The DC Comics Enyclopedia - big hardcover book that has histories of 1000 characters.

AND
The Superhero Book: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Comic-Book Icons and Hollywood Heroes - this book is more of an overview of comic book characters in books, tv and movies and is not exclusive to DC.

Anyone read either?

DC Encyclopedia is pretty awesome. Missing a few things here and there and a couple mistakes I spotted, but for the sheer buttload of material in it it does pretty good, and it looks great. I wouldn't pay the full $40 for it but amazon has it for $25 and that's a pretty decent deal.

The other one I flipped through the other day and was not impressed. Very frantic layout and pretty limited on information.

The other one - which i haven't read - seems to focus on the different incarnations of characters. A thoughtful examination of how TV hulk is different than movie hulk vs comic hulk could be interesting.

the dc encyclopedis is mammoth. i have flipped through it at barnes and noble but am kinda short of money right now and i have many things above it on my want list. that being said though, it does seem to be well done.

The best new book I've read is the "Comic Book Encyclopedia" published by HarperCollins. Nearly 400 pages on pretty much every notable creator and title, from major series to indies like Strangers In Paradise.

My write-up on it is here:
http://www.ugo.com/channels/filmtv/f...cyclopedia.asp

I passed by that in the book store - without picking it up.

For some reason, I thought it was the Marvel aquivalent (sp) to the DC book

I flipped through it and found it to be so full of typos, omissions, and errors as to be next to useless. And Neil Gaiman agrees with me.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/20...ague-below.asp

The pics in the DC Comics Encyclopedia tend towards their more recent history. And there references to the essential stories are invariably something that you can buy in trade paper back. Looks more like a commercial. We get it. We like DC. That's why we're reading it.

I saw the DC Encyclopedia. I really liked it, though I haven't picked it up yet. It had a lot of spoilers. for one thing, it had the death of Spoiler/steph/Robin IV before it happened in War Games and it also states that is the killer of Sue, when Identity Crisis hasn't even ended yet and at current moment, it seems to be someone else anyways. So seems like errors there.

Still wouldn't mind getting a copy at a decent price.

Jackskeleton....
I know that many of us have already guessed the true identity of the killer in "Identity Crisis", but it's probably a good idea to add spoiler tags for those that don't want it ruined for them.

Well, in all honesty, issue #6 came out and the killer of sue seems to be someone different. It could have been written before hand and really is just a speculation in the book.