Superman at Fifty: The Persistence of a Legend

This quirky but delightful chronicle is decidedly chauvinistic: while it grudgingly concedes that Superman was born on the planet Krypton and not in Cleveland, it nonetheless suggests that everything else connected with the Man of Steel bears some relation to Ohio's largest city. The creators of the original comic strip, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, were native sons, and almost every contributor to this collection is either a native or a resident. The essays gathered by Dooley, of the Cleveland Foundation, and Engle, who teaches at Cleveland State University, cover the Superman comics, radio, TV shows and feature movies, and include ""serious'' articles like ``What Makes Superman So Darned American'' and campy discussions of how the indestructible hero might have voted in various elections or what his astrological sign is. The book is captivating and should sell briskly on Krypton and in Cleveland. Illustrations. (November)