Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Now that the paperback version of Gerard Jones' Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book is out, I thought I'd start a thread on aspects of the book that intrigued me.

First off, the cover.  Chip Kidd's design incorporates images by Fletcher Hanks, a Golden Age cartoonist and pulp artist.  The story features, I think, a character called Stardust the Wizard.  Hanks has a naive, outsider artist style that perfectly embodies the newness and weirdness of superheroes.  A weird, visionary character, profiled here (http://www.misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics29.html).  Anyone know much more about Hanks?

Second, I was intrigued by Jones' dismissal of the art on Silver Age Superman comics.  He describes the art by Boring, Swan, et al as rigidly controlled, overly scripted, and, on the level of the page, too restricted to a repetitive grid, with no room for inventiveness, thanks to Weisinger.  Fromulaic variations on 2-shot, close-up,  etc.  My experience of the art is different.  Inventive, classic sci-fi backgrounds and settings, great character detail and a varying naturalistic approach to poses (especially in Swan).  Interesting and elegant artistic solutions to extremely complicated, problematic scripts.

I know Jones is writing a cultural history with a basis in biography, but his neglect of the visual side of that history (past, say, 1950) troubles me. Sure, he focuses on the pulp imagery that inspired Superman and Shuster's (radical and revolutionary in many ways) evolving and then devolving style, but not much else beyond that.   Anyone else have that experience?

Has anyone read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay? I keep meaning to pick it up, but I haven't got round to it yet.  It sounds like a wonderful novel.

I was reticent, but it turns out to be quite good.  Lots in there for fans of Superman and the Golden Age.  A perfect fictional companion to Men of Tomorrow.  An exciting plot, with plenty of comic nerd detail that doesn't get in the way.

And in Chabon's case nothing new and a lot from Feiffer's book. In fact Feiffer's "self published" comic he did as a kid reffing his own golden agaers is called Radio Comics.

I've noticed a lot of comics historians (Steranko, et al) tend to pooh-pooh any post-Shuster Superman art as boring and pedestrian.  This seems to be based on the academician's view that comics exist in their purest form only while in the hands of their originators.  Thus, where I would judge Joe Shuster's work as crude and unschooled (albeit fun), the historian sees it as definitive...anything rough or ugly about it is all intentional and integral to the character, from their point of view.

Swan's stuff is more in the style of classic illustrators...more polished, more delicate, more pleasing to the eye.  And I suppose if you believed the essence of Superman's character lay in frenetic motion and acts of violent retribution, then you'd find the move to Swan's more sedate, mannerly Man of Steel depressing.

I have the opposite view: with all due respect to Jerry and Joe, the vision of Superman that won over most of the world is one fashioned by Bob Maxwell, Whit Ellsworth, Mort Weisinger, Curt Swan, Wayne Boring, George Reeves, Ed Hamilton, Otto Binder, Christopher Reeve, et al.  If we were going to put an honest "created by" credit on Superman comics, it would be longer than the story that followed.  Superman is the product of many hands, and frankly even poor old picked-on Al Plastino drew a version that would be more easily recognized and perceived as "correct" than Shuster's.

I think comics historians have a hard time accepting that anything worthwhile can be created by committee, or that maybe Superman hit his true heights (gasp!) after he was "stolen" away from Jerry and Joe.

Well put Nightwing.
And hey who wouldnt want a Plastino original?

Wonder how many versions of myths circulated before Homer even wrote them down as his version?

Nightwing;  Jerry Siegel was one of the main writers from around 1958 to around 1964.  It's intellectual dishonesty to deny Jerry Siegel any credit for the silver-age Superman.

Wow, I've never been accused of intellectual dishonesty before!  But don't worry, if the term catches on, I'll be sure to credit you every time I use it.  :lol:

I never said Jerry didn't write some great Siver Age Superman stories.  My point was that the things we love about Superman come not just from Jerry and Joe, but from dozens of creators over a period of decades.  And  that if we put a truly accurate "Created By" credit on the Superman character it would include a lot more than two names.  I didn't include Seigel or Shuster on my list because they are already credited, aren't they?

Getting back on topic, Jones' book does cover Jerry's return to the books under Uncle Morty and offers some fascinating insights into just why stories like "Superman's Return to Krypton" resonate so strongly.  And though I don't think Jones goes so far, I would say that Jerry's 60s output on the character beat his early stuff all hollow.  The Seigel and Shuster model Superman was, for me, about knocking down a bunch of straw men week after week.  The 60s model had pathos and emotional power.  And as you imply, the fact that Jerry was behind a lot of those stories proves his writing chops.

I love, always have loved and probably always will love Swan's Superman. I grew up on it, and quickly learned to spot which inkers had been on his pencils. My favourites were Bob Oksner and Tex Blaisdell, and Francisco Chiaramonte grew on me too. There was, as you say, something very delicate about Swan's rendition: he was just as comfortable depicting rather laid-back scenes showing Clark Kent at work, chatting to people, as he was with the action scenes.


Yep. Superman is very much a horse designed by a committee, though the original premise is of course still Siegel and Shuster, and remains unchanged.

