Seventy-five years after he came to life, Superman remains one of America’s most adored and enduring heroes. Now Larry Tye, the prize-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author of Satchel, has written the first full-fledged history not just of the Man of Steel but of the creators, designers, owners, and performers who made him the icon he is today.
Legions of fans from Boston to Buenos Aires can recite the story of the child born Kal-El, scion of the doomed planet Krypton, who was rocketed to Earth as an infant, raised by humble Kansas farmers, and rechristened Clark Kent. Known to law-abiders and evildoers alike as Superman, he was destined to become the invincible champion of all that is good and just—and a star in every medium from comic books and comic strips to radio, TV, and film.
But behind the high-flying legend lies a true-to-life saga every bit as compelling, one that begins not in the far reaches of outer space but in the middle of America’s heartland. During the depths of the Great Depression, Jerry Siegel was a shy, awkward teenager in Cleveland. Raised on adventure tales and robbed of his father at a young age, Jerry dreamed of a hero for a boy and a world that desperately needed one. Together with neighborhood chum and kindred spirit Joe Shuster, young Siegel conjured a human-sized god who was everything his creators yearned to be: handsome, stalwart, and brave, able to protect the innocent, punish the wicked, save the day, and win the girl. It was on Superman’s muscle-bound back that the comic book and the very idea of the superhero took flight.
Tye chronicles the adventures of the men and women who kept Siegel and Shuster’s “Man of Tomorrow” aloft and vitally alive through seven decades and counting. Here are the savvy publishers and visionary writers and artists of comics’ Golden Age who ushered the red-and-blue-clad titan through changing eras and evolving incarnations; and the actors—including George Reeves and Christopher Reeve—who brought the Man of Steel to life on screen, only to succumb themselves to all-too-human tragedy in the mortal world. Here too is the poignant and compelling history of Siegel and Shuster’s lifelong struggle for the recognition and rewards rightly due to the architects of a genuine cultural phenomenon.
From two-fisted crimebuster to über-patriot, social crusader to spiritual savior, Superman—perhaps like no other mythical character before or since—has evolved in a way that offers a Rorschach test of his times and our aspirations. In this deftly realized appreciation, Larry Tye reveals a portrait of America over seventy years through the lens of that otherworldly hero who continues to embody our best selves.
About Larry Tye
Larry Tye was an award-winning journalist at The Boston Globe and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. A lifelong Superman fan, Tye now runs a Boston-based training program for medical journalists. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Satchel, as well as The Father of Spin, Home Lands, and Rising from the Rails, and co-author, with Kitty Dukakis, of Shock. He lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, and is currently writing a biography of Robert F. Kennedy.
Editorial Review
Superman made his debut in 1938 in Action Comics #1. The brainchild of Jerry Siegel and illustrator Joe Shuster, two young dreamers from the tough Jewish precinct of Cleveland, Superman was an instant hit and remains an American icon. Tye explores the reasons for Superman’s enduring popularity by examining the lives of the many people who created and re-created the Man of Steel. Siegel and Shuster soon lost artistic control of their superhero, but others maintained the core of his appeal while changing the details of his image and story to fit the times—a chiseled and invincible image in the 1950s, for instance, then a more nuanced and vulnerable image in the ’70s. While he always fought for what was right, what was wrong would change, from fascism to pollution to greedy financiers, and so on. Able to leap from medium to medium in a single bound, Superman was also a marketing goldmine. He starred in a radio show in the ’40s (taking on the Ku Klux Klan in the first episodes) and became a movie star in an earlier serial but more significantly in the later films with Christopher Reeve in the starring role. Superman conquered television in the 1950s, as George Reeves donned the red-and-blue costume, and there has seldom been a period when some sort of Superman TV show has not been on the air. At his best, Tye ably narrates the stories of the many actors, artists and writers who influenced Superman. Occasionally, he offers details only true devotees will care about or be able to follow—e.g., the ever-changing story of what exactly happened on Superman’s home planet of Krypton. – Kirkus Reviews
It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane, It’s A New Superman Bio!
NPR Book Review – June 18, 2012 (Excerpt)
Eighty years ago, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created the iconic comic book character Superman, but it took several years of rejections before they finally sold him to Detective Comics Inc. in 1938. The distinctive superhero made his first appearance in the comics in June 1938 — and since then has appeared in radio dramas, TV shows, video games, newspaper comics and countless films.
