Publisher: McFarland Books
Release Date: March 13, 2017
Price: $19.99
Creator: Edited by Joseph J. Darowski
Format: 220 pgs., 6"x9", Trade Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-4766-6225-1
Age Rating: N/A
ICv2 Rating: 3 Stars out of 5
This collection of essays, a blend of scholarly and fannish looks at nearly sixty years of related comics, included several interesting and thought-provoking articles. Oddly, it also included a few which didn’t really say anything significant, and a few which looked like they were accidentally sent to the printers while the editing was still in progress. This was especially distressing in a scholarly article written by two professors from Argentina, in which cut-and-paste errors compound the typos. Sentences like "Second, the group has not vehicles of transit of its own, so them must be taken borrowed from the Justice League" sounded like something by Bizarro Clark Kent. The inconsistency was odd, because some of the articles were just fine.
A few typos are forgivable, but there are enough here, especially involving names of both fictional and real people, that it was very distracting. Felix Faux? Maxmia? Even Ronald Reagan’s name was misspelled, so it became difficult to trust any unfamiliar word or name.
The book is much more reasonably priced than some of the McFarland titles, and the readable parts of the contents are worth the money. While some older teens might find it interesting, the book is written for adults, particularly ones with substantial knowledge of both American culture and the Justice League comics.
--Nick Smith: Librarian Technician, Community Services, for the Pasadena Public Library in California.
