Product Description

The enduring cultural phenomenon of comic book heroes was invented in the late 1930s by a talented and hungry group of artists and writers barely out of their teens, flying by the seat of their pants to create something new, exciting, and above all profitable. The iconography and mythology they created flourishes to this day in comic books, video, movies, fine art, advertising, and practically all other media. Supermen! collects the best and the brightest of this first generation, including Jack Cole, Will Eisner, Bill Everett, Lou Fine, Fletcher Hanks, Jack Kirby, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, and Basil Wolverton. If the reader is expecting to find an All-American group of altruistic do-gooders, he in for quite a jolt. As Jonathan Lethem writes in his Foreword, “A collection like Supermen! works like a reverse-neutron bomb to assumptions about the birth of the superhero image: it tears down the orderly structures of theory and history and leaves the figures standing in full view, staring back at us in all their defiant disorienting particularity, their blazing strangeness.” Beautifully designed and produced in full color, Supermen! contains twenty full-length stories, ten full- sized covers, and a generous selection of vintage promotional ads, and is indispensable to anyone interested in the origins of superheroes and the history of the comic book form.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #283180 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781560979715
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Booklist
Superheroes have been the dominant comic-book genre ever since Superman transformed the industry in 1938. Other than a handful of hardy survivors, the hundreds of costumed crime fighters that sprang up in comics’ early era are long forgotten. Supermen! consists of vintage stories featuring a representative handful of those heroes. The earliest, some actually precursors of the Man of Steel, are Mandrake-inspired magicians (Yarko the Great), masked detectives (the Clock), space explorers (Cosmic Carson), and, occasionally, hybrids (Fero, Planet Detective). Later come cape-and-tights-clad stalwarts Skyman, Silver Streak, Daredevil, and Blue Bolt. Their primordial exploits may be crude, primitive even, but also quaintly entertaining and possessed of a brash, undeniable vitality. Often their naïveté is unintentionally hilarious, as in two stories by Fletcher Hanks, the Ed Wood of comics. But there’s also incipient artistry in the early work of Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Basil Wolverton, and Jack Cole, who developed into leading talents. These early examples of a genre still finding its way display conventions recognizable in their superpowered successors. --Gordon Flagg

Review
Supermen! is the book I've been waiting for—a crazed whirlwind tour through the raw badlands of early superheroes, the best and the weirdest of the early days...Fantagraphics Books has assembled 20 of these quirky gems into a nicely designed, affordable full-color paperback. It's like a roadmap of alternative history, where you can imagine that a character like Stardust the Super Wizard became a star...It's one of the best comic collections of the year. Bring on a sequel! (Nik Dirga - Blogcritics )

Supermen! is a rambunctious anthology of the earliest superhero stories—gaudy, crude, infernally potent things, cranked out by young cartoonists. (Douglas Wolk - The New York Times Book Review )

Supermen! is an interesting book. All these knockoffs of Superman have a certain creepy charm—like an off-brand children's entertainer—and there is some art, especially by Basil Wolverton and Jack Cole, that is literally decades ahead of its time. (Paul Constant - The Stranger )

Supermen! provides a concise glimpse into what the early comic books were like back when the medium was really fresh... Today’s readers will be surprised at how some of the material from a supposed more naive times really comes across rather grim and gritty... The 20 stories on view here provide an intriguing insight of where many of our modern day comic book heroes may have originated from, even if indirectly. (Kevin Mathews - The Power of Pop )

Supermen!, this anthology lovingly assembled by Greg Sadowski, makes the case that these earliest endeavors by the future creators of masterworks like The Spirit, Captain America, and Plastic Man were more than crude throat-clearings—they were unfiltered manifestations 
of psyche, lousy with erotic charge and questionable politics. [Grade:] A–. (Entertainment Weekly )

A beautifully designed volume of early American comics... The edition is both aesthetically pleasing and sturdy, featuring clarified reprinting of the colour strips, covers, and scattered elements of advertisements and back matter. (Michael Leader - Den of Geek )

A fun anthology that perfectly captures the experience of stumbling across a random stack of old comics in someone’s attic. (Tangognat.com )

Excitingly surreal…our appreciation for the bizarre otherness of these characters in retrospect suggests that our contemporary icons might well appear no less ‘totally opaque and infinitely awkward’ to future readers. (The Village Voice )

Greg Sadowski's anthology Supermen!: The First Wave Of Comic Book Heroes 1939-41 pulls together some of the goofiest, most innocent, most violent superhero comics ever penned, excavating rarities from the dawn of the genre when small studios set out to reinvent pulp literature in four colors.... This is pure and unadulterated Id, the kind of thing that inspired a moral panic about the corruption of the young. It's every bit as potent today. (Cory Doctorow - BoingBoing )

It’s great to read comics that are fun, inventive, and delighting in the medium instead of dour, 'relevant,' and procedural. Supermen! is a teasing look at a truly Golden Age. (Dave Lartigue - Dave Ex Machina )

I’ve always gotten a kick out of early comics. They’re anti-art in action. Irrational, crude and daffily violent. Kinda like early punk rock. (M. Ace - Irregular Orbit )

Maybe the business was too young, or maybe these characters were just a warm-up for what was to come so they didn't quite stick, but they are just as cool as any early Superman or Batman comic. The comics are all really neat to read, crude and unfiltered... So if you’re a comics fan, especially of the early stuff, this book is a must-have... [Supermen! The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941] is gritty and exciting, so definitely go check it out! (Tom Hardej - CC2K )

Pure pop culture heaven. (Kevin Church - BeaucoupKevin.com )

