Look, Readers! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No – it’s our monthly book spotlight!
I always wondered why those first two guys sounded so excited. I’m generally at least a little bit hyped to see a bird because I’m kind of a wildlife nut but I don’t… y’know. Yell about it every time. For starters, I don’t want to scare away the bird I’m so excited to see in the first place. Secondly, not many people share my excitement about ornithology so I know I’d just kind of be interrupting whatever business they had in the area by being unnecessarily loud. And as for planes, I bet Metropolis has an airport. It’s probably not unusual to see planes in the sky. It probably wasn’t even back in the 1940s. Also, if you lived in a world where a guy was known to fly around in the sky, wouldn’t that be your first choice of thing you hoped you were looking at? I’d probably just be yelling “Hey guys! Look up there! It’s freakin’ Superman!” before correcting myself; “Ah… nope. Actually, just a Northern Mockingbird. Sorry, everyone.”
Anyway, all that aside… welcome to this month’s literary deep dive! I wanted to get in on the fun brewing around the new Superman film and the associated #summerofsuperman hashtag and I’ve been wanting to get this book for a while. What better reason, right?
I’ve been a fan of the big blue boyscout ever since I can remember. One of my core recollections from being small was trying to tie a dishtowel around my shoulders so I could have a cape like his, only to tie it too tight and start choking. My Mom was my super hero that day and managed to undo the knot before I’d asphyxiated. I think I was four, but I can’t be sure. I’d stand under the light in my bedroom or in the living room, spinning myself around in place, fists clenched at the end of outstretched arms, until I was so dizzy I’d fall over. I was pretending to fly towards the sun.
Never did jump off the roof, though.
So, grab some popcorn and your soda of choice. We’re headed back to 1938 on the mean streets of Cleveland, Ohio. Superman may have been born in deep space on a doomed world called Krypton, but he was first imagined in a small house on Kimberly Avenue in Cleveland.
Book Stats
- Author: Larry Tye.
Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle, and Audible.
Price: $15.97 for Hardcover, $17.00 for Paperback, $11.99 for Kindle, and $17.72 for Audible, or one Credit on Audible.
Length: 432 pages or 13 hours 14 minutes in audio format.
Narrator: Scott Brick
Number of books in the series: It’s a standalone work of non-fiction.
Basic Premise
This is the real-world history of Kal-El. The title might make it sound like a fictional history or biography, but it is in fact an extremely detailed look at all the people responsible for the creation of Superman and how his history unfolded, influencing the world around him and being influenced in turn.
We start with Jerry Seigel. His father was murdered by thieves while they were stealing a suit from his humble second hand clothes store. (Told you the streets of Cleveland could be mean.) In an origin story more reminiscent of Batman’s, Jerry grew up wishing for the kind of hero who could put the world right and prevent these kinds of things happening to kids like him. He wasn’t popular at school – short and shy and extremely Jewish in a time when that wasn’t exactly smiled upon, he would comfort himself by writing stories. He published his own Sci-Fi magazines by borrowing the school’s mimeograph machine, and submitted stories to collected story magazines under an array of assumed identities.
Joe Shuster, meanwhile, was taller and even more quiet and shy than Jerry! They were introduced by way of family friends and were immediately drawn to one another. Joe, despite awful eyesight, was a great artist and through him Jerry was able to see some of his written words brought to life. Together they put together the first Superman stories in 1932, plotted by typewriter and drawn with pencil and ink at a humble kitchen table. These stories were sent out into the world, to many different publishers, none of which wanted to take a risk by printing them.
From there we learn about Jack Liebowitz and Harry Donenfeld. These two brought the company known, at the time, as National Allied Publications and they needed new material to print. They bought the rights to Superman for $130. They were taking a chance on publishing a new kind of story; something never seen before. In a publishing landscape dominated by horror stories, war stories and westerns, would a man in a red cape and blue unitard, beating up corrupt businessmen and politicians sell well in Great Depression era America?
Well. Obviously.
Superman always does well when America faces times of strife. The Great Depression was one such time and this new character, filled with hope and vibrancy and action was exactly what people needed to inspire and delight them.
We get to learn about the movie theater serials starring Kirk Alyn, the George Reeves TV show and the radio show voiced by Bud Collyer. This one is especially interesting as it focuses a lot of time on Superman versus the klu klux klan or, as they’re called in the radio show, the clan of the fiery cross. Superman’s radio show cut recruitment for the klan massively and exposed secret code words and dog whistles used by the real life villains so they’d be easier to identify in public and find their business harder to conduct. There’s a lot of mystery and straight up legend surrounding this pivotal broadcast and the facts are, honestly, just as wild as the fiction!
This book goes into exhaustive detail on about 75 years worth of Superman history. From those early issues and the creation of all of Superman’s lore (First introduction of Krypton and the Kents to the early physical model for Lois Lane and who she eventually married!) to the legal wranglings present between the heirs to Superman’s creators and Time Warner Media. It stops just short of the Man of Steel movie released in 2013, though does mention at the very least who directed and starred in it. It also hits its end point during the darker days of the New 52 in terms of comics. I wish there were a revised version with another chapter covering things like Superman and Lois or My Adventures with Superman or the Rebirth storyline in the comics. Or the current DC/IDW Sonic the Hedgehog collaboration and crossover where literally two of my all time favorite characters of all time get to interact.
This is official art. It exists. This is canon. (Probably.) What a time to be alive!
If you’re a fan of the Man of Tomorrow and want to know more about how and why he came to be and the many wonderful, talented people who have brought him to life over the past near century, this is the book for you.
My Take
So, as mentioned, I’ve been a fan of Superman since I can remember. This book is exhaustive at a level even I found impressive and is full of facts that I didn’t know. I think most people with even a passing interest in comic book superheroes know about Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, for example, but their lives wound up very different than we might have assumed. Likewise, Superman: The Movie is a massive cultural touchstone for both Superhero fans (There’s a reason that Kevin Feige insisted that his crew watch that particular Film before working on almost any Marvel movie.) and casual moviegoers, but the way that film came to be is so wild and I had no idea of ANY of the back room squabbling, staff changes and strange money moves that made it possible. A small example of this is Marlon Brando who played Jor-El, Superman’s biological Father, was paid 3.7 million dollars for the role plus an unprecedented 11.75% of the film’s net profits while Christopher Reeve, the main man himself, was paid $250,000… for footage used in both Superman: The Movie and Superman II! (Marlon Brando also wanted Jor El to stick around as a talking bagel or briefcase.)
It does an equally deep dive into Superman’s death and resurrection in the 90s, with information and trivia about the time in the writer’s room where this plot was cooked up. Even more than that it goes deep into the public reaction; the memorials and the black arm bands and the tons of mail that made its way to the offices at DC comics when people learned that the plan was to kill off the Last Son of Krypton. Similarly, though opposite in tone, the public reaction to Superman and Lois finally tying the ol’ knot is looked at! There are short bits of interviews with not only industry professionals but average, every day people scattered throughout the book and they always made me smile.
The narrator, Scott Brick, is solid. Because this is non-fiction, he’s not called upon to do voices or accents but his brisk, no-nonsense reading of the book is perfect and just what’s needed.
All in all, this is an extremely good resource for anyone who wants to know more about not only Superman, but American history as it relates to print media all the way through radio, TV and movies. Superman’s there, through all of it. He’s the one we keep coming back to, especially when the country faces uncertainty or hardship.
All in all, a super-b book and I recommend it!
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