Reviewed by: Comic Books Incorporated: How the Business of Comics Became the Business of Hollywood by Shawna Kidman Ora Charles McWilliams COMIC BOOKS INCORPORATED: How the Business of Comics Became the Business of Hollywood. By Shawna Kidman. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019. For generations of Americans, the inexpensive graphic pamphlet purchased at drug stores, groceries, and eventually comic book specialty shops was inseparable from childhood. For almost 100 years Americans looked up to heroes, laughed at funny animal cartoons, and were thrilled by pulpy detectives. These days, we take a trip to the movie theater to see many of these same stories in expensive CG. The book Comic Books Incorporated tells the story of the convergence of these two industries along the lines of intellectual property while deconstructing the paradox between mass appeal and a niche market. This text is well-researched and fantastically written, with an eye toward untangling the subculture/mass culture interplay. Kidman uses the historical method to relate a thesis about the intertwining of the mainstream success of comic book intellectual properties and big-budget films. In a welcome nod to comic book history, Kidman makes sure to relate that comic books have often toyed with what would later become known as "transmedia." The table of contents lays out Kidman's organization as chronological. This chronological approach is occasionally frustrating: each chapter's timeline is discrete, causing [End Page 58] the book to jump around. An example: the 1950s chapter tells a story that leads to the 1960s, then goes back to the 1940s and leads to the 2000s, then returns back to the 1950s to return to the primary subject. The text attempts to relate narratives within the chronology as they come to a head, then adds important historical context (past and future) as particular issues arise. This approach is difficult because separating individual issues from the industry's tectonics does a small disservice to the industry's overall evolution. This is admittedly a problem largely caused by the issues themselves being complicated rather than being a failure on Kidman's part, who acknowledges these complications. The biggest problem I found with this book is that there isn't more of it. The text came out in 2019; the main body of the book stopped tracking the industry in 2010. There have been numerous (arguably more important) events to approach the thesis of this book from that have happened between the cutoff point of the text and the release of the book. Considering the magnitude of events that happened shortly after the 2010 cutoff date, I can't help but wonder why the main text's look into the industry ended when it did. The first Avengers movie came out in 2012, heralding a sea change in crossover film and the first in a string of substantial moneymakers. The Walking Dead television show was the highest-rated show on cable in 2014. Marvel's Netflix deal, also in 2014, put comic adaptations into people's homes on-demand 24/7. The text is about the mainstreaming of these intellectual properties, yet fails to account for these huge events and more. The introduction and epilogue do briefly mention the convergences of the missing decade, but primary text itself does not. Kidman wouldn't have needed to upend the whole project to include, at the least, a final chapter addressing these events. Unfortunately for the text, the current cultural impact of comics makes almost ten years an eternity in this field. This small gripe aside, the wealth of historically driven theory in Comic Books Incorporated is a welcome addition to the library of any comic book scholar or reader interested in media studies. Ora Charles McWilliams Metropolitan Community College, Kansas City Copyright © 2020 Mid-America American Studies Association