<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Les Daniels has written both fact and fiction, but has always concentrated on the bizarre and the fantastic. Born in Connecticut in 1943, he received his B.A. and M.A. in English from Brown University, where the subject of his thesis was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Daniels worked as a singer and songwriter with such groups as Soup and The Double Standard String Band, then began writing music reviews and a variety of magazine articles.

His first book, Comix: A History of Comic Books in America (1971) broke ground by going beyond the heroes of the golden age to cover later developments, from EC Comics to the underground. The New York Times called it “scholarly and highly entertaining.” Next came Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media (1975), which caused mystery novelist John Dickson Carr to dub Daniels “a young scholar of immense reading, sound taste, and sympathetic insight, whose narrative glitters with entertainment.” After editing two anthologies of classic horror fiction, Dying of Fright (1976) and Thirteen Tales of Terror (1977), Daniels decided to write some fiction of his own.

The Black Castle (1978) represented an attempt to reinvigorate the vampire myth by humanizing its central character: Don Sebastian de Villanueva may have been ruthless and decadent, but he became half hero by battling the Spanish Inquisition. The novel received a World Fantasy Award nomination (the first of four for Daniels) and has been listed among the genre’s significant works by such experts as Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, Stanley Wiater, Douglas E. Winter, and Stephen King. “Les Daniels tells a hell of a story,” wrote King. “”His books are rewarding, creepy, and fun!”

After a hiatus which occupied him with screenplays (purchased but un-produced) and film reviewing, Daniels returned to horror fiction with his first short story; the sardonic “They’re Coming for You” has been repeatedly reprinted in English and other languages. He also revived Sebastian for Yellow Fog (1986) and (after a publishing delay) No Blood Spilled (1991). By then he had returned to his earliest subject with an authorized history of a comic book publisher, Marvel (1991). It became a national best seller, and led almost inevitably to DC Comics (1995). Daniels then chronicled the careers of DC’s most celebrated characters in Superman: The Complete History (1998), Batman: The Complete History (1999), and Wonder Woman: The Complete History (2000). The latter earned Daniels the comics industry’s Eisner Award. These books are all full of striking illustrations unearthed by the author’s research, which make it, in the words of The Washington Post, “important to stress just how good Daniels’s text is.” His latest book, an annotated collection of illustrations co-authored with designer Chip Kidd and photographer Geoff Spear, is entitled The Golden Age of DC Comics: 365 Days (2004).