New York-based publisher Standards Manual has released the highly anticipated reissue of the 1982 DC Comics Style Guide, which was created as part of a monumental effort to totally standardise the look of DC’s superheroes.

Prior to this release, the original guide had never been made available to the public, bar low-quality reproductions which failed to capture the artistry and talent of the artist behind this project: José Luis García-López.

Tasked by DC Comics with creating a cohesive aesthetic for the characters in its universe, including iconic superheroes such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the Justice League, García-López brought his iconic style to bear on the work.

The result was a 3-ring binder full of rules, colour swatches, character profiles and hundreds of unique artworks, providing a comprehensive guide for the visual continuation of these revered fictional figures.

Naturally, as the years passed, new pages were added to the contents of the 1982 edition, and whole new guides were even released to keep DC’s look and feel as current as possible.

Eventually, García-López’s drawings became outdated and the original guide lost to the pages of time, but this did not detract from the Spanish-Argentine artist’s enduring legacy. Even today, many fans associate his style with their beloved superheroes, and his art lives on in comic books, posters, figurines, and other products from the DC collection.

However, this does mean the 1982 guide was, up until now, a rare collector’s item, with very few people lucky enough to own a copy. With the reissuing undertaken by Standards Manual, which involved the painstaking process of recreating the many pages in the book, this seminal body of work is now available for all to enjoy.

Featured inside are 187 highly detailed scans of García-López’s artworks, much of the original text, and an introduction to the long-awaited publication by Paul Levitz, former president of DC Comics.

“It was one of the first style guides in the licensing industry,” recalls Levitz in the book’s introduction. “I don’t remember what competitive materials we looked at, but in the early 1980s, the licensing industry wasn’t very sophisticated, and many licensors weren’t design conscious. That would change radically over the next few years, and it’s possible the DC guide was one of the things that helped that evolution along. It looked incredible, coming in a beautiful looseleaf binder with our heroes dashing across the cover. Our Style Guide had real style.”

The 1982 DC Comics Style Guide is published by Standards Manual; standardsmanual.com