Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster—the Creators of Superman

by Brad Ricca

In time for the 75th anniversary of the Man of Steel, comes the first comprehensive literary biography of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, creators of the DC Comics superhero Superman and the inspiration for Michael Chabon's Kavalier and Clay.

Drawing on ten years of research in the trenches of Cleveland libraries, boarded-up high schools, and secret, private collections, and a love of comic books, Brad Ricca's Super Boys is the first ever full biography about Superman's creators. Among scores of new discoveries, the book reveals the first stories and pictures ever published by the two, where the first Superman story really came from, the real inspiration for Lois Lane, the template for Superman's costume, and much, much more. Super Boys also tracks the boys' unknown, often mysterious lives after they left Superman, including Siegel's secret work during World War II and never-before-seen work from Shuster.

Super Boys explains, finally, what exactly happened with the infamous check for $130 that pulled Superman away from his creators—and gave control of the character to the publisher. Ricca also uncovers the true nature of Jerry's father's death, a crime that has always remained a mystery. Super Boys is the story of a long friendship between boys who grew to be men and the standard that would be impossible for both of them to live up to.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, History, Comics, Superheroes, Graphic Novels Comics, Biography Memoir

423 pages, Hardcover

First published June 3, 2013

About the author

Brad Ricca is the award-winning author of Lincoln's Ghost (forthcoming 2025), the Eisner-nominated graphic novel Ten Days in a Mad-house with artist Courtney Sieh (2022), True Raiders (2021), Olive the Lionheart (2020), the Edgar-nominated Mrs. Sherlock Holmes (2017), and Super Boys (2014), winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Nonfiction and a Booklist Top 10 Book on the Arts. He is also the author of American Mastodon, winner of the 2009 St. Lawrence Book Award. His indie film Last Son (2010) won a Silver Ace Award. He is an English major with a Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where he lives with his family.

Reviews

[Timothy Mayer · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard to imaging a hero more American than Superman. Even his principles spell-out his country: "Truth, Justice, and the American Way". And yet The Man Of Steel's origins are foreign, even interplanetary. Everyone knows his beginnings: how his parents spirited him away to safety in a rocket from their dying world. How he was raised by the Kents, plain folks, as a farm boy, and how, upon discovering his powers, he fought evil as a superhero. By what about his creators? Who were the men who created the most popular comic book hero the world has ever known?

Brad Ricca, who teaches near Cleveland, Ohio, where Superman was conceived, answers the questions in his book, Super Boys. It's an incredibly detailed account of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two Jewish guys from Cleveland who dreamed up Superman. Jerry was the aspiring writer, sending his articles and letters to the science fiction publications of his day. Joe was the drawing talent, whose freehand style gave life to their dreams on whatever paper they could find. These two would launch the most successful graphic art hero in history.

But the story is also filled with tragedy. Jerry's father was robbed in his story and died from the shock, leaving the young writer without the dad he craved. Joe suffered from eye problems all his life. Both were awkward around women and craved attention. They sold the rights to Superman for $130.00 in 1938 to slick New York publishers. They were denied any of the proceeds from the franchise for years. Even Lex Luthor couldn't have come up with a plan so fiendish.

How detailed is this biography? Ricca reproduces the 1934 mimeographed science fiction magazine the two tried to sell. If you want proof of Joe Shuster's talent, all you need to do is look at page 68: there is a drawing for their Jerry's story which defies the description. Somehow Shuster did this drawing directly on the stencil and they were able to reprint it. I've had some experience with mimeograph stencils and I can tell you this is no easy thing to do. Too much solid areas and it won't peel from the cylinder.

Much of the story was covered in the 2005's Men of Tomorrow by Gerald Jones, but Ricca fills the back story to create a rich tableaux of life in depression-era Cleveland. He shows what pictures inspired the two, what events in the history of the northern Ohio town are reflected in the early Superman stories. Men of Tomorrow was focused on how the comics were created out of several neighborhoods in New York City. Super Boys shows there was genius at work in the Buckeye state.

