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Amazing reference & study of the superhero as it exists over time. Almost worth it just for the bibliography & references of sources I now want to read as well.
3.5 stars.A fascinating history of the superhero, from The Epic of Gilgamesh through literature of all ages, and into the age of the comic book. Nevins attempts to define what a superhero is--what traits they, as well as the world they live in, need to have to create a superhero.Nevins bases his definition on fuzzy logic, where statements are ambiguous enough to avoid having to "craft a definition [of superheroes] that will inevitably fail," and on the elements of heroenkonzept introduced by Rud...
I've been reading Jess Nevins' Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana for ages-- the amount of reading he must have done to create such a work is unbelievable. Here he has taken advantage of all that work to look at the stories again from another perspective: which stories were influential in the creation of the idea of a superhero? Nevins lists several criteria that a story should meet to count as a proto-superhero story:unusual origin storysuperpowerextraordinary abilitiesdistinctive weapondisti...
Very interesting scholarly breakdown of the literature leading to 'superheroes' as a genre. I liked how each chapter was further subdivided into different character types/specific characters. Could be a bit dry in places. As others have said, the bibliography alone is a great springboard to find new books/comics.Library book
The book delves into the literary roots of the superhero genre. It sets up a classification system for determining if mythological and literary characters fit into the superhero genre or not. This effort to extend the roots of the superhero genre are interesting. The weakness of the book is that the purpose of the book seems to change twice as the author moves into new literary ages. The first part of the book, which deals with mythology and classical literature, sticks closely to the classifica...
It’s going to take a while to digest the insights in this book. Jess Nevins has illuminated this pervasive figure of our pop culture to a degree I didn’t know was possible.
