500 Great Comic Book Action Heroes
Mike Conroy (with foreward by Will Eisner)
From the Cover: "Superman, Batman, the Flash, Sheena of the Jungle, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Blade, Vamirella, the Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man! These and hundreds more masked and costumed crime fighters are shown and discussed in this collection that spans the decades of comic book publication from the 1930s to the present day. Hundreds of reproduced covers and pages are presented with succinct written histories of virtually every comic book hero ever created in the United States and Britain. Combining and absorbing text with a wealth of full-color archive reproductions, 500 Great Comic Book Action Heroes celebrates the great caped crusaders and fabulous females from the fascination world of comics."
What it is: To sum up the above, this is a book naming 500 comic book heroes from the very beginning in newspaper strips to the current crop running around. Now 500 may or may not be accurate because teams are often lumped together (except the stand out members) and side articles (such as ones about teen sidekicks and patriotic heroes) might not count in the list, and quite frankly I'm not going to take the time to count. But either way a list this big we needn't be sticklers. ANYway the book gives a history of comics, lists Male Heroes, Female Heroes, Teams, Newspaper Heroes (who often get their own comic anyway), War Heroes (think Sgt Rock or Nick Fury), Western Heroes, and Sci-Fi Heroes (which is apparently different than the sci-fi based heroes of most comics?). Very informative, very well done.
What I think: This book can transform a casual comic book reader
into a bonifide comic geek in one reading. Early in the book gets tricky what
with one company being bought by another, name changes, and very similar names,
but eventually we get past that.The list is huge and daunting, with more important/creative/popular
characters getting multi-page articles while the rest get a few paragraphs.
So, so many characters to read/learn about.
But the book does pose one key question: what determines a great comic book
action hero? See, the thing is many of these characters are super obscure.
Like their complete and total existence was 2 issues obscure. Like they've
never been mentioned again (except in books like this) obscure. Like who-the-fuck-is-Mai,-the-Psychic-Girl?
obscure. Is this list based on longevity? Creativeness? Popularity? Marketability?
Who created them? General all-in-all Impact? Conroy never reall explains his
justification for the who's who, and for it you feel a few key people are
overlooked in exchange for some real B-level characters and/or teams.
Another problem is the catagorization in the book. I have nothing against
catagoring, but creating a seperate catagory for Sci-Fi when, by greater majority,
most comic book characters are 100% Sci-Fi characters. Superman, Silver Age
DC heroes, basically every Marvel character are Sci-Fi originned. And it's
not neccessarily powers, because often the case of Sci-Fi is aliens having
powers too.
And the third is basically the errors he makes. I can excuse this, because
there is no way one man could read every comic book (and if he could, still
remember every story and plot thread accurately)
Final Word: I think it's a good read if you dig comics. Hell, in some
ways the summaries help clear a few things up for us Modern Age readers. Is
this book for everyone? No, but I don't think it's meant to be. For those
who like the trivia aspect of comic books this book is great (and for our
friends, family, and significant others this book is complete nightmare territory
when we start talking about it) If you're like me, have read comics (religiously?)
for years consider picking this book up. If you're a comic hater or just a
casual reader ("hey, let me pick up the new Spider-Man comic because
he has movie coming out!") maybe it's best you pretend you never heard
of this book.
And the best part: it's a list book so you can put it down anytime and read
the latest issue of Astonishing X-Men! Excellesior!
.
