Supermen! The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941 - video preview

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, a generous selection of vintage promotional ads, and comprehensive end notations by editor Greg Sadowski, making it indispensable to anyone interested in the origins of superheroes and the history of the comic book form.

192-page full-color 7.5" x 10.5" softcover
ISBN: 978-1-56097-971-5

http://www.fantagraphics.com/supermen

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• supermen
• comicbooks
• goldenage
• willeisner
• jackcole
• billeverett
• loufine
• fletcherhanks
• jackkirby
• jerrysiegel
• joeshuster
• basilwolverton
• superheroes
• book
• fantagraphics

[EdGauthier1]

Wow, were the colors really that bad (meaning limited) in their original form? This neon nightmare is true "traffic light" coloring at it's worst - practically nothing but red, green and yellow throughout.

(With sometimes a little blue thrown in.) What was the deal there - they were told they could only use three or four colors and mainly had to avoid all the rest?

Certainly brings new meaning to the term "four color" printing!

[fantagraphics]

Ed, yes, these were scanned and restored from the printed comics. Comic book coloring was definitely a primitive craft in the early days -- techniques for blending colors using halftones were still being developed, and shortcuts were often taken in the name of cheapness and expediency.

[archer1949]

THat Fletcher Hanks stuff was brilliant!

I'd never heard of the guy until I read this book.

[granotanegra]

Fantastic!!!!

[mysterywalker]

This would be a little better if maybe you spoke during it. What always bothered me about the Silver Streak was that he isn't silver in any way shape or form. Stardust rocks. The Claw rocks... in an evil way, of course.