I can't praise this book enough. Ricca does have a tendency to "recreate" scenes, but they add to the narrative. He writes as to how Jerry Siegel watched George Reeves, who was slated to star in the 50's TV version of Superman, walk by him in silence. There's even several pages about Joe Shuster's fetish comic work, undertaken when he was desperate for money.

The final part of the book is bittersweet in its conclusion. Shuster and Siegel were finally, after years of living at the poverty level, able to get some cash out of the company which controls Superman. It took a letter writing campaign and help from some dedicated fans, but they were finally recognized as the creators of The Man Of Steel. The legal tries which came out of their various law suits have paved the way for other artists to regain control of their creations. Although both of the men passed away years ago, their families are still seeking restitution through the courts.

I know there's a new Superman movie out. I will eventually see it as I 'm told it's pretty good. But somebody needs to make Super Boys into a movie. It has all the drama and heroism of a comic book. And it 's real.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always considered myself to be more of a Batman sort of guy than, Superman guy, but am always interested in hearing about the creation of superheroes, no matter who they might be. I am also always interested in hearing how they were created. Turns out, Siegel and Shuster were a lot like many sci-fi/fantasy (and now comic book) fans in high school. They both believed they could come up with something at least as good as was being published. I believe it is this background on both men as they grew up is what I found the most interesting. Not only were they not overnight successes, but even once they began being published, they still were very hard workers. They wrote/ drew whatever they could get work on, though always being proudest of those things they originated themselves.

While I knew quite a bit about early Superman, I still learned a lot about the men who created him. I was also surprised to find out that certain other characters were created by one or the other, which made me even more impressed.

The last section of the book concerns itself with the many lawsuits filed on behalf of the creators to gain the Superman copyright back from National/DC comics. While this is all integral to the story of Superman's existence, it was the main part that troubled me. I am a full supporter of creators owning the copyright to material they create, especially as I hope to one day be such a creator. On the other hand, there is a point in the precedings when I started to lose my sympathy for the Siegel and Shuster estates. This is not a shortcoming in Brad Ricca's writing, but at a certain point it seems that the families are just trying to milk the publishers for all they can get. Anyway, you can read for yourself and decide.

I recommend this book for both comic book fans and anyone in a creative industry where their rights of ownership may be threatened.

[Kieran McAndrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

The creation of the world's first superhero by two quiet but enthusiastic young friends should be an inspiration to us all. Their lives should be embodiment of the American Dream: that working hard and doing your best should lead to success. So how did Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster end up selling 'Superman' for $130?

Ricca's unauthorised biography tries to explain it. As with most things in business, it gets complicated, but Ricca sets things out as plainly as he can, with a comprehensive back story to set the scene and ending with court cases that decided the ownership of one of comic books' most iconic characters.

There are copious source notes, which for me interrupted the narrative flow, but they are useful and informative in their own way. A great companion piece for any 'Superman' fan.

[Wayne McCoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super Boys is the culmination of 10 years research by Brad Ricca. The result is an excellent biography about the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. The book includes rare early artwork and stories from their days in high school. Through these, you can see the evolution of Superman.

Jerry just tried wanted to fit in. He wrote for the school newspaper under aliases. He wrote stories about the girls he liked. He wrote letters to the early science fiction magazines and he schemed to get rich writing. When he met Joe Shuster, he found someone who could illustrate his stories. The result, eventually, was Superman. It seems like the ultimate rags to riches story, and it was. Just not for Jerry and Joe. They gave away the creation through errors and spent years trying to get it back.

The book covers the hard years, with Joe working drawing less than admirable things, and Jerry working as a non-credited writer in comics. Towards the end of their lives they began to receive the recognition they so desperately wanted, but the money never rolled in like they dreamed. As the book closes, the family is still in the process of getting some of the rights back.

It's a great story about 2 guys living in Cleveland who create something so beyond them. Something that was breathed out of their fantasies and into ours. Very enjoyable and melancholy.

