Walter Koessler 1914-1918 – WWI photo book is one of the top-selling publishing Kickstarter projects of all time
Walter Koessler 1914-1918: The personal photo journal of a German officer in World War I
by Dean Putney
Putney Publishing
2013, 140 pages, 17 x 11 x 1 inches
$78 Buy a copy on Amazon
Dean Putney is Boing Boing and Cool Tools software developer. His great-grandfather, Walter Koessler, was an officer in the German army during World War I. A gifted artist and photographer (he was drafted into the army in 1914 when he was studying architecture), Walter carried a camera with him everywhere he went, taking pictures of daily life in the German army. He even went into hot air balloons to capture the destruction of bombed-out German towns.
These photos do not show dead or wounded soldiers. Instead, they show young men working and relaxing in trenches, self-assured pilots, military parades, the hauling of equipment. They offer a fascinating glimpse of a way of life 100 years ago, making it seem like today.
Dean decided to share Walter’s photo book with the world. He launched a hugely successful Kickstarter to self publish it, and gave himself a crash course in book publishing. His hard work paid off. The result is a stunningly handsome, very large-format book, with 670 photos and many interesting anecdotes written by Dean about his great grandfather. — Mark Frauenfelder
Dave Stevens’ Covers & Stories - The best work from one of the greatest comic book artists of all time
Dave Stevens’ Covers & Stories
by Scott Dunbier (editor)
IDW Publishing
2012, 272 pages, 12.1 x 8.3 x 0.9 inches
$39 Buy a copy on Amazon
Hold a gun to my head and ask me to name my 10 favorite cartoonists and Dave Stevens would be on the list. I first encountered Stevens’ work in 1982: he had written and drawn a short story that took place in 1938 Los Angeles, featuring a character of his own creation called The Rocketeer (and his love interest, a barely-disguised — and barely clothed — Bettie Page). Stevens’ art was superb, matching the comic book work of Frank Frazetta. Stevens was clearly drawing The Rocketeer out of a love for Golden Age comic books, the mid-20th century, Buck Rogers serials, and great pinup art. My friends and I made weekly visits to the local comic book store in Boulder, Colorado, asking the owner if anything with Dave Stevens art has arrived. Sometimes Stevens’ work appeared on the cover but not the interior. Less frequently, he drew stories for the insides of the comics, too. It didn’t matter. We bought everything he drew.
Dave Stevens Covers & Stories has all of the Stevens comic book covers I loved from the 1980s, along with pencil studies and photos of the original art (so you can see the Wite-Out and blue pencil lines, which is always interesting to me). It also has lots of pin-ups and a even a few stories I hadn’t seen before (If you want the complete run of The Rocketeer stories, you can buy a copy on Amazon).
Born in 1955, Stevens’ life was cut short in 2008 when he died from leukemia. He had much more to give. — Mark Frauenfelder
Exuberantly colorful Japanese street fashion tribes
Tokyo Adorned
by Thomas C. Card
Booth-Clibborn Editions
2014, 130 pages, 15 x 12.5 x 5
$27 Buy a copy on Amazon
Ten years ago photographer Thomas C. Card read a newspaper article about the extreme makeup and fashions being worn by Japanese club kids. He never forgot about it and in 2012 he went to Tokyo to photograph various kawaii (cute) fashion subgenres, such as ero-kawaii (erotic and cute) and kowa-kawaii (creepy and cute). He published the photos in a very large and beautiful book called Tokyo Adorned, which came out this week.
Each person in Card’s large-format book is presented in two photos on a two-page spread. One photo is a close-up (shot slightly above eye level), and the other shows the entire outfit. The photos are taken against a white backdrop, making the colorful outfits pop. Almost all of the subjects are wearing cartoonish contact lenses. Card attempted to interview the subjects but most didn’t want to say anything about themselves.
Listen to my interview with Thomas about Tokyo Adorned. — Mark Frauenfelder
A fascinating look at 250 medical marvels
The Medical Book
by Clifford A. Pickover
Sterling
2012, 528 pages, 7.7 x 9 x 1.4
$22 Buy a copy on Amazon
The Medical Book is a fascinating compilation of 250 medical milestones described in chronological order, starting with Witch Doctors in 10,000 B.C. and ending with Human Cloning in 2008. I started by flipping around to random topics: Bloodletting (1500 B.C.), Condom (1564), Women Medical Students (1812), Leech Therapy (1825), Cause of Leprosy (1873), Transorbital Lobotomy (1946), and Hand Transplants (1964). Each entry contains one page of interesting history and correlating facts accompanied by a stunning image, and each had me completely absorbed. Now I’m reading the milestones in order so I don’t miss a thing. If a curio cabinet could be pressed into the pages of a book, this would be it.– Carla Sinclair
Incredibly lurid comic books that sparked a panic in the 1950s
The Horror! The Horror! Comic Books the Government Didn’t Want You to Read
by Jim Trombetta
Abrams ComicArts
2010, 306 pages, 8 x 11 x 1.2
$23 Buy a copy on Amazon
People who complain that today’s video games are too violent are lucky they weren’t around in the 1950s, when children’s entertainment was far more gruesome. The Horror! The Horror! has over 200 horror comic book covers and complete stories that depict dismemberment, disfigurement, sadism, bondage, torture, electrocution, blinding with red hot pokers, decapitation, and cannibalism. No wonder kids loved comics so much in those days.
It was too good to last, of course. In 1954 a crusading pro-censorhip psychiatrist named Fredric Wertham published a book called Seduction of the Innocent that described the damaging effects of comic books on young minds (he included many sexually suggestive comic panels in his book, which is no doubt a reason why many people bought it).
That same year, Wertham was invited to present his findings at a US Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. Under threat of having their industry shut down, comic book publishers formed a self-censoring association called the Comics Code Authority, which banned common horror themes from their stories. And comics stopped being as much fun. (Decades later it was discovered that Wertham distorted the findings of his research to bolster his arguments.)
Fortunately, some copies of pre-code horror comic books escaped the bonfires. Jim Trombetta’s massive anthology collects the most interesting examples of an era when there were no rules. – Mark Frauenfelder
