Supermen!: The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1939-41: The First Wave of Comic-book Heroes (1939-1941) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I have looked forward to the release of SUPERMEN! THE FIRST WAVE OF COMIC BOOK HEROES 1936 - 1941 solely due to the horrible experience I had reading Jim Krueger and Alex Ross' PROJECT SUPERPOWERS. The promo material for PS looked great and really got me interested in its modern take on a selection of public-domain Golden Age heroes, but the result was a catastrophe. When I learned that SUPERMEN! contained classic appearances from some of those very same characters, I decided that it was time to wash out my mouth with a sample of their original adventures.

SUPERMEN! is a selection of covers, ads, and stories featuring forgotten characters such as Dr. Mystic, the Clock, the Face, the Flame, Skyman, Blue Bolt, the Comet, and many more. Creators include a who's who of comic history: Jack Cole, Will Eisner, Bill Everett, Gardner Fox, Jack Kirby, Ogden Whitney, & Basil Wolverton, just to name a few. These stories are from the earliest days of the comic industry, and many of them, even though written by acknowledged founding fathers, are pretty laughable in terms of plot; however, the art, whether realistic or cartoonish, shows an inspired creativity that would shape the medium for decades. In any case, this book achieves exactly what it sets out to do: to give forgotten work from the Golden Age of comics its due. Jonathan Lethem provides an excellent introduction that really hits home, making me feel like we are long-lost brothers. In fact, it's one of the few truly worthwhile intros I've ever read in a comic collection. The end notes by editor Greg Sadowski wrap the book up nicely, providing interesting tidbits on the creators, stories, and characters.

Fantagraphics has once again done fans a great service by releasing a beautiful, inexpensive reprint of obscure Golden Age material. SUPERMEN! is presented in a similar format to the bestselling I SHALL DESTROY ALL THE CIVILIZED PLANETS! It's a bit smaller and thicker, but it features the same garish colors, production values, and paper. I'm certainly hoping for additional volumes.

