About Heroes

This review was submitted by Bluejohn:
Superhero: The Secret of a Genre

By Peter Coogan

From the classroom, we all know what a textbook is. The book itself is usually a telling of history of a subject in some sort of chronological order, and sometimes separated by region, technological advances, and how it changed the world. While not everything in a textbook is the most fascinating information we have ever read, we do find bits of pieces of information that is useful to our own curiosity. For some, however, they are blessed with a love of a subject to the extent that they do not simply read the textbook, but inhale its information while enjoying the educational experience.

As comic lovers, I tell you know that this is our textbook. Not for the simple pleasure of reading, this book takes comics to the degree of most college classes but respects the awe of the concept itself, never allowing the material to become loose and unconnected to the heart of a comic lover. If comics could be majored in, this book would be part of the 101 course work.

With an introduction by Denny O’Neil, the book already starts with a strong name backing not only its author but also the book itself. The book then weaves between the aspects of comics that make the stories interesting, the stories that make the comics interesting, and the impact they have not only on the world itself but also the each person who reads them. Citing a variety of literature that brings reality into fantasy, the book details the eras that comics have had in the past, the evolution of heroes from said past, and how all that background leads into the comic revival that we are experiencing now.

However, this book is not just a long look at a subject we all know and love. All this information is separated into sections that condense an amazing amount of information into categories that we can grip within our own minds. Some chapters are simple concepts with large explanations, such as The Definition of a Superhero, in which we look at what connotations are put with the “super” titles that are given to those that go beyond the call of duty, and Supervillian, a look at how all villains can be categorized, and how these categorizes fit into the fears that all humanity shares. However, the book delves deeper as it progresses, looking at Comic Predecessors, from Spring Heeled Jack to Hugo Hercules to Popeye to the Phantom to the heroes that we know today, and the Evolution of the Superhero, wherein we look at each age of comics, Antediluvian through Crisis into the present Renaissance, and how heroes developed to fit the problems that were facing readers throughout the generations.

While I would love to say this book is the staple of comic book support, there are things that cause your mind to wince. First of all, the book can be dry. When I use the term textbook, I do not use it lightly, and as such be prepared to cover material which might seem non important to your personal preferences. I also saw repetitiveness near the last half of the book, the author recovering material but not making mention of its previous uses. While such problems do occur, I could not find anything in error when commenting on the comics as a whole. It knowledge was concise and well put, and with an extensive appendix and reference list in the back, you never feel like you have been lead down a one way street of thought or are without a chance to continue the thought process in other locations.