500 Great Comicbook Action Heroes [Paperback]

Mike Conroy (Author), Will Eisner (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2003

Superman, Batman, the Flash, Sheena of the Jungle, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Blade, Vampirella, the Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man! In addition to these well-known masked and costumed crime fighters, readers are introduced to hundreds more relatively obscure but equally fascinating characters in this collection of comic book heroes that spans the decades from the 1930s to the present day. As Will Eisner, the famous creator of many comic book heroes says in the foreword to this book, "Perhaps the most significant contribution of heroes into the popular literature of the 20th century was made by the form of graphic narrative known as comics." Serious comic book collectors, general fans, and every reader who is interested in pop culture's history will want to add this book to their personal collection. Hundreds of reproduced covers and pages are presented with succinct written histories of all the major comic book heroes from America and Britain. The fabled crime fighters are presented under categories that include male heroes, female heroes, teams, newspaper heroes, war heroes, western heroes, and sci-fi heroes. Combining detailed text with a wealth of full-color archive reproductions, 500 Comic Book Action Heroes celebrates the great caped crusaders and fabulous females from the fascinating world of comics.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Like the imaginary men and women it chronicles, this small, stocky guidebook to a century of comic superheroes holds its own share of secret identities. Alongside thumbnail profiles of fantastical characters, from the Phantom to the Disco Dazzler, the text also performs the role of industrial historian and biographer of the men who birthed the industry in the first place. Packed with short essays on the history of comics, covering such topics as Jack Kirby, co-creator of the Marvel universe, and the Kung Fu craze of the early 1970s (when titles such as Iron Fist and Master of Kung Fu became popular), the book paints a picture of flamboyant characters both before and behind the scenes, with plenty of hard information for connoisseurs and novices alike. While it could have used an index, this heavily illustrated encyclopedia-cum-cultural history will please anyone with more than passing interest in the subject.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 7 Up--An attractive, compact introduction to comic-book heroes and history. Following an overview of this medium in the 20th century, the titular heroes are divided into seven chapters--males, females, teams, newspapers, war, western, and sci-fi. Short alphabetical entries include biographical and publication histories; they are interspersed with longer, boldly illustrated focus pieces that discuss significant characters (Superman, Wonder Woman, etc.) and moments in history, such as the rise and fall of crime comics. These pieces include numerous full-color, full-page reproductions of comic-book covers and pages, often against a glossy, black background. Marring the work are occasional errors, including misspellings of characters' names, and the lack of both an index and images to accompany the brief entries. Aficionados and researchers would quibble with the details, but casual readers will enjoy this intriguing mini encyclopedia.--Douglas P. Davey, Halton Hills Public Libraries, Ontario, Canada
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: Barron's Educational Series (August 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764125818
• ISBN-13: 978-0764125812
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,618,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some Value for Collectors, August 15, 2005

By 

Rodney Meek (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 500 Great Comicbook Action Heroes (Paperback)

I had hoped that this volume would prove an informative guide to assorted characters and series in the comic book world, and it is true that it covers a lot of ground. It doesn't just focus on the "Big Two", Marvel and DC, but also has plenty of information on some of the current so-called independents, various defunct companies from the Forties to the present day (many of which were absorbed by DC), and also a smattering of entries on non-American comics.

However, a heck of a lot of the detail that is presented is in the way of simple timelines about when a given series was published or resurrected and who might have been writing or drawing it. So we learn a lot about the year in which a title first debuted, when it was canceled, when it was re-started, and what issue numbers were involved in each run. There's just a good amount of strangely mundane detail that would be of little interest to anyone but the specialist. This book is sort of the equivalent of one of those super-focused tomes on the military costumes of the Napoleonic Wars. Sure, somebody wants to know that stuff, but most people want to get to the good parts about battles and generals and kings and campaigns, and not dwell on what kinds of buttons and flashings your average Austrian grenadier had in 1805. So the relative lack of commentary on the actual characters themselves and the key plots is rather disappointing.

