject matter, but in MetaMaus I felt I really came to an understanding of the level of craft Spiegelman put into his work. Spiegelman speaks about the different levels of his books, the overt subject of Auschwitz and the Holocaust, but also the framing narrative of intergenerational misuderstandings and conflict, that being a survivor of the Holocaust doesn't make you perfect, and of the deep reasons for the use of animal models that reflected how Nazis themselves propagandised about Jews. I learned about the symbolism and movement of the panels across each page and Spiegelman's own struggle to express his ambivalism about his family history. I didn't think I could respect Spiegelman more that I did, but I do now. A wonderful piece, not just about Maus but about the history and methodology of the comic medium.

The Mighty Thor by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby

Collecting The Mighty Thor: Journey into Mystery 83-100 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, these are great 1960s comics.

Lame self effacing but brilliant Dr Don Blake is fleeing from alien stone men from Saturn when he stumbles into a cave discovering the hammer of Norse god Thor.  Striking it on the ground he becomes the mighty Asgardian, son of king of the gods Odin, mighty in strength, creator of thunder and great storms, but also mighty in heart.  When he lets go of the hammer for more than 60 seconds he returns to the body of the enfeebled Dr Blake, in love with but unable to express his affections to his beautiful nurse and constant companion Jane.

This is a great collection of a beloved Silver Age superhero, but I loved it also because it is also an encapsulation of early 1960s society and mores, how men and women related and loved, expressed themselves to each other.  Thor is used mercilessly as a propaganda tool, the jingoism of Thor's use as a tool against the terrors of Red China and the unthinking defence and advance of democracy is as much a part of the comics as his epic battles against his brother Loki, god of mischief, and other foes.

Comic, Comix and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art by Roger Sabin

Definitive work of research by Sabin in large format chronicling the history of British comics from their conception up to about the turn of the century, interesting and through though a bit thin on comic art for girls and very little about manga, but there are other books for that