I received a review copy from St. Martin's Press and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for letting me review this book.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can remember watching the original Superman movies with Christopher Reeves. Mr. Reeves played a good superman. I don’t remember much about the comic book version of superman. I was not much of a comic book fan.

To be honest this book would not be one of my first choices to read but nonetheless, I am intrigued to learn about the men behind the superhero. I learned a lot about who Jerry and Joe are as people. It was nice to learn where they came from and how they met. Mr. Ricca does a great job of telling their stories. Joe showed amazing talent as an artist at a young age and a wonderful imagination. I give it up to people like Joe who can draw “free hand”. When it comes to drawing likes just say that I am your gal for “hangman”.

I liked reading about how Jerry came up with the idea of superman. Jerry and Joe make an excellent team as evident in their work and all that they have accomplished. Fans alike will enjoy reading this book. Super Boys is a collectable!

[MisterLiberry Head · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn’t need the dust jacket to tell me that the author is a professor at Case Western Reserve University. Almost 70 pages of notes at the back of the book would have told me that--plus the near-obsessive collection of minutiae and the attempt to elevate the subject matter to quasi-cosmic significance. Those are hallmarks of an academic tome, one likely to delight only hard-core comics buffs.

The basic story of wordsmith Jerry Siegel and illustrator Joe Shuster--two hard-luck Jewish kids who brainstormed a huge cultural phenomenon but naïvely sold away their rights to the character for what, in hindsight, was pocket change--is well known by now. And it’s a much more interesting story when bits of it were fictionalized by Michael Chabon in his brilliant novel, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.” With a novelist’s sense of pacing, Chabon knew to downplay the legal battles-- but Ricca goes into mind-numbing detail about the many decades of Superman litigation. And the second half of SUPER BOYS, about all of those lawsuits and the financial struggles of Siegel & Schuster--who never came up with another superstar creation, either solo or as a team--was tedious and depressing. Ricca’s overly literary writing style and amateur psychoanalyzing of the unlucky pair, for all his trying, fails to animate the drama and can’t sustain interest over 400-plus pages.

As a kid in the Sixties, when I first discovered Marvel Comics after a long bike-ride to a new drugstore’s comic-books rack, I never bought another book about the Superman universe. Marvel’s art, especially the amazing work of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditka, seemed to POP off the inky pages, and the stories featured superheroes who worried about REAL problems instead of intergalactic law enforcement. Ricca writes: “Marvel Comics … seemed positively revolutionary compared with the stories at National [home of Superman]” (p264). The booming new Marvel imprint offered a bullpen of genre geniuses crafting the books--“all featuring snappy patter, outrageous science, and a new type of imaginative realism” (p264). As the great Stan Lee used to say, “Nuff said.”

[Paul Cockeram · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a heartbreaking story of betrayal and loss in the saga of Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, two boys from Cleveland who became household names after creating Superman, and Ricca finds that story. Then Ricca mythologizes the myth-makers, which probably appeals to fanboys more than casual readers like me. In fact, the level of research and scholarship Ricca brings to his subject (69 pages of footnotes! a 4-page bibliography!) elevate the creation of Superman from incidents to American history. While treating the creation of a comic book with the same gravitas as, say, the composing of the Declaration of Independence, Ricca's tongue rarely slips into his cheek. He respects the story enough to analyze it in terms historical, psychological, literary, and legal. His heart is in the right place. This ends up, in other words, being a good read.

Where it dragged was the step-by-step slog through Siegel and Schuster's Cleveland childhood, in which Ricca breathlessly points out anything in the boys' early experience or high school ephemera that might connect, in any way, with Superman. Did Siegel's high school crush serve as the model for Lois Lane? Did Schuster's adoration of the period's ruggedly masculine muscle men inspire his realistic renderings of Superman? Maybe. Probably. And I'm certain someone out there cares enough to nod thoughtfully over these details, or to thrill at connecting these dots.

