Heroes in the Night: Inside the Real Life Superhero Movement
By Tea Krulos I love love love comic book superheroes. I chose this book because I was a little more “Um, huh?” about the whole “real life superhero” thing. I tend to see them as silly news stories or possibly dangerous over zealous neighborhood watch folk in masks. I figured this book would tell me if I was right.
The author was clearly allowed access to the movement that the typical person would not be granted. He most certainty paints us a picture that those silly news stories never did. I’m not sure that we leave this book with an idea of what these people actually do though, not really. In some ways that seems to be the point of the book -- to explain to us that not all “RLSH” are alike. Some simply donate to all kinds of charities (um, okay many of us do that without a costume, but whatever). Some take on specific causes affecting their neighborhoods (drugs, homelessness, abuse, etc etc) and do work specifically targeting that one cause. While yet others in the RLSH movement, well, they walk around in costumes doing, um, walking around garnering a lot of attention because mask and spandex mostly, I think? With the exception of a few stories we really don’t learn what, if anything, they do. One self-accounting RLSH, the only one with any kind of full list in the book, seems to include things like tipping wait staff on his list of good deeds (huh?).
I did finish the book still unsure what to think of the movement as a whole. I received the book at about the time of the George Zimmerman verdict (he actually has a brief mention in the book) and really felt as though so many of these guys and gals would be nothing more than him in a mask. Leaving the book, I still fear many of them are that. As I said there are a few specific stories in here and some of those do show that maybe these characters aren’t all the right people to be fighting crime and protecting anyone or anything. In fact, their lack of proper training and over enthusiasm might be a danger in itself. I don’t need to tell you of their flaws though -- they have enemies for that. Yeah - Real Life Super Villains for the heroes (though unlike the comics, these baddies are mostly harmless - taunting the heroes online, mocking their outfits, etc).
The book I read was an advanced copy aka the editing was not complete and many of the photos were not yet included.. Somehow, I didn’t mind as I felt just reading about these real life characters was better than the side show of actually seeing their costumes. But then some of them sounded soooo outrageous that I actually had to pause my reading and go search for videos from their, you guessed it, silly news stories. So in that sense this book did its job in selling their stories to me - I did want to know more about some of them. Others I hoped would just get bored and fade away.
Besides not knowing what to think of the RLSH movement, I have also been really torn as to what to rate this book. It’s not a 5 star book. It’s also not a bad book. 3 or 4… 3 or 4… So torn here. Given the subject matter I think the author did the best he could… mostly. At times he kind of does seem a little fan boyish. It’s probably like a 3.5 star book. I’ll given it 4, because like I said, given the material I think the author did the best he could
* Disclaimer: I received this book at no cost in order to review it. I offered no guarantee of a positive review, though I only request books I think I'll like because why read a book you think you’ll hate?