I love this book! I read it through cover-to-cover twice during the first week I owned it. "Supermen! The First Wave of Comic Book Hereos 1836-1941" is a great collection, and in a way is kind of nostalgic for me.
That may sound kind of funny considering I am from the baby boomer generation (I'm 55). That means I was a kid during the Marvel Age of Comics. In the late 60s their title Fantasy Masterpieces ran Golden Age stories of Captain America, Human Torch, Submariner and others. These tales, 25 years old at the time, were so foreign from the 60s comics that I was immediately taken with them. The art on Captain America just flowed, liquid-like from panel to panel - sheer action. It was fascinating to see where Jack Kirby came from in his early days, and Bill Everett's Submariner had such an elegant style to it. And being an aspiring comic book artist myself I remember looking at Carl Burgos' primitive efforts on The Human Torch and thinking, "I could do better than that!"
At around that time I got introduced to comics fandom, subscribing to "fanzines" with articles about the Golden Age of Comics written by readers who happened to be kids at the time. And even the self-published comics of the day had a "gutsy" quality to them, akin to the Golden Age. Anyone remember Biljo White's "The Eye"?
It was just a few years later when DC experimented with a 48-page format filling the extra pages with more Golden Age material, and then their 100 page spectaculars. These efforts were quite exciting to behold, but the Comics Code Authority at the time wouldn't allow the more gruesome and off-the-wall type of comics popular in those early days.
Not so in "Supermen!" This is a fine sampling of the early medium, touching on the evolution from newspaper comics to the comic book format. Considering some of the greats of the era are represented, you can see how their earlier efforts contributed to later developments. Take Jack Cole, for example. On the heels of his Plastic Man, he is represented in this collection by three different stories, which he both wrote and drew, and his direct, exciting cartoon-y look reminds me a lot of self-published efforts. Take The Comet, a "hero" with the power of his eyes giving off a disintegrating ray. He is hypnotized by a crook and murders a bunch of people, and finally the crook himself by looking at him with his visor up, melting him into a puddle! Jack Cole's experimental layout is seen on page 5 of this story when he abandons the three-tier panel format for a diagonally placed center panel of The Comet blasting policemen! Twenty years later Marvel's X-men had the character Cyclops and I don't recall him murdering anyone with his eye power!
Silver Streak is Jack Cole's second effort from about the same time. He's one of those fast running heroes like the Flash. Jack draws really primitive insect monsters in this one, obviously with no reference material. They look so ridiculous, but then these creatures are like something a 10-year-old would come up with. This naive approach has it's own charm and even though the art has a primitive look throughout the story moves along at a fast pace.
But Jack Cole's real tour-de-force here is his 16-page epic "The Claw Versus Daredevil!" In this tale he really hits his stride, and believe me the Comics Code Authority would never go for this one. The Claw is a monstrous being about 50 feet tall - Asian - from a hidden land in Tibet intent on conquering America. He would be considered a racist caricature today, and he is depicted crushing a disciple in his claw-like hand until the unfortunate individual is bleeding profusely before he dies. He also steps on some of his men and grinds them into the ground much like King Kong does to the jungle natives in the classic film. And like King Kong The Claw shows up in New York City (he's arrived by a drilling machine that he used to go under Europe and the Atlantic Ocean). He channels electricity from under the ground and hurls lightning bolts at skyscrapers wrecking them, arousing the attention of the Daredevil, a harlequin costumed wisecracking hero. The two engage in a spectacular battle more wild than anything seen in the Marvel Age of Comics. This is inspired work, and typical of most of the comics seen in this collection.
It's interesting to see some of Bill Everett's early efforts just before The Submariner; in a 3-page Dirk The Demon from 1939, he has kind of fairy tale like illustration style. It looks like he'd fit in with all the animators on Disney's Snow White (Dirk, the boy hero I first thought was a girl - he has this huge pompadour hairdo). But then in Sub-Zero - a hero with a "cold" touch - he has adapted a more "heroic" I'd say style, a little awkward - and you can see he's heading toward the angular type of drawing that he utilized on The Submariner. It's a bit messy, but to my eye it tells me that he's experimenting, and that's the mark of a good artist, pushing beyond one established style into something new.
There are plenty of notes in the back of the book giving background for each story and the surrounding history of the fledgling comic book industry. The Iger-Eisner studio is mentioned. Will Eisner, as a young man realized that the newspaper comics reprints would soon run out of material and hired a staff on artists on salary so he could oversee the quality. One of his artists was the young Lou Fine represented here in the high adventure tale The Flame. It has a sort of Zorro like quality to it, and soon Lou Fine would go on to more elegant illustration in The Ray and The Black Condor. Eisner himself illustrates Yarko The Great Master of Magic. His artistic approach is unlike The Spirit here but clear and accessible.
There's plenty of science fiction based strips as well, the children of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. Rex Dexter of Mars is illustrated by Dick Briefer. He draws heroic proportioned people with some imaginative looking robots. And Basil Wolverton's classic Spacehawk is here as well. Each panel is a beautifully rendered detailed piece of art. Fletcher Hanks, a true "outsider" artist checks in with a Stardust episode (see "I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets") where the super being encounters a girl and takes her to his paradise like domain, unusual for this character to hint at any romantic interest, and his Fantomah Mystery Woman of the Jungle is the only female "superman" in the whole collection and probably the most ruthless of the lot. She transforms into an evil-looking skull face being and captures a man who has engineered a terrible ape army and throws him to the mean apes themselves. There's a shot of the beasts setting upon him tearing him - literally - from limb to limb. You can see his arm and leg flying above them!
Then there's the young Jack Kirby represented by Blue Bolt and a very early science fiction attempt "Cosmic Carson." Jack, unlike some of the other artists at the time didn't see comics as a stepping stone to a career in illustration. He loved the medium and his long career is evidence of that.
"Supermen" is a great collection of the early efforts of imaginative artists of the era, some of whom went on to long careers and others forgotten. I'd love to see a second edition perhaps featuring some of the MLJ heroes like The Hangman, Mr. Justice, The Shield, The Web, The Black Hood and Steel Sterling. And how about Bulletman or the Green Lama?
I can't say enough good things about this book! And I want to see more of the same!

Greg Sadowski deserves high honors for putting this book together. While most comic fans know that Superman, Batman and Captain America date to late 30s and early 40s few have seen the environment where these enduring icons emerged.

Sadowski starts with a 1936 strip by Superman creators Siegel and Shuster featuring a character in a precussor to Superman's costume.

He continues with over 20 Golden Age stories including space heroes, masked crime-fighters, and the surreal works of Fletcher Hanks. Commentary by Sadowski puts each story in context and explains the significance.