Becoming Batman: a must-read?

* BUMP * My copy has arrived at last! Amazon had a devil of a time, with three false starts that they couldn't get this book, in the last month. But here it is at last! I'll certainly post a review, eventually.

How realistic is Batman? At best, this book will lay out a strategy for aspiring superheroes not imbued with superpowers. At worst, this book will stifle a decades-old ongoing discussion at college coffeehouses and bars everywhere. You know I "preordered" mine.

Coming in October -- A book by E. Paul Zehr -- Becoming Batman: The Possibility of A Superhero. Zehr is a professor of kinesiology and neuroscience at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, and a karate expert.

Scientific American - Dark Knight Shift: Why Batman could exist, but not for long. JR Minkel interviews Zehr about how one might train as the Dark Knight. A good read. Zehr's done his homework.

excerpt from Scientific American

What's most plausible about portrayals of Batman's skills? You could train somebody to be a tremendous athlete and to have a significant martial arts background, and also to use some of the gear that he has, which requires a lot of physical prowess. Most of what you see there is feasible to the extent that somebody could be trained to that extreme. We're seeing that kind of thing in less than a month in the Olympics.

What's less realistic? A great example is in the movies where Batman is fighting multiple opponents and all of a sudden he's taking on 10 people. If you just estimate how fast somebody could punch and kick, and how many times you could hit one person in a second, you wind up with numbers like five or six. This doesn't mean you could fight four or five people. But it's also hard for four or five people to simultaneously attack somebody, because they get in each other's way. More realistic is a couple of attackers.

Update
I haven't posted a review because I just... can't ... get through this book. I keep hoping it will pick up, but the first few chapters have been dry textbook introductions to genetics, biology and training. I'm actually caught in an unhealthy approach-avoidance with this book. So that gives you some idea, but I can't weigh in officially until - if - I make it to the end.