The organization is also idiosyncratic and a bit off-putting (a simple A-Z listing would've sufficed), and there are a fair number of spelling and grammar errors. The entries themselves basically give equal weight to every selected character or group, so the Avengers get the same number of paragraphs as comparative unknowns such as the Challengers of the Unknown.

Really, this book is best used as a resource to learn about some of the more obscure non-mainstream or now-unpublished characters or to find out see which artist or writer was working on which title. Definitely not for the casual fan.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars So-so reference book, March 22, 2007

By 

mrliteral - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: 500 Great Comicbook Action Heroes (Paperback)

If I had to pick the most important feature of a reference book, it would probably be accuracy of information. Almost as important would be the comprehensiveness of information; a dictionary, for example, would be of little use if it only covered the letters A and Q. Finally, a reference book should have easily accessible information; that same dictionary would be hard to work with if the words weren't in order. Mike Conroy's 500 Great Comic Book Action Heroes scores well enough on the first point and decently on the second point. On the last item, however, it is not very good.

In terms of accuracy, the book does a good job. While I am a comic book fan, I am not nearly enough of one to truly say if every detail is accurate; for all I know, the fact that the first Blue Beetle appeared in 1939 may be right and may be wrong. On the other hand, the information I do know fits with what is presented in the book, so I'll take the other stuff as true until told otherwise.

Comprehensiveness is harder to judge. Certainly, most major superheroes (and other action heroes) are here, but anyone familiar with the genre can probably name a few that are not mentioned. For example, such "classic" heroes from the 1980s as Rom, the Micronauts and Ka-Zar (all of whom had decent runs) are basically omitted, as well as other folks like the Moon Knight and Luke Cage (Power Man) and the Question. On the other hand, we do get to read about some interesting but obscure heroes such as the Badger and Congorilla. It's a mixed bag. Are there even truly 500? I never bothered to count.

The big problem is with organization. While the heroes are basically listed in alphabetical order by category (such as Male, Female, Teams and War Heroes), each section is interrupted by special items on specific items and trends. There's a lot of fun information here, but it's often hard to find. The Table of Contents does provide some help, but the lack of an index is a major problem.

Overall, the book looks nice, with plenty of art and nice paper, but I am hard-pressed to give it more than a high three stars. On a fundamental level - organization - this book is sub-par, so as a reference book, it doesn't do the trick as well as it should.

10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Covers a lot of Material - but gets many small facts wrong., November 25, 2004

By 

Ivan A. Wolfe "rabidwolfe" (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 500 Great Comicbook Action Heroes (Paperback)

This book covers a lot (and I mean a lot) of material. As a nice, quick overview of Comic Book heroes and their history, as told from a loving and friendly point of view, this is fairly good. There were characters in here I did not know about, or had forgotten about (and I'm a lifelong comic fan).

However, Mike Conroy could have used some fact checking. With the sheer amount of detail, I suppose we can forgive a few small errors, but here are a couple of details I found to be more than incidental:

On page 149, he refers to the character Starseed as "malevolent." In fact, the opposite was true. Starseed did drop a mountain in the middle of Sunset Blvd. - but he was merely returning it from when he took it ages ago. He was actually benevolent, and offered to cure Morbius, Man-Thing, Ghost Rider and Werewolf by Night of their afflictions. Unable to control their monstrous selves, the monsters killed Starseed rather than accept his gift. The tale was a tragedy, with Starseed as the hero that dies in the end. Next time, read more closely, Mr. Conroy.

On page 141 he refers to the character of Blade, the Vampire Slayer as "African-American." I find it hard for a man who was born and raised in England to be an American, but maybe his citizenship changed later in life (although all Blade's early adventures take place in or near London, where he was living with his girlfriend Safron).

If these two small errors don't bother you (they actually don't bother me all that much), then the other errors likely won't bug you either.

A good, solid book of capsule histories and an accessible, quick reference work.