Publisher: Basic Books
Author: Gerard Jones
Paperback £9.70
ISBN 9780099487067

This review starts with a question: HBO and Lionsgate Television, where are you? If ever a book deserved a television series to made then Gerard Jones Men Of Tomorrow – The True Story of the Birth of the Superheroes should at the top of the list of both of those companies. A joint production between HBO and Lionsgate would work; Men Of Tomorrow is an obvious amalgam of The Sopranos and Mad Men, the gangster connection and the sale of superhero dreams to a hungry public.

Author Gerard Jones, frank and detailed research (no comic book company mentioned in Men of Tomorrow seems to have sued) into the early history of the comic book industry makes for informative reading; at times, jaw dropping too. The book sports a second subtitle too, one more fitting: ‘Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book’, gives the reader a better idea of what is in store. Men of Tomorrow picked up the Eisner Award in 2005 and it is easy to see why.

Men of Tomorrow spans the early years of the comic book industry in the 1930s, the formation of DC, the rise of Marvel and the demise of companies like EC, Fawcett Comics and Fox.

Jack Liebowitz passed away, at the age of one hundred in 2000, far from his original role as company accountant for Detective Comics Inc. and, by 2000, a part of the growing organisation called Warner Communications.  Harry Donenfeld, the salesman, the one time publisher of pulp and girlie magazines, and gangster groupie, who, hand in hand with Liebowitz would build, from the ground up the company that would eventually, simply call itself DC. Donenfeld would end his days holed up in a hotel (which DC caught the tab for) with his mistress.

Intertwined in this early history of the comic book industry, is the life and times of Superman’s creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Their creation rejected by United Features Syndicate and Esquire Features before finding a home in Action Comics. The highs of their creation and the lows of being outsmarted by Liebowitz’s deft accountancy, able to show a loss on the percentage payments Siegel and Shuster had contractual rights to; the Superman radio show, the Superman merchandising, and later the Superman television show.

Although by then Siegel and Shuster had lost control of their creation, the ten-year contract both signed to produce the Superman comic book had expired and would not be renewed by DC for business reasons, which you could argue, means profits and boardroom power.

Jerry Siegel would be allowed back many years later to write some outstanding Superman stories as long as Siegel did not publicly state he was the creator of Superman. Corrections to the plight of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster would come in the decades to follow but then only due to organized protest.

Men Of Tomorrow – The True Story of the Birth of the Superheroes does not always focus on proudest moments of the early history of the comic book industry but Gerard Jones’ book does seem to evoke that old adage: ‘It’s not personal, it’s just business’.

Reviewer: Steve Hooker