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Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book Hardcover – International Edition, October 12, 2004

by Gerard Jones (Author)

99

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Will Eisner Comic Industry AwardsWinner, 2005

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By the Eisner Award-winning author of The Comic Book Heroes, Killing Monsters, and scores of successful comic books and screenplays, Men of Tomorrow is the first book to tell the surprising story of the young Jewish misfits, hustlers and nerds who invented the superhero and the comic book industry. Among the characters in this vibrant panorama: · Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the goofy myopic creators of Superman, who sold the rights to the Man of Tomorrow for $130 to... Harry Donenfield, former pornographer and con-man, and his partner, Jack Liebowitz, founder of DC Comics, who went on to help build Steve Ross's legendary Warner Communications. Batman's Bob Kane, who rose to fame and fortune in a career based entirely on lies and self-promotion. Mort Weisinger, the ruthless editor of Superman, who suffered a nervous breakdown when he tried to be a superhero himself. Plus Stan Lee, founder of a new kind of hero, including Spiderman, at Marvel Comics; Will Eisner, whose creation "The Spirit" has become a cult classic, and many, many more. Springing unheralded out of working-class Jewish immigrant neighborhoods in the depths of the Depression, these young men transformed an odd mix of geekdom, science fiction, and outsider yearnings into blue-eyed chisel-nosed crime-fighters and adventurers who quickly captured the mainstream imagination. Within a few years their inventions were being read by 90% of American children and had spawned a new genre in movies, radio and TV that still dominates youth entertainment seventy years later. Drawing on exhaustive research, including interviews with friends and relatives of the creators, Jones reveals how the immigrant experience and the collision of Yiddish and American culture-forged in the crucible of two world wars-shaped the vision of the make-believe hero. He chronicles how the comics sparked a frightened counterattack that nearly destroyed the industry in the 1950's and how later they surged back at an underground level, to inspire a new generation to transmute those long-ago fantasies into art, literature, blockbuster movies and graphic novels. 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.

Print length

416 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Basic Books
Publication date

October 12, 2004
Dimensions

6.5 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches
ISBN-10

0465036562
ISBN-13

978-0465036561
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Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

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 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 début 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.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

From Booklist

The comic book's early days have received heightened attention in the wake of Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Kavalier and Clay, about the cutthroat businessmen and naive artists who then populated the industry. Although Jones' history limns dozens of the young writers and artists, most from working-class Jewish neighborhoods and many still teenaged, and the bosses who exploited them, its central figures are Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who launched the superhero genre by creating Superman, only to sell the rights to the character for a pittance and spend decades in obscurity and near-poverty. Jones continues the story through the censorship that nearly destroyed the industry in the 1950s to the 1960s superhero revival that continues today. Jones' experience as a comic-book scripter, albeit decades after the period he chronicles, gives him the advantage over most previous writers on the comics milieu, and his vivid writing suits the subject. But it is his impressively thorough research that makes this one of the most valuable books on a distinctively American storytelling form. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; First Edition (October 12, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465036562
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465036561
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.6 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,684,137 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,102 in Historical & Biographical Fiction Graphic Novels
- #9,562 in Fantasy Graphic Novels (Books)
- #34,826 in Sociology (Books)

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Gerard Jones
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My latest book is "My Pal Splendid Man," humorous stories cowritten with Will Jacobs. I'm now finishing "Nation of Faith & Flesh: The Moral War That Shaped America," a great big history book for FSG. Next will come "Lost Hero," the story of the forgotten genius who launched the American comic book industry (cowritten with Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson) and "Million Dollar Ideas," a humorous novel about Golden Age Hollywood (with Will Jacobs again).
I started out in the early '80s writing humor books and articles (mostly for National Lampoon), which transitioned into writing comic books and screenplays, which transitioned into writing nonfiction about comics and other pop culture, which in turn has transitioned into writing about cultural history in general. It's been a long, winding, astonishing journey.
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4.6 out of 5

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Phil Semler

Truth, Justice, and the brutal, corrupt American Way

Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2013

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This is a hell of book.
Near the end of Jones’s wonderful account of the origin and history of comic books, Bob Kane, the “creator” of Batman, says, “Let me tell you some things about comics, kid.”
That’s what Jones does here. Of course, we fans want to hear all the rotten stories of the writers and artists and how they persevered while getting royally screwed by the publishers and distributors. A lot of money was made, but guess what, the creators didn’t see much. But mass culture means using technology to disseminate information, using a lot of collaborators (even the artists and writers had to farm out the work, so who’s exploiting who?) and fair to say, we get that history, which includes gangsters and other shady characters, the pornographers, sadists, and amoralists who just want to make money. And bulls***psycho censors who want to burn all the books. The Jews figure heavy in the story. A story of acceptance and assimilation and respectability, even as their race was being exterminated in Europe, and they remained helpless in the Lower East Side. America becoming a superpower after finally entering World War II, several years after the birth of the comic books. Jones has a lot of work to cut through the myths, lies, and phony ledgers.
Sure, I rooted for Jerry Siegel, the creator of Superman. And he does win his recognition and some money at the end. But it was because of the fans, Jones writes, the fans, the geeks, the clique of kids of raised on comics, who kept reading and reinventing, and creating new media—TV, film, videogames, licensing, graphic novels—finally the fans had a say to make things right with their gods. This book is about truth, justice, and the brutal, corrupt American way, which has always been a conflict between the haves and the have-nots.
It’s really the history of America. Perhaps now we’re over the edge of no return in our life of consumerist pop-culture, complete political satire, media control, drugs, music, computers, phones, etc. What will the kids raised on this culture go? Looking forward to new superheroes to guide us.

