AddALL.com - Sporting Supermen: The True Stories of Our Childhood Comic Heroes 1845131657 9781845131654

When Brendan Gallagher wrote a feature on the Telegraph's sports pages about his favorite sporting comic heroes, the response from readers was unprecedented: hundreds of e mails from nostalgic readers. Now he has turned his research and enthusiasm into a unique celebration of these prodigious characters. He devotes separate chapters to the three greatest heroes: Wilson of the Wizard; Alf Tupper, the 'Tough of the Track;' and Roy of the Rovers. Then he covers the best of the rest, including men like Skid Solo, Johnny Cougar, and Raven on the Wing. He also tells the story of the remarkable Gilbert Dalton, author of the Wilson stories, a writing machine who wrote millions of words in his lifetime and whose productivity put Dickens to shame, and has talked to the BBC's Stewart Storey for a modern (and entirely serious) analysis of some of Wilson's most amazing feats (like a three minute mile). Here, then, are such truly extraordinary feats as bowling out Australia twice in a day with 120mph deliveries in a 1953 Ashes Test, a professional soccer player still playing in the top flight at the age of around 75, not to mention running 20 miles cross country in two hours to warn the Duke of Wellington of Napoleon's advance.