How has the Man of Steel evolved over the past eight decades — and what has made him so popular? Those were the questions that intrigued biographer Larry Tye, whose book Supermantells the story of the red-and-blue-clad icon who Tye calls “the longest-lived American hero of the last century.”
“Americans embrace Superman partly because he captured so many things that are part of our psyche and part of our sense of ourselves,” Tye tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “… He gave us an unwavering sense of right and wrong. He sweeps in to solve our problems. He was a bit like a Messiah in that he descended from the heavens to help us discover our humanity. And unlike all these other heroes — the dark Batman or the fraught Spider-Man — Superman was out there, always like a clear sign of light.”
The story of Superman was created by Jerry Siegel, who grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Cleveland and was often teased as a child. [Read the full article...]
‘Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero,’ by Larry Tye
The Washington Post Book Review – June 29, 2012 (Excerpt)
A year ago, within the confines of his Spider-Man-adorned office in Beverly Hills, Stan Lee emphasized to me that back during the rise of comics’ Golden Age, many creators were woefully naive about negotiating their rights in a 10-cents-a-book business. And last summer, virtuoso Batman artist Jerry Robinson told me — several months before his death — that illustrators at the 1930s dawn of comic books had no idea how much their original art might one day be worth.
Understanding that innocence within a nascent industry helps the reader appreciate the behind-the-scenes world of “Superman,” Larry Tye’s wide-ranging survey of the Man of Steel. For there is poignancy beneath the pop culture, and the Man of Tomorrow is best understood through the prism of yester-century.
In this regard, Tye — a former Boston Globe journalist who writes with Lois Lane-like passion and moxie — does his homework well. The best origin story pulsing through “Superman” is not the one about the Krypton-to-Kansas alien baby, but the one about the superhero’s all-too-mortal, sometimes star-crossed creators, Jerry Siegeland Joe Shuster. [Read the full article...]
Man of Action - ‘Superman,’ by Larry Tye
The New York Times Book Review – July 5, 2012 (Excerpt)
“Superman!” gasps Lois Lane, freshly scooped from beneath the nodding carbines of a South American firing squad. “Right!” says the boxy blue-and-red figure who holds her in his arms. “And still playing the role of gallant rescuer!” His mouth is set in a kind of grimace, but with dimples. Is he frowning? Tautly grinning? And what can he mean by “still playing the role”? This is only the second Superman comic ever, from July 1938, and already our hero — caped and airborne, with Lois coiled against his unbreachable bosom — is carrying a freight of super-irony.
Then again, as we learn from “Superman,” Larry Tye’s exhaustive and engaging book, irony attends every phase of this story. Superman’s creators — Jerry Siegel (writing) and Joe Shuster (drawing) — were a pair of Cleveland geeks whose underdoggery was purer almost than the alpha-male prowess of the pulp heroes they adored: Tarzan, Hugo Danner, Clark (Doc) Savage Jr. and so on. Both the sons of immigrant Jewish tailors, Siegel and Shuster were uncool, and they were girl-less. They had no money. Shuster, the artist, was horribly nearsighted. And how they toiled, through lost nights of teenage-dom, at their secret weapon: their made-up ultrabeing, their hero to out-hero them all. First, in a misfire, he was naughty (a mind-reading tramp called “the Super-Man”), then he was good. Then very good. At last, on what Tye calls “a hot summer night of divinelike inspiration,” it happened: the elements fused, and the 19-year-old Siegel, scribbling madly in his bathroom, came up with the doomed planet Krypton, Lois Lane, Clark Kent the mild-mannered reporter. . . . [Read the full article...]
UnBound: Battle of the Half-Angels
The Nephillim Chronicles – Book One by Ronnie Massey
Justin and Theo are just normal teenagers with their teenage problems, until the day they meet their biological fathers, Michael and Uriel, two of the few remaining archangels. They learn, they are nephillim, the half human offspring of angels, and they learn they are not the only ones. In the days of old, nephillim walked the earth. Now heaven’s misfits may be all that stands between mankind and the wrath of Lucifer and the Fallen. But how will a handful of teenagers react when they find out, not only are they not human, but they are the most powerful soldiers in heaven’s army? How will they deal with their newly found powers? And will they be able to stop Lucifer?
We are the only country that makes guns, including military-style assault weapons, available to anyone who wants to buy them. This is not freedom. It is a tyranny of death and destruction — a tyranny of which the National Rifle Association is proud. The Washington Post
UnBound: Battle of the Half-Angels
