The Big Book of the '70s

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, a review of The Big Book of the '70s (DC / Paradox, 2000).



I used to love picking up these Big Books that DC used to publish in the late nineties. As with so many of their subsidiary and imprint publishers, however, they really flooded the market with the darn things, releasing close to two dozen over a period of about two years. That was a bit more than even fans like me could handle.

Each of the Big Books gives you close to 200 pages of comics, with several dozen artists tackling a story in around 2-5 pages each. This time out, you've got work from Bookshelf favorites like Sergio Aragonés, Roger Langridge and John Ridgway, among many others, illustrating tales of excess and bizarre behavior from the groovy decade. Everything from The Brady Bunch to the Son of Sam to the Symbionese Liberation Army is profiled within.

Seventies pop culture was often garish and ugly, but it sounded better than it looked, if you take my meaning. Maybe it was my own adolescent curiosity around the time of the 1980 election that made me want to make some kind of sense about the world around me, but I've always found the crazy news and culture of the period fascinating stuff, and enjoyed this Big Book thoroughly. I shouldn't have put off this collection for as long as I did!

Now to find a new copy of The Big Book of Conspiracies. I loaned mine out a couple of years back and don't remember to whom. Bah!