I remember getting this book out of the library in the late 80s. I remember three things: 1) The title “Superheroes” coming out of the cover with no pictures.
2) there was an illustration of James Bond casually filing
his nails with a Bond behind him as he is surrounded by henchmen with guns; and
3) There was an entry for Paddington Bear.
Now I know we all have our definition of what is and what is
not a superhero and where I might disagree with you, I can typically follow
your chain of logic.
BUT PADDINGTON BEAR???????
Surely my memory is faulty, I’d mixed up Superheroes
with David Pringle’s Imaginary People or some other reference work that
I had read at the same time. I mean it
was like 40 years ago. I must have been
mistaken. But I was so certain of those three things it would pop into my head
every now and then. Recently, the
thought popped up again and I decided to track down the book and put the whole
thing to bed.
Easy peasy you say a book called Superheroes with no author.
Let’s pop “Superheroes” into the title search on Abebooks or some other online
book search tool. Over 12,000 hits. Let’s scroll through the results
“Superheroes don’t clean their rooms”
“Your Guide to Superheroes”
“Marvel Superheroes”
“Big brothers are Superheroes”
And many many many more that just aren’t the book.
However, I did know that the book was likely published in
the late 70s or early 80s and I had a feeling it was British.
So I start limiting the search by time which would knock out
many of the results and I find Gyles Brandreth’s book.
The cover had the title coming out of the page that I
remembered but had a subtitle and a guy in a plain white superhero suit (I wonder
if Mark Millar saw this book and that was the inspiration for Nemesis)
But that cover might just be another printing or I just misremembered
but I found a copy at a reasonable price and ordered it.
The book arrived and I flick through and there is the James
Bond illustration almost as I remembered but the Bond girl was not there.
I am not doing well on my memory for this book, maybe I was
wrong about Paddington Bear. I flick a little
further in the very thin book and DAMMIT the bear is there.
I read the introduction and Brandreth gives no rules or
rationale for what he sees as a superhero. He merely states that these are characters
are his favourite characters.
Looking over the 35 entries there are several that I certainly
would not have considered superheroes, Robinson Crusoe, the Hardy Boys, Nancy
Drew, Dan Dare, Peter Pan and Tin Tin just to start.
If the book had been titled Adventure Heroes or Action Stars
or something similar these would have made more sense.
The entries themselves are fine a nice two or three page
profiles but there are some errors, Alan Scott’s successor as Green Lantern is referred
to as Hal Gordon instead of Jordan (but that could be a confusion with Flash Gordon
or a simple typo). Look I get it I’ve
written my own similar non fiction works and errors happen.
Perhaps more egregious is Dr John H. Watson is referred to
as Dr Henry Watson. I mean the H might
stand for Henry but there is no Henry Watson in the Cannon of Conan Doyle Stories. Speaking of Cannon, he says that Irene Adler
is the love of Holmes’ life – that’s not in the Doyle stories that’s from
several of the continuation authors.
Ideally you should only reference the Conan Doyle stories or make it
clear that you are referencing a continuation work (such as Baring Gould’s
Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street for example).
For adventure heroes, this is not a bad quick reference work
for a young reader of 10 or so.
