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

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Gerard Jones, a longtime insider to the comic book business, draws on years of research and interview to reveal how the collision of Yiddish and American culture shaped the modern vision of the hero. He recounts the frightened counterattack against comics that nearly destroyed the industry in the 1950s and traces the underground resurgence that inspired a new generation to transmute those long-ago fantasies into art, literature, and blockbuster movies. Along the way he uncovers never-before-told stories about the makers of America's most peculiar art form." Far more than the story of superheroes, Men of Tomorrow tells of the growth of geek culture from its birth in the science fiction fandom of the 1920s to its conquest of mass media sixty years later and tracks pop culture's transformation from the freewheeling, pickpocket entrepreneurship of the early twentieth century through immigration, technological upheaval, and a pair of world wars to the corporate control of the AOL/Time Warner era.

FROM THE CRITICS

John Hodgman - The New York Times

Superman 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.

Library Journal

In this superb, insightful history, Jones (Killing Monsters) tells the story of the early days of the comics industry-the late 1930s to mid-1950s era commonly referred to by fans as comics' "Golden Age." The biggest names of the time are all here: Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Bob Kane, William M. Gaines, and others. But Jones gives special focus to the career of Jerry Siegel-the writer who, with artist Joe Shuster, created Superman-following his days as a young science fiction fan, his phenomenal success, and his battles with DC for credit and compensation for his creation. Jones displays a firm grasp on the minutiae of comics history, but he goes far beyond those facts, exploring the psychology of the comics' creators and publishers and presenting a wealth of detail on the cultural background of pulp magazines, Prohibition, and Jewish immigration from which the comics arose. Jones's earlier The Comic Book Heroes (o.p.) superbly covers the era after 1956 and is recommended for comics fans, while this book will have wide appeal to fans and mainstream readers alike. Highly recommended. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews