Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book
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The fascinating and heartbreaking true story of the goniffs, shmendricks, and shlemiels who gave birth to the superhero comics-written with all the verve and velocity of a golden age comic book.-Art Spiegelman The New York Times - John HodgmanSuperman was just a smiling strongman until Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster went back and gave us his origin: his fatherless exile from a lost paradise; his adoption by smiling heartland farmers; the secret powers he did not dare reveal. He ultimately split his identity in two, leading his true life in the air so as not to threaten his assimilation into everyday life on the ground. That's when Superman became a metaphor, Jones says, for the ethnic experience in America and later for our homegrown outsiders, the bookish and the bullied, the weirdos and geeks and, well, cartoonists.
