Danny Fingeroth - Superman on the Couch
This book walked a very narrow line, and did it very well. On the one hand, it could have gotten way too pedantic in an attempt to appeal to as large an audience as possible. After all, comics didn’t get their dumbed-down reputation from nowhere. Thankfully, this book is not at all “comic bookish.” It’s also not pretentious, which any serious work of analysis can be. No, this porridge is just right.
Fingeroth covers a lot of ground, and delivered more than one psychological or sociological point that made me go “hmm.” For instance, he compares the plight of Superman (strange being from another world becomes superhero) to that of the American immigrant. That had never really occured to me before, but it’s definitely not a stretch, especially when you consider that Big Blue was created by two Jewish guys in the 30s. Something tells me that the concept of immigration wasn’t too far from their minds at the time.
He also points out something else I never noticed before — the idea that most of the major heroes (Superman, Batman, Spider-man) are orphans. This, he suggests, plays into the basic desire (conscious or otherwise) by children to be something more than they appear to be. What child wouldn’t want to be told that the people who grounded him last night are not his real parents, but that he’s really an alien with laser eyes who can fly and see through walls?
There’s a lot of other stuff here too (including a look at the world of female superheroes, in which he rightly includes Buffy), but I think you get the basic idea. As a guy writing superhero stories, this was an excellent look into an angle of the genre that I’d never explored before.