DC Comics Style Guide (2024)
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Standards Manual reprinted the book for the public for the first time in over forty years. It was a pretty big deal José Luis García-López fans (and George Perez fans because he drew some Teen Titans style guide). It really is a shame that DC Comics basically hid these pages from the public, because the Style Guides were meant for internal uses. Like most fans, I was confused why DC Comics decides to license this book to a third-party company.
Originally announced in May 2024 as 1982 DC Style Guide, the 1982 name suggested that there will be future books, such as the 1984 or 1985 editions. Maybe it is to avoid the confusion, but they eventually dropped the 1982 in the title, and is now simply called DC Comics Style Guide.
My situation is unique in that I was not going to be home from December 2024 to March 2025. Since the book was delayed into early 2025, it meant that I wasn’t actually home to receive the book. For most people the four months delay wasn’t going to be a problem, but for those who are moving or traveling or celebrating an anniversary or birthday, timing is everything! If the book had delivered in August or prior to December, I would have been a happy camper. It would have been pretty awesome to bring the book with me on my long Winter Hibernation. After this horrible experience, I don’t think I’ll ever pre-order anything (in fact, I cancelled my Fallout Pip-Boy).
My biggest complaint about the DC Comics Style Guide is they didn’t make it clear that this “reissue” is basically a very high-quality photocopy of Standards Manual’s book. There were no efforts made to enhance or fix any blemishes. For example, some pages are wrinkled, some pages have torn three-holes, some pages have ghosting text, some pages have smudges, some pages have miscoloring… all pimples and imperfections are on display here. This is such a disappointment, because for years, I had seen beautiful pages online, because they digitally removed the holes or fixing blemishes, etc.
They officially list the book as 368 pages, which makes for a very nice beefy spine… but in reality, only half of those pages have artwork with the back of its page is blank (no printing). Some pages are the back of folders (which is basically blank pages). I felt they could have saved some trees or pass the savings to the consumers if they used less pages.
If you are a fan of García-López or a fan of DC Comics, you probably already own the book, so it doesn’t really matter what I say. For those on the fence about dropping $95 on this book, I can definitely not recommend this book to you.
I wish that DC Comics would put out an official book. They have the source material or original print films… or if they don’t, they have the resources to clean up and make the artwork presentable.
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