Comic Book Confidential was released at the end of the 1980s and is a good capstone to one of the best decades for the comic book industry. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, the internet wasn’t nearly as prevalent as it is now, so it was very possible that a lot of the non superhero comics would not be known to a lot of people. That was what made Comic Book Confidential essential viewing for the comic book fan. It not only introduced people to a lot of comic books they might not have seen before, but it also showed panels and pages (narrated by the author) from those books. But is it worth viewing now?
Not just yes, but Hell Yes. Look at this lineup of comic book writers and artists: Lynda Barry, Charles Burns, Sue Coe, Robert Crumb, Will Eisner, Al Feldstein, Shary Flenniken, Bill Gaines, Bill Griffith, Jaime Hernandez, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Stan Lee, Paul Mavrides, Stan Lee, Frank Miller, Victor Moscoso, Francoise Mouly, Dan O’Neill, Harvey Peker, Gilbert Shelton, Art Spiegelman and Spain Rodriguez. It’s more or less everyone who was anyone from the 1940s through the 1980s. With some notable exceptions of Alan Moore, Steve Ditko, Bob Kane, Siegel and Shuster, Joe Simon, Dave Sim, Wendy Pini and others that I’ve probably forgotten to list.
With a lineup of stars of the comic book industry, the movie covers comic books from the early days of Bill Gaines father creating the comic book format, through the rise of superheroes, touching on the controversy in the 1950s, the rise of Marvel in the 1960s, the direct market in the 1970s and the rise of independent comics and superstars of Miller and Moore in the 1980s. The wonderful part of the movie is not just the history lesson, but the artists going over their work. And as a younger comic book fan in the early 1990s. I’d never heard of Love and Rockets
If you love comic books, then you must see this movie. Highly recommended.