We all know the story of the two Jewish boys who created, for all
intents and purposes, the American pop cultural phenomenon of the comic-book
super-hero, right...? – Who had trouble
finding a publisher for their creation but who believed in it themselves and
persisted over several years until they finally succeeded...? – But who, young and naïve, yes, but
necessarily bowing to what was standard business practice in the nascent
industry at the time, the late 1930s, signed away all their rights to their own
creation with that first sale for a mere pittance...? … Well, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster do
indeed appear in this charming, well-researched, and well-written little book
about the origins of the genre, along with many other famous names of that
heroic age in which comic books literally exploded into late-Depression-era
America standing on the cusp of the Second World War, but they are not the main
characters. They serve instead as the
general models for O'Hearn's own self-styled “Kings of the Comic Books,” two
high school boys in New York City – Steve Hersh and Curly Goldman – and Superman
is a close enough archetype for their own creation, Sam Stark, Super Sleuth,
that although they had created him before April 1938, DC Comics' Harry
Donenfield was able to interdict publication and kill the feature. In that, of course, O'Hearn bleeds in the
famous case of Victor Fox's Wonder Man [link], the first and most blatant
outright imitation of Superman, who hit the stands for a single issue in
1939 (ironically, the same month as DC's own Detective Comics #27
featuring the first appearance of Batman). And from that mix of general models, plus a
generous helping of period flavor and sensitively written characterization, O’Hearn
creates a tale capturing perfectly what I imagine life at the birth of the
Golden Age to have been like. As I
stated in my short Amazon.com review [link],
“This is a must-read for any fan of the comic book genre.”
Cheers, and Thanks for reading!
Note: O’Hearn also runs a
wonderful blog [link] wherein he seeks to identify the writers and artists of the
Golden and Silver Ages when most went uncredited in the published stories
themselves, a task that requires a considerably more discerning eye for subtle
distinctions in style than I myself possess.
It’s an amazing accomplishment. –
The Prof
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