At other times, Ricca struggles to incorporate his research into his narrative of the boys' rise and fall and subsequent rise. And it's a damned fine narrative. Executives of the early DC Comics make spectacular villains, exploiting the boys' youth and inexperience by buying Superman for just $130, leaving Siegel and Schuster in poverty for most of their lives while the company and its executives made fortunes. And Ricca's writing style proves inviting, poppy, fun, and widely accessible. This was perfect bedtime reading, and I'm glad to have learned more about what might turn out to be part of the American mythos.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

via NYPL - A well-researched and largely well-crafted biography of two of pop culture's most important, and most tragic, figures. Ricca sometimes overplays his hand, forcing lost father narratives and the fictional high school alter-ego Kenton into places where they had no business, but the depth of detail is impressive and the writing engaged. Definitely worth a look for Superman fans who want more insight into their hero's parentage.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review originally published in Looking FOr a Good Book. Rated 4.0 of 5

Well this was informative!

It's pretty hard not to know who the character of Superman is, but naming the creators of Superman might be much more challenging to most people. Fans of comics and graphic novels likely already know of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and even someone like myself - very much on the outer fringe of comic/graphic novel reading - knew about the long battle Siegel and Shuster had to retain (or regain) the rights to the character.

Biographer Brad Ricca has done some exhaustive research and we get a look at these two young men from their early school days, to the high school days when the early characteristics of Superman could be found.

Starting as a fan and writing letters science fiction magazines, it was clear that Jerry was a go-getter and a planner and he thought he'd get rich writing stories. When he Jerry met Joe, he saw someone who could illustrate his stories and together, like many high school boys who dram of making it big doing something they love, the multiple ways that a dream can crash never occurred to them.

Small successes built up and they were producing stories for comics at a fantastic rate, and making good (for them, at the time) money. But it was a difficult period in publishing (when isn't it?) and sometimes they worked on hand-shake agreements or with promises for more later. And through innocence and bad choices, they gave away their rights to what would become one of the most iconic figures in all of pop culture. And once those rights were gone, Jerry and Joe weren't essential to be part of the story-telling process, and while their creation would make millions of dollars for a publisher, Joe and Jerry were often challenged just to find work.

Joe and Jerry's story is quite sad, and not all that unusual for those working in this industry. Much of their later lives are spent challenging the rights to Superman and trying to get their due and even now, at the end of this book, their families are trying to get these rights maintained.

The story of the lawsuits goes on a bit too long for me - though I recognize that this is what consumed Jerry for much of his life. Still, I found his early years - the environment in which he grew to become a writer - the most fascinating.

This is a really well-written biography. It is thorough and doesn't really manage to take sides (in the debate about rights ownership), which is nice. Yes...it's about Joe and Jerry and there is going to be some bias toward their being allowed to cash in on their character, but Ricca himself doesn't outright say that. He lets Jerry say it.

Definitely worth reading.

Looking for a good book? Super Boys by Brad Ricca is a solid biography of the creators of Superman, from their early days before Superman, to their decades-long battle for the rights to their greatest creation. It is fascinating and well written.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster is almost as mythical as the one of Superman. Everyone knows how two Cleveland kids invented the greatest hero of all time and were cheated by a greedy publisher. Well, not everyone. But anyone slightly interested in the history of Comics. And I used to be a huge fan. And reading the Comics Journal religiously that was the thing I learned: Creators are poor souls who get ripped off. (I was never quite convinced in the case of Kirby since I thought that Lee was the Genius, but that by the way.)

So, they came up with the idea of a man from outer space, with superhuman powers to help mankind. Caught in a lover’s triangle with his own alter Ego and Lois. Now, my Golden Age was the Silver Age and reading the early Superman stories I always thought they were a little stiff and silly (especially Shuster’s drawings). So I admired the men, but only as a sort of moral obligation.

They famously sold the rights to Superman for $130. Which even then was not much. They got $10 per page. So they knew it was not much. Why did they do it? Well maybe because they did not care as long as they could work and would earn money.

