About the Author

John Kenneth Muir is an American literary critic and award-winning author of more than 35 books in the fields of film and television, with a particular focus on horror and science fiction as well as the creator of the award-winning web series Abnormal Fixation and the audio drama Enter the House Between. He is an associate professor of humanities and communication, and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Reviews

* Riveting"" - School Library Journal

Gr 8 Up-In this arbitrary but riveting survey, Muir sandwiches entries on 71 superheroic individuals or teams from the past 50-plus years of broadcast media between a pithy historical overview and back matter that includes a compendium of plot clich?s and several "Best/Worst" lists. Each main entry opens with a briskly opinionated introduction, then goes on to extensive cast lists, (usually) comments from other critics, and, for nearly all, plot summaries for every episode, released or not. Though the bibliography is barely adequate and the black-and-white publicity stills are disappointingly sparse, the sheer quantity of information, much of it difficult or impossible to find elsewhere, more than compensates for the book's limitations. Where else are readers going to find such depth of detail, not only on such major figures as Superman or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but the likes of Captain Nice, Isis, and Saturday Night Live's Ambiguously Gay Duo? That being said, Muir has left major gaps in his discourse: he discounts the influence of The Matrix, slights most children's cartoons, gives women their due but has little to say about race or ethnicity in superherodom, and, perhaps in service to his argument that modern superheroes are a distinctively American phenomenon, passes over Hercules and Xena, heroes derived from folklore or invented in other countries, and anime characters. Still, this is a browser's delight, and a long-overdue update for Jeff Rovin's Encyclopedia of Superheroes (Facts On File, 1985; o.p.); but to keep their pop-culture resources balanced, libraries will also need at least one comprehensive movie guide, and such resources as Jonathan Clements and Helen McCarthy's The Anime Encyclopedia (Stone Bridge, 2001).-John Peters, New York Public Library Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.