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

Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book, Gerard Jones, Basic Books, 2004

This book is a history of that ubiquitous part of contemporary American adolescent life, the comic book.

In the early part of the 20th Century, there were an entire generation of male geeks and outsiders who enjoyed reading this crazy literature called science fiction. Mainly Jewish, and usually living in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, they combined their fantasies and youthful traumas into the square-jawed heroes who are now a central part of pop culture.

A central part of this book are Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, a couple of kids from Cleveland who created the first superhero, Superman. They learned, the hard way, that hard-nosed businessmen of questionable reputations, like pornographer and bootlegger Harry Donnenfeld, now ran the business. In the beginning, Siegel and Shuster signed away the rights to their creation (standard procedure). It took until the 1970s, just before the first Superman movie, for the pair to get official recognition, and something like a reasonable amount of money, for Superman.

The 1930s saw an explosion in comic book popularity. Even the shadiest, two-bit publisher could put out the worst schlock ever created, and it would be vacuumed up by the public. A seemingly infinite number of superheroes came before the public, teamed up with every other superhero, fighting any villain that could be put on paper. Some combinations worked, while others failed. Hitler and the Nazis provided a ready-made villain during the 1940s, which saw the public turn away from superheroes. Wartime paper restrictions put most publishers out of business; those that remained put out crime stories, westerns, and horror stories, to name a few. In the 1950s, Congress discovered the comic book. They were accused of corrupting America's youth, especially the horror stories.

For the artists in the industry, working conditions were little better than a sweatshop. For instance, if 64 pages of material were due at the printer in three days, there was no possibility of leaving the office until those pages were done. With such time constraints, many details were left out of panels and chunks were taken from other stories, even if the two had nothing to do with each other.

This book is excellent. Anyone who has ever read an old superhero comic book, or a newer "independent" comic, should read this book. It's also recommended for those interested in early 20th Century pop culture.