Ricca said they did not get rich. But they did earn about $400.000 in the first 10 years which is about $6.000.000 in todays money. Some would consider that not bad at all. Maybe they were just wasting their money. And then they got compensated again in 1947 over the rights of Superboy (but were fired consequently.)

And then again when the Reeve movie came out. Yes, being the creators of an iconic moneymaker they maybe deserved more. But then, maybe not. Maybe the publisher (National then) deserves some credit too. Siegel and Shuster tried to make it on their own with self-publishing an SF magazin called Science Fiction (that included an early appearance of a bald and evil Superman). And they failed.


What I did not know was that they were actually in the business and were making good money years before Superman made it. And one reason Superman did not come out earlier is that they hoped to sell to the newspaper market instead of having a "comics book" character. And did you know that Superman’s dad was Jor-L originally and received his proper name from the first Superman novel? And that radio Superman invented the name Kryptonite instead of K-metal? (What? You don’t care?)


I liked the story of their early lives. Especially Jerry’s who was a contributor to a school paper. And judging from the example pieces one can see that he was a talented young man. And I learned that at one time he tried to make it (Superman) with a more established artist. Apparently Shuster forgave him.

I have not followed Superman in a long while (more or less from the time Clark left the Daily Planet).
The new movies are beyond the pale. Henry Cavill is so grotesquely miscast that one almost believes in divine justice since Reeve was so wonderfully cast. But I do hope there will be a Superman one day again that Siegel and Shuster could be proud of.

[Ben Truong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster – the Creators of Superman is a biography of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman. Brad Ricca an Edgar-nominated author wrote this book.

Jerome Siegel was an American comic book writer. His most famous creation was Superman, which he created in collaboration with his friend Joe Shuster. Joseph Shuster was a Canadian-American comic book artist best known for co-creating the DC Comics character Superman, with writer Jerry Siegel, in Action Comics #1.

Ricca nimbly narrates the adventures of two creative Cleveland, Ohio, teenagers who, in the 1930s, combined their youthful passions to create the story of the world’s greatest superhero. Siegel spent his early years reading pulp magazines and writing his own fantastical imitations and Shuster learned to draw by tracing funnies in the paper.

When Shuster moved into Siegel’s neighborhood, they discovered a common love of comics, detective fiction, science fiction, and fantasy, and started working together on various projects. After high school, Siegel launched his own local magazine, Science Fiction. In an unassuming 1932 story, the pair featured a depression-hardened character that discovers he has strange mental powers like telepathy and acute vision after ingesting a fragment of a meteor.

Ricca's compulsively readable tale reveals the real-life model for Lois Lane, the elements on which Superman's costume are based, and the model for Superman himself. At the center of the story, of course, is Siegel and Shuster's decision to sell the Superman rights to Action Comics for a pittance – a choice they lamented the rest of their lives. The pair endured poverty, bad marriages, bad health, and a lack of recognition for their work.

Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster – the Creators of Superman is written and researched rather well. Ricca's comprehensive biography reveals the turmoil and creative genius that led to our most enduring superhero, the Man of Steel.

All in all, Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster – the Creators of Superman is a wonderful biography of how two people came together and created one of the most iconic superheroes of all time – Superman.

[Whitney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Looking at all the reviews, I'm kinda alone in my opinion, but I really felt this book would have been better as an academic paper than a book.

Credit where credit is due: this book was very well researched. Everything was cited, there were photos aplenty, and every inch of the legal stuff was trotted out with the tone of someone who spent hours getting it all in order. It never makes the assumption that the reader probably knows something, and makes very little guesswork about the gray areas.

Thing is, this book just should have been better. It had all the components to work very nicely: tragedy, family drama, a story about underdogs, a tale of smashing success and downfall, and a subject matter that I care a lot about: Superman. I like history, I like legal drama, and I love superheroes, so this book didn't have much to do to earn an easy 4-star review from me.

