Saturday, March 17, 2012

Was Superman a Spy Review


Was Superman a Spy? by Brian Cronin

Brian Cronin has collected some of the comic book stories, legends, rumors, and myths that he has been exploring for years on his blog and collected them all into one book.


I was thinking of this book as a list of comic book rumors and the truth about them.  That is not exactly the format that this book takes.  It reads more like a history of the major comic book companies and how various characters and plot points came about.  So most of the time I didn’t know what the myth was he was responding to.   And I do think that Cronin uses exclamation points (!!!!) more often than the facts warrant.  Nothing is quite that exciting.  But that doesn’t mean that the information was not interesting.  I’ve never looked into it much before myself so most of the information here was new to me.  Not only do you learn why they came up with kryptonite and why Batgirl was introduced, and many other tidbits but you also learn about the crazy comic book politics.  The fighting and the way stories were changed around to fit with movies or TV shows and such and the battles over the rights to use certain names and terms. (Hulk Hogan had a run-in with Marvel about his name.)  Knowing all the weirdness that went on behind the comic books does not make them less fun to read.  In fact I think it might make them more fun.  You, of course, have to be a comic book fan to care about any of the information in this book but if you are I think you will find something here for you.

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