New Pop Culture Books: Batman! Buscema! The BBC and more!

Our picks this month. Click the links to order from Amazon.

THE ART OF THE BATMAN is the official behind-the-scenes illustrated tie-in book to the highly anticipated film The Batman by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, War for the Planet of the Apes), coming to theaters March 4, 2022. The Batman stars Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne/The Batman, Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Paul Dano as Edward Nashton/ The Riddler, Colin Farrell as Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin, Jeffrey Wright as Lieutenant James Gordon, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, and John Turturro as Carmine Falcone.

The year is 1888 and Louis Le Prince is finally testing his “taker” or “receiver” device for his family on their front lawn. The device is meant to capture ten to twelve images per second on film, creating a reproduction of reality that can be replayed as many times as desired. In an otherwise separate and detached world, occurrences from one end of the globe could now be viewable with only a few days delay on the other side of the world. No human experience—from the most mundane to the most momentous—would need to be lost to history.
    In 1890, Le Prince was granted patents in four countries ahead of other inventors who were rushing to accomplish the same task. But just weeks before unveiling his invention to the world, he mysteriously disappeared and was never seen or heard from again. Three and a half years later, Thomas Edison, Le Prince’s rival, made the device public, claiming to have invented it himself. And the man who had dedicated his life to preserving memories was himself lost to history—until now.
    The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures pulls back the curtain and reveals the riveting story of both Louis Le Prince’s life and work, dispelling the secrets that shroud each. This captivating, impeccably researched work presents the never before told history of the motion picture and sheds light on the unsolved mystery of Le Prince’s disappearance.

Doctor Who; tennis from Wimbledon; the Beatles and the Stones; the coronation of Queen Elizabeth and the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales: for one hundred years, the British Broadcasting Corporation has been the preeminent broadcaster in the UK and around the world, a constant source of information, comfort, and entertainment through both war and peace, feast and famine.
    The BBC has broadcast to over two hundred countries and in more than forty languages. Its history is a broad cultural panorama of the twentieth century itself, often, although not always, delivered in a mellifluous Oxford accent. With special access to the BBC’s archives, historian David Hendy presents a dazzling portrait of a unique institution whose cultural influence is greater than any other media organization. 
    Mixing politics, espionage, the arts, social change, and everyday life, The BBC is a vivid social history of the organization that has provided both background commentary and screen-grabbing headlines—woven so deeply into the culture and politics of the past century that almost none of us has been left untouched by it. 

Glamour Road: Color, Fashion, Style, and the Midcentury Automobile
This highly visual book explores the seldom-told story of how glamour, fashion, design, and styling became the main focus of automotive marketing from the postwar 1940s through the 1970s. With the expansion of the American suburbs after WWII, women suddenly needed cars of their own. By adopting the fashion industry’s yearly model changes, as well as hiring many designers and stylists from the fashion industry, the automobile industry made a direct appeal to the rising sophistication and influence of women. By perfecting the fashion-centric concept of planned obsolescence, it became the dominant economic engine of American postwar prosperity. The dramatic photography, elegant fashion, and use of color and materials in midcentury automotive marketing created a groundswell of demand for new cars. Much of the marketing imagery of the period hasn’t been published since it first came out, and this book features some of the best.

They were a generation all their own, the army of children who ran home from school to watch Dark Shadows, TV’s very first supernatural soap. A breed apart, they set aside the worship of mundane pop stars to follow vampires, witches, and werewolves. From 1966 to 1971, they were daytime Monster Kids…and today they have stories to tell.

The director Michael Cimino (1939–2016) is famous for two films: the intense, powerful, and enduring Vietnam movie The Deer Hunter, which won Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1979 and also won Cimino Best Director, and Heaven’s Gate, the most notorious bomb of all time. Originally budgeted at $11 million, Cimino’s sprawling western went off the rails in Montana. The picture grew longer and longer, and the budget ballooned to over $40 million. When it was finally released, Heaven’s Gate failed so completely with reviewers and at the box office that it put legendary studio United Artists out of business and marked the end of Hollywood's auteur era.
    Or so the conventional wisdom goes. Charles Elton delves deeply into the making and aftermath of the movie and presents a surprisingly different view to that of Steven Bach, one of the executives responsible for Heaven’s Gate, who wrote a scathing book about the film and solidified the widely held view that Cimino wounded the movie industry beyond repair. Elton’s Cimino is a richly detailed biography that offers a revisionist history of a lightning rod filmmaker. Based on extensive interviews with Cimino’s peers and collaborators and enemies and friends, most of whom have never spoken before, it unravels the enigmas and falsehoods, many perpetrated by the director himself, which surround his life, and sheds new light on his extraordinary career. This is a story of the making of art, the business of Hollywood, and the costs of ambition, both financial and personal.