Yet, none of it really came together. All of the pieces were disjointed, and it never felt like a full arc was put together. The murder, the love story of two poor Jewish immigrants, the idea of two outsiders making it in a tough business, all of that could have been used to give the story the spark it needed to push through the dry stuff. Yet, most likely because the "dry stuff" was the most well-documented, the author really ground that stuff into the dirt while breeding over the emotional aspects. How do you make Superman boring??!!

There were some decent parts-the aspects that described their formative years and the formation of the Spectre was all good, but after a while, I just felt like I was reading a long Wikipedia entry on the subject.

[Dan Shonka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brad Ricca's biography of the two young men who created the character of Superman is outstanding. No surprise, the big corporation took advantage of the two teens who had created the gold mine for the unscrupulous scoundrels who merely printed and distributed it. While that's a thread that runs throughout (can you believe the two guys that created Superman lived much of their life in poverty?), I really enjoyed the detailed similarities between all of Jerry's (the writer's) various stories and characters. (He wrote a lot more than just Superman.) There's a good bit less known of Joe (the artist), largely because he was only briefly married late in his life for just a year, I guess. Jerry put much of his real life in his stories. Joe modeled his drawings after friends and people he admired (bodybuilders). Anyway, if you have ever enjoyed superheroes or comic books, I highly recommend this book. (Btw, Jerry even wrote for Marvel comics for a while!)

[Maurice Tougas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story of the birth of Superman, as told through the story of its co-creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. I'm not a comic book fan, but the story held my interest for the most part (until it got too deep into comic book guy minutia). It's actually quite a tragic story, in that both of the creators got royally screwed by the comic book companies. Overall, a little too deep for someone not crazy about comics, but consistently interesting (and sad) nonetheless. (By the way, don't buy into the 'Superman is a Canadian' myth. Yes, Joe Shuster, the artist of the team, was Toronto born, but he moved to Cleveland with his family when he was 10. Aside from his place of birth, there is nothing to link the Superman story to anything Canadian.)

[Laura Cobrinik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brad Ricca's book, "Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster--The Creators of Superman," seems like the definitive biography of the artists who created "Superman." However, the author does say that there may have been others out there who also designed the character....There is some question as to whether "the idea was stolen" but I did learn that the artists were from Cleveland, Ohio, and eye opening fact because I had always thought that the creators of Superman and the other superheroes were from New York City.
And enjoyable book about the way artists work.
I recommend it to Art Students and to anyone who likes comics. Good for history buffs too!
Laura Cobrinik,
Boonton Township, NJ

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given that I'm more than familiar with the history of Siegel and Shuster — their creation of Superman, DC seizing it away from them and stiffing them on a promised slice of the merchandizing pie — I'm impressed that Ricca still tells me a lot I didn't know. Their family history, rough love lives, details of the various lawsuits to win back the rights, Jerry's other comics work in the 1960s and so on.
It doesn't get four stars because of occasional errors (too nerdy to list here) and because Ricca's determined that everything Siegel wrote somehow reflects his inner torment: if he writes about a father/son relationship it ties in to his own father dying when Jerry was a teen, if he writes about women it reflects his own love life, etc. To a point I can buy that, but only to a point.

[Joe Seliske · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was aware that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had sold the rights to Superman to the predecessor of DC Comics for a small amount but I was surprised to learn that it was only $130. These gentlemen spent the entire rest of their lives trying to right this wrong and litigation continued even after their deaths. Brad Ricca supports his narrative with an unbelievable amount of research, some of which goes back to the 1930s when records are sparse. I was unaware that this was the first biography of the two fellows who invented Superman as well as the superhero genre itself. Bravo.

[Keith Hendricks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best comic-related biography I have read, not only for its content, but for its tremendously melancholic tone and the way Ricca finds the poetic connections between the creators’ lives and their creation. E.g., the blue suit (!) stolen, on the night of Siegel’s father’s death, from the family business, a clothing store later valued in probate for within $1 of the $130 National paid for Superman. The chapter “Both Sides” is a great payoff after a lengthy slow burn.

