The DC Vault is one of those books that tells you everything you want to know or have even wanted to know about dc comics.
Let's look at the cover, you can already tell this is going to be one amazing trips through the history!
Martin Pasko and the president of DC, Paul Levitz has put together a collection unlike anything fans have ever seen!
You can defiantly tell this is a true museum in a box.
The back cover alone had me so excited!
look at all that stuff that you get with this book , a wonder women button, a batman mask, tons of posters memos, concept art and more!
I've Got to get this wrapper off as soon as possible I'm going crazy with excitement!
The first think I noticed about this book, was the stupid cardboard in the middle of the book, I know it's there to protect the book but in the end it looks like it caused more damage than good,
It looks like the cardboard scratched the ink right off the page,
Another that that worried me right off the bat was the spiral binding!
It looked like it was too fragile to support the weight of all the pages.
It definitely wouldn't last long if you were to read this book several times,
so you have to be extra careful with this one!
But wow what is that I see is that the batcave! You could defiantly tell how OCD batman was just by looking at the cave, I mean look at those wax figures and check out those giant heads or that classic batman card catalogue.
I could stair at this page for days looking for Waldo, but that horrible scratch on the page kind of ticked me off! I like my stuff to stay in Mint condition if possible but stupid cardboard tried to ruin it for me!
But chapter 1 really got me interested, from the days of Spicy Detective to New Comics it was time to get comfy and really dig into this book.
But the more I got into it the more I noticed something must have went horribly wrong at the printing presses because pages 13 and 14 looked like someone had just taken a big bite out of them.
I mean seriously, I just opened this brand new book and there's all these small problems that really just made me upset. It would be like a Harry Potter or Twilight fan buying a book to have a whole page missing. At first I thought maybe this is how the book is supposed to be, but nope, this was really a ripped up page!
But let's forget about all that for a moment because there is some really great stuff in this book, like the picture of the ashcan cover for the original action comics- this was the first issue that Superman ever appeared in, and its really interesting to see that Superman wasn't their original cover choice and they almost went with a more graphic looking image instead.
The next few chapters covered the birth of the DC heroes and even a lot of heroes I'd never even heard about, like page 18 that features the strange adventures of Mr. Weed or pg 25 featuring Old Slam Bradley and Dr Occult.
But what seemed to be the main focus was Superman, and rightfully so, because if you love Superman like I do you will love this book. But who doesn't already know about superman?
The best parts of this book stem from the birth of the Flash, Sandman, the Green Lantern and even Batman. Knowing how they were created and their DC history really helps you to gain tons of respect for the characters.
As I got into the book I would pause for a bit to check out some of the physical content, most of which is pretty cool, but some of it just left me disappointed. Like the Wonder Women button that's shown on the back of the book, it looks cool right?
Don't get too excited, because once you get the book open you find out it's not an actual button at all but a piece of paper. It would have been much cooler if it was a real button!
But for every fault this book has, it tends to make up for it with something cooler, like the Junior Justice Society of America decoder!
So how does it work?
Well, there's a window on the back and you pick the name of your favorite character, flip it over, and each one has their own sequence of codes.
But what kind of sucks is there's nothing to really decode. It would have been much better if they would have included The Superman - Tim Store booklet decoder.
The Super man -Tim book that's included is a reprint of a mini magazine that was given out by various clothing stores.
I saw this code and I was left wondering 'why is there no decoder for this?'
The only thing I understood from this coded page is that some kid fell or something and Superman's on his way to save him.
Things like the Superman -Tim stuff and the public service announcements are a real treat to fans.
Theses psa's covered a lot of issues that were going on at the time. "Smoking is for Squares" is a pretty cool example. It tells the story of Bob, who doesn't give into the other kids telling him to take a butt...hahha I said butt.
These psa's show that even in the late 40's and early 50's DC really touched some serious issues of the time. In "Stand Up for Sportmanship" a kid was getting shunned because he is from another country, when Batman and Robin rush into to explain that they shouldn't listen to crackpot lies about people of different races or religions.
In "Brotherhood Quotient" I was actually pretty shocked that DC was brave enough to even include a quiz for kids that included some racy topics.
I wasn't shocked that they included things like alligators, cabbage, detective stories.
Those things I could see on a kids quiz.
But they really pushed the envelope by adding Baptists, Jews, Foreigners and Negroes. I'm not making this up, this stuff was on an actual DC quiz called "The Brotherhood Quotient."
Throughout the book there is a lot of amazing concept art as well as memos and reprinted promo stuff.
I had a lot of fun reading this book, especially when I got into the late 70's and early 80's stuff.
Reading about how DC came up with the idea of Infinite Crisis is a story within itself. You get to learn how it completely changed some of the superhero origin stories and it also killed off popular characters. Its nice to see how much work was involved in making it happen.
You'll also learn stuff you may not have known when it comes to the movie and TV adaptations of DC stories like Superman the movie, the Wonder Woman tv series, the Superboy tv show, Lois and Clark, the list goes on and on, and this book does a great job explaining it all.
This book even had me excited to see Laurence Fishburne as Perry White in Snyder's Superman film.
On page 174 it gives you a glimpse at an African American version of Perry White that wasn't used for Superman the animated series. I mean you can tell Fishburne is the perfect casting choice!
I could go on about this book forever. It's becoming one of my favorite books of all time, each time you read it you find something new.
But don't expect all that cool stuff on the back cover to be what you think, because I'm still disappointed over the Wonder Woman button just being a piece of cardboard.
That was a huge let down for me as a fan.
Also, whoever is printing these books need to go back and re-inspect them because no one likes buying books with pages ripped or damaged from silly cardboard.
If I didn't like this book so much I would have tried to get a replacement without the damage, but over all its one of the best purchases I think I have ever made.
And that's not all- There's a Marvel Museum in a box too :)