Superman is like any character that has been appropriated so widely: there is a sort of shared notion of who he is that is completely different from what the purist might think. It's like Sherlock Holmes and his deerstalker: in the Conan Doyle stories, he only wore it in the countryside (no Victorian gentleman would walk around London in that getup), but film, TV and other adaptations have changed that perception.



Oh! You already used the word "committee". I thought I was being all smart and original. Well, I agree with you -- while I have a lot of fondness for Siegel and Shuster's Superman, I really prefer the later stuff. (Well, apart from all the frantic John Byrne Stalinist Revisionism, to be honest.)

Nightwing; sorry about the "intellectual dishonesty" remark".  It just irked me that you seemed to be giving George Brewer/Bessolo/Reeves & Christopher Reeve creator credit for the silver-age Superman while denying it to Jerry Siegel.  I see i overreacted.  There are those (including Permanus, it seems) who believe that Jerry Siegel had no involvement past 1947.  And even others who seem to give Siegel & Shuster no credit for anything after the story in Action Comics #1.  Some sources state that Jerry Siegel was actually the sole creator of Superman.  Seigel & Shuster are the ones who should get full credit for creating Superman.  The mythos itself i credit to the writers & artists (& some of the editors).

Wait til the K-Metal story is finished...it might help solidify the original Siegel vision, and a totally different outcome than what he thought...talk about hypertime...

Well, Jones is pretty dismissive of Shuster as well, while crediting him with the essential combination of unschooled cartoonishness and earnest proletarian love of the material that made Superman "believable" initially.  But he is quick to point out that the character and the mythos quickly outgrew Joe's skills.  For myself, I don't see the necessity of the evolution, as much as I love Swan, et al (ie, more than Shuster, mostly).

There is room in my worldview for both styles of Superman (this is why Earth-2 is such a great concept).

Jones has written eloquently on Silver Age artists elsewhere, so it seems he is more intent on proving a thesis by selectively ignoring the great art of the 50s-60s.  It would be interesting to read his chapters on Siegel's "Second Act" as part of the Great Comic Book Heroes, his book on the birth of the Silver Age.

No problem, I just wanted to make sure you knew where I was coming from.  I don't mind people thinking I'm all wet, I just want to make sure they know what I said first.  :lol:

One nice thing about Jones' book is that he does NOT take the easy way out and portray Jerry and Joe as a couple of poor schmuck kids steam-rollered by the DC monster.  Sure, there's a bit of that at work, but real life is a lot more complex than the tidy mythology that's sprung up around these two.  Jones shows how Jerry shot himself in the foot with poor decisions, paranoia and a lack of social skills.  Reading the book you really want to wince as you watch Jerry continually rub Jack Leibowitz and Harry Donenfeld the wrong way and set himself up for the fall of a lifetime.  Plus, in Jones' account, Jerry was an opportunist who saw Joe's art for what it was...limited...and was very much ready to leave his partner behind if that's what it took to succeed.  In fact, if anyone comes off as a real victim in Jones' account it's poor old Joe, who seems to have been in over his head from Day One and never really stood up for himself  to anyone, even Jerry.

Frankly, I love Jerry's Silver Age contributions and I wish he could've done more (but again, he tangled with DC and got tossed out for good).

And I'm not necessarily giving George Reeves credit for the SA Superman...he preceded the Silver Age...or Chris Reeve, who came after it!  My point is that the average man on the street doesn't know Silver from Bronze from Gold, but what he does know he probably learned from the the Adventures of Superman, Superfriends, the filmation cartoons or the Reeve movies.  And most of us who do care about comics are far too young to have read Action #1 the month it hit the stands; our Superman is very different.  Jerry and Joe started the ball rolling, but if the character had remained exclusively under their control, he may well have sputtered out by war's end, to be remembered as a fad like bobby socks and plane-spotter cards.

Sometimes in real life neither party of a lawsuit (or other kind of conflict) is the "bad guy".  Or the "good guy" for that matter.  They both believe they are "in the right" & the other guy is wrong.  These conflicts are usually so heated & bitter because neither side wants to listen to each other.  They just talk at each other.  I'm right, you are wrong & evil.  To a uninvolved 3rd party the invectives from both sides can sound like stereo.  I wonder, if things would have been all that different if Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster were the businessmen while Jack Liebowitz & Harry Donenfeld were the creators of Superman.  There would most likely be stories about how the evil Jerry & Joe stole Superman from the pure, innocent, naive Jack & Harry.

Abd the creation of the Spectre is an example of that.  Jones tells that story from an angle I'd never considered.  Although many of those Spectre stories are not exactly "improvements" on Shuster --perfect candidates for "outsider art" status to rival Fletcher Hanks.

It really is a great book, giving the most exacting, complex version of the events surrounding the creation and subsequent exploitation of Superman ever.

Siegel's story is really one of great success, all things considered.  Given his limited skills, personality, and initial inexperience, he carved out a unique life in the annals of American culture.  With imagination, determination, luck, a partner, and financial backing, he gave the world Superman.  And with experience and age, he created great art in the Silver Age.  From what I understand, he also left behind a loving family.