[Gregory Van Den Berg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super Boys explains, finally, what exactly happened with the infamous check for $130 that pulled Superman away from his creators—and gave control of the character to the publisher. Ricca also uncovers the true nature of Jerry's father's death, a crime that has always remained a mystery. Super Boys is the story of a long friendship between boys who grew to be men and the standard that would be impossible for both of them to live up to.

[Dean Simons · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came to this book only vaguely knowing the story of the boys who lost their own creation. This book is very detailed and takes its time building an image of the boys and their young world. The latter half of the book goes at a blistering pace of incidents and detail which contrasts from slow (and rather wonkily written) start. Overall I enjoyed the book and it was very illuminating.

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fantastic look back at the creation of Superman by two young men from Cleveland, as well as their terrible treatment by the Corporate world. Much of their adult life was spent barely getting by, or in actual poverty.

Still, in the end, their dreams were shared with the World, and will outlive everyone.

[Michael Spiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book. Can’t help but feel bad for jerry and Joel. They got royally screwed.

[Carlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Espectacular.

[Dkolacinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

You don't step on Superman's cape. But you do step on his creators and don't really acknowle their role in the creation and growth of the most iconic hero of the 20th century.

[John Sorg · Rating 1 out of 5]

Excellent research; miserably poor writing.

[Dustin Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting topic. Reads like a master's or doctoral thesis. The same story could've been told in half the number of pages. Hard to finish.

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

dense with citations, Super Boys aims to present the history of the famous character as a story itself. However, it did get a little lost in its tangents and at time felt quite dry.

[Kendal · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tragic and cautionary about how the Big Entertainment thumbscrews The Little Guy.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brad Ricca tells the interesting story of the creators of Superman, with lots of related information about the history of comics in general. Ricca piles on a lot of detail. At one point I thought the book could have been trimmed by 50 pages or so, but later on I learned that some of the earlier detail was relevant to the later story. I raised my opinion of the book as I worked my way to the end.

All in all, an interesting history of one of our culture's most enduring fictional characters and the men and industry that created him.

[Adam Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a biography that tells the story behind the story of the iconic superhero: Superman. Brad Ricca leaves no stone unturned in his research for this book. The end notes document original source material used such as newspapers, books, magazines, comic books, web sites, letters, original art work and personal interviews. Ricca does an excellent job in bringing Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster alive for a new generation of readers. One does not need to be a comic book reader or fan to appreciate this book.

I found the book enjoyable, a fast read and very interesting. It piqued my interest in comic books in general, and Superman in particular. Also, I found myself interested in the issue of intellectual property rights. The original creators of Superman were certainly given the short end of the stick in terms of the money they would have earned. Artists today are probably much more savvy when it comes to their rights. Jerry and Joe eventually began to fight back, but in the end what they and their heirs received was a pittance in comparison to what the publishers made (Action Comics, National and later DC comics).

Here is a quote that pretty well encapsulates their feelings on the matter (pg. 278):
The publishers of SUPERMAN comic books, National Periodical Publications, Inc., killed my days, murdered my nights, choked my happiness, strangled my career. I consider National's executives economic murderers, money-mad monsters. If they, and the executives of Warner Communications which owns National, had consciences, they would right the wrongs they inflicted on Joe Shuster and me.
I believe Brad Ricca has done a masterful job in evoking sympathy in the mind of the reader for Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in particular and artists in general.

Recommendation

I would certainly recommend this book to everyone who enjoys a good biography. If you have an interest in comics (especially Superman), this book will be that much more enjoyable. It is well-researched, well-written and captures the reader's attention with its emphasis on the humanity of the artists who created Superman. In a broader sense, it captures the humanity embodied in Superman: his struggles against evil become ours; his struggles to become human become ours as well. Superman is the ideal for which we strive. He knows his limitations, but does his best to fight for justice.