Book review: Why Superman Doesn't Take Over the World

I just finished reading Brian O'Roark's book, Why Superman Doesn't Take Over the World, which I thought would be a neat intersection of two of my interests, economics and super heroes. Indeed, I had been looking forward to this book since it arrived just after we came out of the last lockdown last year. However, I was a little disappointed - not because I had set my expectations high, but because the book feels like it very quickly ran out of good ideas.

O'Roark uses examples from comic book super heroes (with a smattering of references to television and the movies) to illustrate economic concepts. Some parts of it are excellent. For example, the chapter that uses Batman and Robin to illustrate comparative advantage and the gains from trade was particularly good, as was the chapter that uses Avengers: Civil War to illustrate game theory and the prisoners' dilemma (also using Mick Rory and Leonard Snart as a second example, which is quite fitting). However, much of the rest of the book fell a bit flat. The comic book references were fine in themselves, as was the economics. However, the two didn't really gel together and the relationship felt quite strained. The final chapter, which attempts to use the concept of utility maximisation to identify who is the greatest super hero, is probably best forgotten (and not because O'Roark arrives at the 'wrong' conclusion, as he doesn't even end up answering the question).

As I noted in this 2017 post, I've often toyed with the idea of writing a book about the economics of the reality TV show Survivor. Aside from the time commitment required to write a book, the main thing that has stopped me from the attempt was the worry that, while there is certainly some excellent material linking Survivor and some fairly fundamental economic concepts and theories, there may not be enough for a book-length treatment. This book suffers from exactly that problem.

If you're into comic book super heroes and economics, there's something to like about a book that attempts to integrate the two together. However, you could probably file this one away with the Green Lantern movie.