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Amazon Customer

Siegel and Shuster and the Fight for Superman

Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2013

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To be sure this book is well researched. It goes deeply into the immigrants (mostly Jewish) who would found the comic book industry (some patience is need for the first fifth of the book as it is not about comics-they had not been invented yet-but it is fascinating to watch the pieces slowly drift together). Though most of the big and small publishers are covered the lynchpin of this narrative is the story of Siegel and Shuster; how they created Superman and how they lost him and their long struggle to get some sort of compensation. To be truthful the author is very even handed in his portrayal of both sides of the struggle. The creators of Superman seemed to have had their one big idea, then they struggled; one with failing eyesight, the other just could not seem to come up with the next big concept creating many failures along the way. Some of the popular myths that we think of as "comic history" are disputed and shown for what they were.

Though I might have wanted to hear more about other creators and companies; and that is not to say you don't; I understand that in such a vast field it is important to provide a focus otherwise the book would have been ten times as long. Sometimes I was aghast at how cut-throat the comic industry could be-this is a warts-and-all story and very worth the time to pursue.

For more information on EC comics which is intertwined with DC comics seek out a copy of the Mad World of Bill Gaines which really goes deeply in ECs history.

4 people found this helpful

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Antonio

Social history of comics with a business twist

Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2004

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I was a comic book fan from my earliest age to about 10 years ago, when the whole thing seems to have gone to the dogs. I was brought up on the Mexican editions of DC comics, and didn't become familiar with Marvel Comics until I visited the US in the second half of the 1970s and learned to love the cheeky humor and mindless action, plus the wonderful artwork of the Romitas, Buscemas and Ditkos of this world, and their little mannerisms ("true believers", "'nuff said", "excelsior!", "no-prizes" and such). Although I did learn a bit about the origins and evolution of the medium, I must confess I was never too interested about the creators themselves. For me, they were subsumed within the characters and stories they told, drew and inked. I guess this may be a consequence of having learned about comics from reprints of 1960s Superman and Batman books, where the writers and artists were hidden under wraps, and strong individuality was discouraged. Although I knew that Siegel and Schuster created Superman, that Kane and Finger did the same for Batman, and that Lee and a host of other talents (like Kirby, Ditko et a.) gave forth the Silver Age, I didn't know much about the guys themselves, or the business they were in.

This book has introduced me to the inner workings of the "House(s) of Ideas", both those of the creators and the businessmen. It is certainly interesting to find out how such basic concepts as secret identity, origin story, motivation, super-villains and love interests came to be, and what was the business model that would enrich a few managers at the expense of some of the creators. I was aware of the essential "American-ness" of comic books (that was, after all, part of the pleasure they gave to a foreigner in the days before color TV and cheap international travel). "The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay" showed me that this was a particular brand of "American-ness", very deeply interwoven with a particular immigrant experience. "Men of Tomorrow" fleshes out this landscape, and populates it with fascinating characters. Even if you are not a comic book fan, it would be a very enjoyable read, since it is not a book for "geeks" and fleshes out all the stories for a general reader. I give it four stars because it could have used more pictures. Memo for the editors: people who read comics like pictures! Put some in in the next edition.

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Wolvie

Servicio rápido y en perfectas condiciones

Reviewed in Spain on September 20, 2015

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El libro es perfectamente recomendable para todos aquellos que deseen conocer anecdotas sobre la Edad de Oro de los comics, llegando en su última parte hasta el resurgimiento de los superheroes a principios de los 60.

One person found this helpful

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Mlef

Excellent ouvrage!

Reviewed in Canada on September 27, 2013

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Pour ceux qui s'intéressent à la naissance du comic book américain dans les années trente, fascinante histoires des pionniers, des gangsters, des créateurs et des hommes d'affaires qui ont créé à fois un nouveau genre littéraire ainsi qu'une véritable industrie...

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evansT

A Lot of Men of Tomorrow

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 29, 2012

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A great book, detailing the hidden worlds behind our favourite silver age comic books, mainly focusing on the infamous battle in between Siegel and Shuster and DC Comics for the rights and recognition as the creators of Superman but with enough segues to make it pretty much a comprehensive account of the comic industry from the 30's to the 80's.

Very well written and researched. The only flaw I have with it is that there's an awful lot of people who keep popping in and out of the story's narrative who you have to keep remembering who they are and what they've been doing, along with even more people who will pop up for a few sentences, seem important and then disappear for the rest of the book. Of course this isn't the fault of the writer; if the real history was made up of hundreds of people, well the writer has to include those hundreds of people in order to be as accurate as he can - this is a non-fiction history book.

Very well written, very informative, well worth a read.

Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on February 17, 2017

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merci

Mr. M. J. Short

Good Read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 27, 2019

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The story of the birth of comic books told in an interesting way with lots of stories I hadn't heard before.

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