The biggest surprise might be how good these stories are, even if they failed to take off in the way that, say, Superman did... [T]he Notes section at the end, written by editor Greg Sadowski, ...is truly fantastic... His studious efforts are worth the price of the book alone... These stories deserved another look and more attention. Sadowski has done an admirable job of making Supermen! The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936–1941 not only reverent, but exciting and fun as well. (John Hogan - Graphic Novel Reporter )

The comics are glorious, primitive works of pulp science fiction, crude ancestors of the modern superhero. Yet there's something vital and imaginative about these unsophisticated comics which clumsily explore superhero stories and ideas long before they calcified into cliche. (David Campbell - The Society for the Advancement of Dave )

This Greg Sadowski-edited and designed anthology of early superhero comics is, like Paul Karasik's Fletcher Hanks collection and DC's Jack Kirby omnibuses before it, a real "here's how it's done" moment.... In a time when the major superhero companies seem dead-set on creating the most uniform tone possible across their lines...evidence that superheroes can behave in any number of ways against any number of threats is indeed liberating, perhaps even necessary. (Sean T. Collins - AllTooFlat.com )

What was once mundane had become utterly fascinating in Fantagraphics’ superb collection Supermen! (Rob Lott - Bookgasm )

About the Author
Greg Sadowski is a writer, editor and designer (B. Krigstein, Supermen!) living in Washington State.

Jonathan Lethem is the author of six novels, including the bestsellers The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives in Brooklyn and Maine.

Customer Reviews

Who needs Alex Ross?
I have looked forward to the release of SUPERMEN! THE FIRST WAVE OF COMIC BOOK HEROES 1936 - 1941 solely due to the horrible experience I had reading Jim Krueger and Alex Ross' PROJECT SUPERPOWERS. The promo material for PS looked great and really got me interested in its modern take on a selection of public-domain Golden Age heroes, but the result was a catastrophe. When I learned that SUPERMEN! contained classic appearances from some of those very same characters, I decided that it was time to wash out my mouth with a sample of their original adventures.

SUPERMEN! is a selection of covers, ads, and stories featuring forgotten characters such as Dr. Mystic, the Clock, the Face, the Flame, Skyman, Blue Bolt, the Comet, and many more. Creators include a who's who of comic history: Jack Cole, Will Eisner, Bill Everett, Gardner Fox, Jack Kirby, Ogden Whitney, & Basil Wolverton, just to name a few. These stories are from the earliest days of the comic industry, and many of them, even though written by acknowledged founding fathers, are pretty laughable in terms of plot; however, the art, whether realistic or cartoonish, shows an inspired creativity that would shape the medium for decades. In any case, this book achieves exactly what it sets out to do: to give forgotten work from the Golden Age of comics its due. Jonathan Lethem provides an excellent introduction that really hits home, making me feel like we are long-lost brothers. In fact, it's one of the few truly worthwhile intros I've ever read in a comic collection. The end notes by editor Greg Sadowski wrap the book up nicely, providing interesting tidbits on the creators, stories, and characters.

Fantagraphics has once again done fans a great service by releasing a beautiful, inexpensive reprint of obscure Golden Age material. SUPERMEN! is presented in a similar format to the bestselling I SHALL DESTROY ALL THE CIVILIZED PLANETS! It's a bit smaller and thicker, but it features the same garish colors, production values, and paper. I'm certainly hoping for additional volumes.

A fun, fun look at the history of comics
Greg Sadowski deserves high honors for putting this book together. While most comic fans know that Superman, Batman and Captain America date to late 30s and early 40s few have seen the environment where these enduring icons emerged.

Sadowski starts with a 1936 strip by Superman creators Siegel and Shuster featuring a character in a precussor to Superman's costume.

He continues with over 20 Golden Age stories including space heroes, masked crime-fighters, and the surreal works of Fletcher Hanks. Commentary by Sadowski puts each story in context and explains the significance.

Not Only Reverent, but Exciting and Fun as Well
Considering how much tribute the current comics industry pays to the Golden Age of its past, it's amazing how much is overlooked and how often we forget the real glut of comics being produced at the time. Redressing the issue somewhat is Supermen! The First Wave of Comic Book Superheroes 1936-1941, which compiles some of the lesser-known lights of the time. The biggest surprise might be how good these stories are, even if they failed to take off in the way that, say, Superman did.

Speaking of Superman, his creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, kick off this collection with a story about their mysterious "occult detective" Dr. Mystic. The rest of the stories run the gamut from fun to frivolous and include some of the biggest luminaries comics has to offer: Will Eisner, Gardner Fox, Jack Kirby, Jack Cole, Basil Wolverton, and a host of others, some of whom never attained the recognition they deserved. The styles incorporate the building blocks of comic art today, and the stories represent the superheroes, aliens and monsters, and mystic forces that drove the marketplace.

Bestselling author Jonathan Lethem provides a foreword to the book, properly cataloguing the scope and impact these stories had. Putting the works into context is helpful, but it's the Notes section at the end, written by editor Greg Sadowski, that is truly fantastic. He documents each story included in this collection and provides the history, background, and explanations needed to understand the stories in the proper context. His studious efforts are worth the price of the book alone. Tucked away in the back, they are missed until you reach the end of the book, at which time it's difficult to avoid reading the notes and backtracking to read the stories again, now armed with new information to better your enjoyment of them.

These stories deserved another look and more attention. Sadowski has done an admirable job of making Supermen! The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941 not only reverent, but exciting and fun as well.

-- John Hogan