DC Super Heroes: The Ultimate Pop-Up Book...Pop-Ups Within Pop-Ups
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Reviewed by Scott Tingley, December 14, 2010

Matthew Reinhart heard you liked pop-up books, so he put pop-up books in your pop-up book so you can read pop-up books while you read pop-up books.

I just got DC Super Heroes: The Ultimate Pop-Up Book from the fine people at Little, Brown Book Group, and maybe I am completely out of the loop in the world of pop-up books (which is a very likely scenario) but this book is light years ahead of any other of its kind that I have ever seen. I did a little internet searching before writing up this piece, and there certainly some pretty fancy high-end pop-ups out there, but as far as versions for kids go, this is the best I could find.

DCSH:TUPUB (which will be my alias if I ever have to go on the lam) is like what the movie Inception would be like if it was about the major heroes and villains in the history of the DC Comics universe instead of dreams and stuff (so yeah, just like Inception) – it just keeps bringing you deeper and deeper. Each and every page has smaller pop pages in the corners – mini pop-up books. Each page has two, even three of these mini books – I was three times through the book and I was still finding extra pages to the mini books. One glorious time I found a mini-book inside a mini-book. I'm hoping that if I keep reading it I will stumble across a mini book featuring the Legion of Super Heroes,,,and in that book there will be a Heckler mini book. Sigh. I can dream, can't I?)

From a comic-guy standpoint there are what could be called some misses in this book. There are a couple new characters included that may not be around for a while and there are a few legacy characters missing that may not be popular right now but have stood the test of time. Reinhart sure does try to make everybody happy here though. There is a 13 inch high battle scene that throws in a whole lot of characters that needed to get in there (no love for Ted Kord though...but maybe if I keep looking). There is a small Anti-Monitor page that fills in some more gaps (if you don't know what I'm taking about, don't worry, you wouldn't have worried about anything I mentioned in this paragraph anyway). I'm nit-picking here anyway – there are no glaring omissions and you can never make everyone happy (but seriously, Paralax??).

I gave it to my four year old son and he loved it. He was actually awed by it.

Page one: Superman and Superman stuff
Page two: Batman and Batman stuff
Page three: Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman stuff
Page four: Green Lantern Corps. And other big second tier characters (flash, etc)
Page five: Darkseid and other big shot villains
Page six: Just about everybody

This book is a bit pricey at around $35 Canadian / $29.99 US but it is an amazing book with so much to offer fans of comics, superheroes, pop-up books and awesomeness, and it can be found cheaper if you look hard enough (seasonal sales, use your book store coupons or order online )

You can see three of the pages here.

Oh, and I've just decided that I want to be the pop-up king of the internet! Have you got a pop-up that you want to push? I'm your guy. You've got a pretty high bar set for you though.

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