Johannas SCIENCE OF SUPERHEROES Review

THE SCIENCE OF SUPERHEROES Real Science in Comic Books by Lois H. Gresh & Robert Weinberg Introduction by Dean Koontz John Wiley & Sons, 224 pages, $24.95

I haven't had this much fun learning science since I took modern physics in high school from a wacked-out Duke professor who loved questions about what Christmas trees on neutron stars would look like. THE SCIENCE OF SUPERHEROES is a readable popular science book with an interesting hook. Superhero stories are used to introduce discussions of various scientific questions, as follows.

I had been wondering what this book was really about... I wonder how the Ducks have anything to do with superheroes though. Funny about the mention of using real science when you have anthropomorphic ducks speaking english without any lips heh....

-steph www.raisinlove.com

GIZMO DUCK!

Howard the Duck, Master of Quack Fu?

He used a lot of stupid science as well especially in the early years but there are a hell of a lot of dusck stories where the talking ducks apart everything is far better researched than your average super hero comic. The history and geography often contained a lot of details and the science was not only usually pretty good but on a few cases extrapolated things that latr proved to be true. Barks never let science or history get in the way of a good story but he did try to build his stories on solid ground.

Professor Jack Selegue at the Periodic Table of Comic books has quite a few duck references and they are usually a lot more realistic than the super hero references.
http://www.uky.edu/Projects/Chemcomics/

There's another review in New Scientist, if anyone's interested, looking at it from a slightly different POV, but basically agreeing with Johanna:

That is an interesting perspective. Thanks for the pointer.

For yet another one, if you look the book up at Amazon.com, you can read someone claiming to be Mark Waid overreacting and missing the point, imo. Whoever that person was, he certainly didn't read the same book I