The Quality Companion: Celebrating the Forgotten Publisher of Plastic Man

If you're remotely a fan of comics history this is a must have. The first quarter of the book consists of full color reprints of several representative golden age stories. After the reprints the book proper goes into the complicated history of Quality, then goes on to include profiles on artists, writers, a mini encyclopedia of all the major Quality characters, and a very complete bibliography for the research involved in writing the book itself. Also included are publication histories of Quality titles both by genre and character, a plug for the Digital Comics Museum, and a well written explanation of the copyright status of these old titles.Another nice thing is that the book doesn't stop with the golden age, and covers the 'modern' use of Quality characters once they were acquired by DC - covering the changeover of the Blackhawk title, the JLA/JSA crossover which introduced the Freedom Fighters, the use of Quality characters in Thomas's All Star Squadron, and includes discussion of the 2010 reboots of the Freedom Fighters. The book is current enough to even give a nod to the recent appearance by the Freedom Fighters on the Batman: Brave and the Bold animated series.A very good all-in-one guide to all things Quality.

Except for Plastic Man (and maybe The Spirit) Quality's heroes didn't make a huge dent in the public consciousness. Even so they boasted some great comics art (Lou Fine and Russ Heath among them) and an interesting cast of characters. This book offers an exhaustive look at the characters and the creators behind them.

For those who think Plastic Man, Uncle Sam & the Freedom Fighters are DC products think again. This book does a wonderful job of putting their history in place from the founders to the creators involved. This companion even has some nice reprinted comics. Worth a look.

Fascinating, detailed history of an important comic book company that is in danger of being forgotten.

So much information on a comic book company who lived up to of it's name,,,,QUALITY

This publication is a treasure of information about this little known comic publication. I am especially interested because of the extensive couverage of Blackhawk comics and the artist that made this a classic.

I was never aware of all the information that is contained in this volume. Great collection of comics and interesting bios of the creators.

I really anticipated this volume, as I was once a big Golden Age comics collector and had many of the original issues. Now the author puts out a great product, providing a wealth of information on each Quality character, story synopses for many issues, writer and artist info, AND 9 great complete stories in full color. Is that great or what? Highly recommended.

Quality comics (though they were never really called that by themselves) produced some really wonderful tales. I think they still hold up well now (same with EC comics / St John publishing etc) and this book gives a lot of background information about the company and the comics and the heroes and the artists etc as well as a number of colour full comic examples such as for the Ray and Uncle Sam etc. A great item for my comic reference bookshelf. Would have been even better if it had a full index of every comic (it does not) and I am certain many decent comics from Quality never get a mention as it is mainly superhero / horror etc. Totally recommended

Super ! Alles zur Zufriedenheit.