I just finished reading Gerard Jones’s Men of Tomorrow, an immensely well-researched, eloquently written and insightful history of the early days of superhero comics. It connects the superhero phenomenon with the immigrant (and often Jewish) dreams and fantasies of Depression-era America, tells the tragic story of the long struggle of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster to be recognised as the rightful creators of Superman —- an issue finally decided with the help of a Batman artist and (later a political cartoonist) Jerry Robinson, who just happened to have a summer cabin next door to Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer!
The entirely novel perspective on the forces that shaped the funnies into the pop culture phenomenon that the book offers is the detailed coverage of the lives of Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz, the men at the helm of National, the publisher of DC Comics —- two larger-than-life, very different men who started out peddling sleazy pulps and semi-pornographic magazines and ended up in charge of the most wholesome American icon of them all. Jones draws his characters with the sharp, vivid pen of a verbal Kirby or an Eisner, showing the all-too-human fallibility of the men who consorted with gangsters, desperately wanted fame and recognition, conducted boardroom deals with Bronx street smarts and shaped the dreams of millions. Siegel comes across as the protagonist of the story, a failed writer struggling with a creation bigger than himself, and an outlet of his frustrations and anxieties. It all rings very true, and is the perfect non-fiction companion to Michael Chabon’s excellent The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.