David's Reviews > The Greatest American Hero Companion

Finished reading this one last night. Not much I really need to say about other than that it’s a really good book about one of my top favorite tv shows growing up, “The Greatest American Hero” (1981-1983). The book is “The Greatest American Hero Companion” by Patrick Jankiewicz (BearManor Media, 2023).

Jankiewicz has written several books about shows like this from the late 1970 and 80s (my particular “golden age” of all things pop culture), including “You Wouldn’t Like Me When I’m Angry!: A Hulk Companion” (which I am also in the process of reading) and “Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century: A TV Companion”, as well as “Just When You Thought It Was Safe: A Jaws Companion”.

Jankiewicz really does his homework, not only detailing the creation of the show by Stephan J. Cannell and the casting of series leads William Katt, Robert Culp, and Connie Sellecca, plus the obligatory complement episodes guide. He also has loads of interviews with everything, some conducted by him specifically for this book, others conducted earlier (for Cannell, the actors, and other significant people who had died).

This is a pretty definitive book resource about the making of this short lived but still widely remembered television series, one which came out in a lull period in terms of superhero pn TV (“The Incredible Hulk” was just finishing it’s run at the time that “Hero” was beginning). But it was a sign of things to come. I highly recommend “The Greatest American Hero Companion” to all fans of the series. I gave it five out of five stars on GoodReads. (Copy read checked out from the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library.)