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Supermen!: The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes, 1936–1941
"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."—from the foreword by Jonathan Lethem
The enduring cultural phenomenon of comic book heroes was invented in the late 1930s by a hungry and talented group of artists and writers barely out of their teens, flying by the seat of their pants to come up with something new, exciting, and above all profitable. The iconography and mythology they created flourishes to this day in practically all visual 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. Readers expecting to find an All-American group of altruistic do-gooders are 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, nine full-sized covers, a generous selection of vintage promotional ads, and comprehensive background notes by editor Greg Sadowski.
This anthology is indispensable to anyone interested in the origins of superheroes and the history of the comic book form.
192 pages, Paperback
First published February 2, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
January 17, 2010
Great collection of Pre-Code superhero comics. Perfectly odd and unpredictable, with a lot of big names. I have enjoyed Wolverton and Fletcher Hanks in the past, but it's remarkable to see how, when you get to their stories in this book, they just explode off the page at you. It really helps to have this context to see just how idiosyncratic and highly developed they were.
June 11, 2010
A weird book that showcases work by the forefathers of superhero comics before they hit paydirt with their famous heroes, eg. Will Eisner before The Spirit, Siegel and Schuster before Superman, Jack Kirby before Captain America , etc. Many of these stories are primitively written and drawn and look more like storyboards than fully fleshed-out stories. A typical story (four pages!) would go like:
Frame 1: Aliens have landed on Earth. “We are going to take over this useless planet”.
Frame 2: The Blue Bolt flies towards the alien space craft – “I see trouble! Who are these strange beings?”
Frame 3: Aliens scowl: “Stop, intruder, or we shall kill!”
Frame 4: The Blue Bolt punches an alien. “Take that, you weirdie! Sold American!”
Frame 5: “Curses!” Too many of the aliens, by the way, look disturbingly Asian. Just sayin’.
Not a lot of sophisticated plotting going on here but please remember these are pioneers in a field that was uncharted in its time. Nevertheless, the best of the lot is Jack Cole, who already had his act ready before Plastic Man. His strip is the best drawn and most competently plotted of the bunch.
Frame 1: Aliens have landed on Earth. “We are going to take over this useless planet”.
Frame 2: The Blue Bolt flies towards the alien space craft – “I see trouble! Who are these strange beings?”
Frame 3: Aliens scowl: “Stop, intruder, or we shall kill!”
Frame 4: The Blue Bolt punches an alien. “Take that, you weirdie! Sold American!”
Frame 5: “Curses!” Too many of the aliens, by the way, look disturbingly Asian. Just sayin’.
Not a lot of sophisticated plotting going on here but please remember these are pioneers in a field that was uncharted in its time. Nevertheless, the best of the lot is Jack Cole, who already had his act ready before Plastic Man. His strip is the best drawn and most competently plotted of the bunch.
March 1, 2015
For those curious about the earliest days of superhero comics, when creators had the freedom to go wherever their whims took them and the formulas for the genre hadn't yet been written in stone, Fantagraphics Books has published a handy and hefty sampler of the era.
Shot from the original comics (no computer coloring here), Supermen! covers the spectrum from very obscure (Rex Dexter of Mars, Fero, Planet Detective, Yarko the Great) to seminal early work by Jack Kirby, Basil Wolverton, Jack Cole, outsider Fletcher Hanks and more. Sadowski's notes in the back of the book give great historical context; I learned a lot about the various competing and overlapping comics publishers and editors during this primordial period.
Reading Supermen! can actually become depressing because nearly every story contained in the book is more fun, and utilizes more imagination and whimsy, than any superhero comic book on sale today. Inside these pages you'll find pulp-colored dreams, crazy acts of violence (by the heroes!), hallucinogenic imagery, and the promise and fulfillment of illicit, bizarre thrills. As many in The Sex Pistols' audience went on to start their own groups, these stories must have spurred the creative imaginations of hundreds of future creators.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough; it needs to be on the shelves of anyone who reads any superhero comics, as it contains examples of the original formation of the genre. One small complaint: the credits for the book design, so essential for a finely packaged collection of graphics, is squirreled away in small print on the last
page of the book. Not cool, Fantagraphics.
