Best anatomy book so far for those wanting to draw comics in a "american way"
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I'm a hobbyist comic book artist and to me this is the best book on this subject.
I have a lot traditional books on anatomy (In my opinion best ones are made by Andrew Loomis but unfortunately those are hard to find) but there are only few ones that tackle really well how to pencil and ink anatomy in American comic book style.
Best parts of this book for me where "muscles in action" (where you see how different actions change the appearance of different muscles and how muscles move over underlying skeleton). Also "effects of light on the body" together with "surface rendering" (that sections really shows what kind of line should be drawn and where to get good looking muscle groups in different poses and lighting conditions).
When I compare this book with other "learn to draw comics" -books I think that there are few good generalist books of similar quality like Drawing Dynamic Comics (Cutting Edge (Watson-Guptill Paperback)) (Cutting Edge (Watson-Guptill Paperback)) or How to Draw Comics the "Marvel" Way. Those books give you good overall understanding about what steps there is to comic pages from start to finish but those are little bit lacking in details about how to illustrate specific parts of anatomy in variety of positions.
Then there are books that are excellent but bit different in style like Action! Cartooning: 96 Pages of How-to Havoc! or Cartoon Cool: How to Draw TV's Retro Style Characters. These are good to widen your skill set and build good foundation to more simplified style but don't obviously help with detailed style used in Marvel/DC/Image -comic books.
Btw. about the criticism in earlier review I can say that many books in Hart- series are well.. a bit lacking in quality vise in my opinion. This book is nothing like that. It could be even more polished on few small aspects but same thing can be said about almost all books. Also it can be said that this book don't work too well as your only book. It should be bought in addition with some foundation book that covers all the comic making process from a to z.
The fact that there is different artists used in this book doesn't matter to me at least. Actually I think it's a good thing to see a how same thing can be accomplished with little bit of a variation.
I highly recommend this book to any beginner or intermediate comic book artist interested in drawing anatomy American comic book style.
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Not that bad
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The previous reviewer doesn't really seem to have paid much attention to the book or its intensions. This book is a guide in the exagerration of anatomy that has been found in modern comics. It focuses on the basics of anatomy, what you would need to get started with an understanding of anatomy. The poses of anatomy don't cover everything, but does give you enough to get an understanding of how to piece things together. Examples are given to clothing (hand and feet specifically) although it might be lacking if this was a book about clothing on the body. This isn't a how to draw book but a reference book, as it says on the cover. There is wealth of useful tips in this book and I have found it a great source of referrence for my own art.
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Writing 'Cutting-Edge' Rubbish
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There are two bits of advice I can give here, the first on the item the second on why you a person may be buying this.
If this is a parent who has come across this book with their (I'd say about under 10) children in mind then it is a very, very good book, although it may be slighlty advanced. However, for all others it is a massively basic look at anatomy. It doesn't cover every possible angle/ position. It completely ignores the possibility of the characters wearing clothes, it uses more than one artist, one or two of which draw some stunning pictures the rest of which are ver mediocre at best. If you are starting out in anatomy then sure a book like this is always going to help beginners but it is never going to make you more than that, anatomy is a massive subject and this just doesn't cover it.
Secondly, if you have some talent in art and have shown yourself in the past to display an interest in YOUR spare time to independantly work on your art, then I would definetely recommend fine-tuning your skills with books like these, if not, then I can almost guarentee you will lose interest, mainly because if you already don't have a knack for art then you will struggle massively even to slightly replicate the pictures in books like these let alone indepently reproduce them in different ways, and you basically need a tutor.
At the same time 'cutting-edge' refers to exactly that- perfect looking people, however, a true artist in my opinion would be able to understand anatomy when a person eats too much or is thin and not muscley etc. and this is not covered, neither are the subjects of older/ younger characters to draw etc. etc. the list is endless of what this doesn't include. And finally the 'interviews' at the end about getting into the comic book busines- are in one word useless.
This review has been written with the vague impression that the possible customer of this book will want to draw characters like in comic books, if you are a serious artist then you will be hugely let-down as that is simply not what this book is about.
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United Kingdom | 
Canada