An utterly charming book by beloved Parisian artist Pierre Le-Tan, filled with dazzling illustrations and intriguing tales about often eccentric art collectors. Le-Tan, known for designing New Yorker magazine covers and collaborations with fashion houses, summons up memories of inveterate collectors in this lavishly illustrated volume. He evokes fascinating, sometimes troubled figures through insightful and curious portraits. With seventy of his distinctive pen and ink drawings―in vibrant color with meticulous cross-hatching―A Few Collectors opens a window onto the vast or minuscule world created by collectors out of a mix of extravagance and obstinacy. It recounts encounters in Paris, the Côte d’Azur, North Africa, London and New York, where Le-Tan’s subjects have amassed a range of treasures. Some involve famed figures like former Louvre Museum director Pierre Rosenberg. Others are insolvent aristocrats, princes of film and fashion, expatriate dandies, and flat-out obsessive eccentrics. Le-Tan devotes perhaps his finest chapter to himself.

John Buscema’s innovative drawing on Marvel’s Silver Surfer is presented in IDW’s Artisan Edition format. Collecting three complete issues (issues #5, #6, and #8) from the acclaimed original run written by Stan Lee. As a special bonus—this book will have four foldouts featuring eight oversized covers.
    An essential component of The House of Ideas, John Buscema’s talented hand graced the pages of Marvel’s most iconic characters for over four decades, working on The Avengers, Thor, The Fantastic Four, and The Amazing Spider-Man just to name a few.
     As with all Artisan Edition books, nearly every page in this volume has been scanned from the original art, enabling the reader to clearly see all the little nuances that make original art unique and fascinating—blue pencil notations, margin notes, whiteout, and so much more. This will be a must-have for all fans and students of classic comic art!

DC’s Dark Knight first emerged from the shadows in the pages of Detective Comics in 1939, when young Bruce Waye vowed to avenge his parents’ murder and fight for justice in crime-ridden, corrupt Gotham City. 
    Packed with information on the Dark Knight, including how he was created and evolved over the decades, this in-world celebration of DC’s most popular Super Hero explores his motives and drives, his incredible array of weapons and vehicles, his “family” of allies, and his formidable rogues gallery, including The Joker, Catwoman, Harley Quinn, The Riddler, Penguin, Bane, Scarecrow, Killer Croc, and many more. 
    This definitive volume brings Batman’s thrilling story right up to date with full details of his exploits in recent DC storylines such as Rebirth, Dark Nights: Metal and Dark Nights: Death Metal. Featuring a detailed timeline of key events in the life of Bruce Wayne aka Batman, Batman: The Ultimate Guide is packed with spectacular full-color artwork from the original comics and is a dream purchase for the Dark Knight’s legion of fans all over the world.

In 1976, champion player Roger Sharpe stepped up to a pinball machine in a Manhattan courtroom. The New York City Council had convened to consider lifting the city’s ban on pinball―a game that had been outlawed since 1942 for its supposed connections to gambling and organized crime. Sharpe was there to prove that, unlike a slot machine, pinball wasn’t a game of chance designed to fleece its players―it was a game of skill that required a measure of patience, coordination, and control. To prove his point, he proclaimed that he would launch his ball into the center lane at the far end of the playfield―much like Babe Ruth famously pointing to the fences. Sharpe pulled back the plunger and released, and the fate of this industry and art form hung in the balance.
    Thus opens Jon Chad’s comprehensive graphic novel to the history of the captivating, capricious―and at times infuriating!―game of pinball. Tracing pinball’s roots back to the Court of King Louis XIV, through the immigrant experience of early 20th century America, the post-War boom and bust, right up to the present day, Chad charmingly ushers readers through the myriad facets of this most American of pursuits―capturing not just the history but also the artistry, cultural significance, and even the physics of the game.
 
In one of the most well-known and well-loved fantasy epics of the 20th century, Elric is the brooding, albino emperor of the dying Kingdom of Melnibone. After defeating his nefarious cousin and gaining control over the epic sword, Stormbringer, Elric, prince of ruins, must decide what he’s willing to sacrifice in a fight against Armageddon.
    Stormbringer is the second in Michael Moorcock’s incredible series, which has transformed the fantasy genre for generations. Perfect for fans new and old, this book is brought to life once more with stunning illustrations from the most lauded artists in fantasy.

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