Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book

by Gerard Jones (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2005

  $34.29

  Animated by the stories of some of the last century's most charismatic and conniving artists, writers, and businessmen, Men of Tomorrow brilliantly demonstrates how the creators of the superheroes gained their cultural power and established a crucial place in the modern imagination. This history of the birth of superhero comics highlights three pivotal figures. The story begins early in the last century, on the Lower East Side, where Harry Donenfeld rises from the streets to become the king of the 'smooshes'-soft-core magazines with titles like French Humor and Hot Tales. Later, two high school friends in Cleveland, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, become avid fans of 'scientifiction,' the new kind of literature promoted by their favorite pulp magazines. The disparate worlds of the wise guy and the geeks collide in 1938, and the result is Action Comics #1, the debut of Superman. For Donenfeld, the comics were a way to sidestep the censors. For Shuster and Siegel, they were both a calling and an eventual source of misery: the pair waged a lifelong campaign for credit and appropriate compensation. -The New Yorker

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $3.28

  In the depths of the Depression, out of the crowded tenements of New York and Cleveland, the comic book superhero leapt into being. Out of a mix of geekiness, science fiction, and outsider yearning, a crew of young men from working-class Jewish neighbourhoods and shady backgrounds created a series of blue-eyed, chisel-nosed crime fighters and adventurers who quickly captured the imaginations of young and old. Within a few years their creations had spawned a new genre that still dominates youth entertainment seventy years later. Gerard Jones draws on exhaustive research to portray how the immigrant experience and an outsider mentality shaped the vision of the make-believe hero, while a bizarre melting-pot of left-wing politics, mob money and the worlds of soft-porn and detective magazines contributed to the publishing world that produced the comics and brought them to millions. He chronicles how the success of the comics provoked a backlash that nearly destroyed the industry in the 1950s, and how later they surged back, inspiring a new generation to transmute pre-war fantasies into art, literature, blockbuster movies and graphic novels. Men of Tomorrow rivetingly demonstrates how the creators of the superheroes established their crucial place in the modern imagination.