Superman on the Couch by Danny Fingeroth

I didn't end up finishing that collection of short stories by... I'm blanking on the name. I'm pretty sure it isn't Dashiel Hammet. There are really just the two big name American pulp detective writers, all the others you can get away with not knowing their names. That is assuming all necessary knowledge is that which could be useful on that game show with Alex Trebek. It's times like this that I wished I had internet at work, for the sake of spell and fact checking (ah, okay, Jeopardy, thanks coincidental use of jeopardy in a sentence, whew.) . Anyways, that short story collection was due back at the library, as was the OTHER mystery by a more contemporary guy who I REALLY don't remember.

(Remembered that I recorded some info so I could get them back from the library. The short story collection is "The Simple Art of Murder", and the other novel is "Minnesota Strip: A Dan Fortune Novel of Suspense". I neglected to record the authors, but this is fine.)

From there I dove into "Sewer, Gas, and Electric" by Matt Ruff, and it was pretty interesting. A sort of screwball vision of the future. I was only 25 pages in when THAT had to be returned. So there's another one that I have to get back.

That left me with two books that are only just due back on the first of June (I think...), the first of which being "Superman on the Couch" by Danny Fingeroth. It's a look at how and why Superhero's so enrapture our society (if you'd like to suggest that isn't the case, need I reference the recent success of the Avengers movie?). I thought it would be tonally similar to the various Superheroes and Philosophy books; a wide range of authors essays discussing a variety of topics using superheroes as a teaching tool. However, such was not the case.

Very little background information was given to the various topics discussed (Jung is definitely a person that exists, whatever his theories are). There was nothing said that I could, or would desire to, argue with, but it also wasn't particularly Earth-shattering. The book may be better suited to the less experienced fan, or rather, maybe better suited to someone who's read fewer 'academia of comic book' books. And I'm pretty sure I haven't read all that many!