Once I planned on reviewing books telling the histories of both Wonder Woman and Batman, along with their respective creators, I knew that I would have to do another to round off this series by reviewing a novel covering the last member of DC’s trinity and the two men who created him. While Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman had a tendency to read like a history textbook, which covered the time period in which William Moulton Marston lived, and Glen Weldon’s The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture reads like a detailed timeline of Batman’s evolution and the resulting factions of fandoms that sprung up in response to the character over the years, Brad Ricca’s Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster – The Creators of Superman strikes the perfect balance between establishing a historical context, telling complete author biographies, and laying out a timeline of the Man of Steel’s development through the years.
Ricca’s book beautifully weaves the “origin stories” of Superman’s creators, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster – two sons of Jewish immigrants from Cleveland, Ohio that considered themselves outsiders – with the origin stories of the Man of Tomorrow, his cast of supporting characters, and his entire world. Jumping back and forth in time, Ricca gives readers a detailed account of the early lives of Siegel and Shuster, their family struggles, and their school careers, focusing a lot of time on how the science fiction and pulp magazines of the day and working on the school newspaper informed both boys’ sensibilities as they grew up. Not only would these sensibilities all shape the world of Superman, but so too did the various people they met throughout their childhood and early adulthood, aspects of many of whom are reflected in characters such as Lois Lane, Lex Luthor, and other characters in the mythos. What’s clear is that all of their experiences, the people they knew, and the alienation they felt in life melded together like magic, resulting in the truly authentic, sincere, good character that is Superman.
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What’s interesting is that this perfect storm of events in the lives of Siegel and Shuster can almost be seen as a lucky accident. Indeed, Ricca seems to believe that the creation of a Superman-like character was inevitable considering how many aspects of the character’s story Siegel and Shuster pulled from the pulp magazines that came before him; his theory is that eventually, somebody else would have created a similar character had Siegel and Shuster not done it first. Ricca’s theory that Superman’s creation was a happy accident is given some credence when we take into account that Siegel and Shuster tried before Superman, with various degrees of success, to create other enduring cartoon and comic book characters, and they tried again post the creation of Superman as well. Nothing they did, however, ever managed to capture the hearts of Americans – or the world – as much as Kal-El or his alter ego, Clark Kent.
What makes this all the more heartbreaking is the fact that National Comics – the precursor to DC Comics – bought the rights to Superman from Siegel and Shuster, who had no idea about the phenomenon that their creation was going to become, for a mere $130.00. (Earning each of them only $65.00!) For years, the writer and the artist continued drawing the comics while battling for more credit and more money from National until they parted ways with the company and with one another, at which time they were desperate to come out from under the shadow of the Last Son of Krypton by creating other characters individually. It’s a cautionary tale for writers and artists about copyright issues, and one that is reminiscent of the way Bill Finger was boxed out of getting residuals and credit for his role in creating Batman. (Though unlike Finger’s family, Siegel’s and Shuster’s managed to successfully get a piece of the Superman pie a little bit quicker, though unfortunately still too late, for both creators were dead by the time it happened.)
Besides giving readers an enormous amount insight into the lives of Siegel and Shuster, and the creation of Superman, Ricca writes his novel in such a way so that the narrative is framed in the context of examining the American dream. The novel explores what exactly the American dream was back when these two creators lived, and how everybody strived to achieve it throughout their lives. In addition to this, however, the novel also details the pitfalls of said dream, and all of the ways in which those in power try to keep down those attempting to achieve fame and riches. Indeed, the lives of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in general were both the epitome of succeeding at achieving the American dream before it all went wrong for them, and it’s utterly fascinating to read about the creation of the grandfather of all superheroes through this specific lens.
Brad Ricca’s novel is extremely well written and compelling. Between this book and the other two I’ve reviewed over the past few days – Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman and Glen Weldon’s The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture – I enjoyed this the best of the three. Ricca managed to craft an entertaining book that is both extremely knowledgeable and enthusiastically geeky, and it’s a must read for not only Superman fans, but comic book fans and lovers of biographies in general.