Shot from the original comics (no computer coloring here), Supermen! covers the spectrum from very obscure (Rex Dexter of Mars, Fero, Planet Detective, Yarko the Great) to seminal early work by Jack Kirby, Basil Wolverton, Jack Cole, outsider Fletcher Hanks and more. Sadowski's notes in the back of the book give great historical context; I learned a lot about the various competing and overlapping comics publishers and editors during this primordial period.
Reading Supermen! can actually become depressing because nearly every story contained in the book is more fun, and utilizes more imagination and whimsy, than any superhero comic book on sale today. Inside these pages you'll find pulp-colored dreams, crazy acts of violence (by the heroes!), hallucinogenic imagery, and the promise and fulfillment of illicit, bizarre thrills. As many in The Sex Pistols' audience went on to start their own groups, these stories must have spurred the creative imaginations of hundreds of future creators.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough; it needs to be on the shelves of anyone who reads any superhero comics, as it contains examples of the original formation of the genre. One small complaint: the credits for the book design, so essential for a finely packaged collection of graphics, is squirreled away in small print on the last
page of the book. Not cool, Fantagraphics.
June 25, 2009
A crude, ridiculous, and fascinating collection of now-forgotten characters from a time when every publisher tried to cash in on the success of Superman. There is lots of good stuff here, but The Claw vs. Daredevil story is the standout. An incredibly racist villain who changes size from panel to panel without explanation, a hero who's only weapon is a boomerang, his girlfriend who immediately discovers his secret identity, an army of easily killed and offensively depicted henchmen, a castle shaped like a skull, an underground tunnel from Tibet to New York, the destruction of Manhattan, half a dozen deathtraps, a flood, a toe (apparently) gets chopped off, and the villain eats the hero--all in one 16 page story!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 1, 2015
Very nice reference book for the Golden age of comics. Tons of complete reprints of hard to find comics from the era. Nice book for your reference library. Recommended
July 8, 2024
This volume is a great reminder that Golden Age comics were in some ways even messier than Silver Age comics. Sure, the Silver Age features Batman fighting space aliens and Jimmy Olsen getting new powers every time he sneezes. But there's a consistency of story structure, pacing, art style, composition, etc. that makes them feel more recognizably like modern comics. Golden Age comics are a wild mess of throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. One of these stories is so early that every panel is numbered to help make sure you know how to read a comic book. The stories generally move quickly and don't always make a lot of sense. And some of them are pretty bad. But it's still fun to get insight into all the comic heroes you've never heard of.
This volume collects 20 stories from various publishers and authors. It's mainly what I would consider superheroes, but there are a number of stories focused more on Flash Gordon style guys zipping around in Art Deco space rockets that I feel are only really adjacent to the superhero business. A couple of these guys had reasonably long careers, especially the ones published by the company that would become Archie comics and a character or two who eventually got bought out by DC. But it's mostly heroes you've never heard of. Sure, the Clock is technically the first guy with a mask but it's not much of one. And the Shield had an American flag themed costume before Cap did, but it's not surprising that one is more famous.
It is fun seeing tropes and character ideas pop up here in the early days, before becoming more mainstream. Amusingly there's a guy named Daredevil, though he seems to be playing second fiddle to the Claw, a giant Yellow Peril villain who doesn't necessarily make others of that ilk look tame exactly, but he's still a hell of a lot by any standard. The Silver Streak is a speedster hero that I think predates the original Flash and has some fun with the whole speedster thing. I liked seeing that superheroes performing for orphans has been around basically since day one, even if the giant insects were kinda weird. Some characters have neat uses of powers, like Sub-Zero using ice to lift a telephone receiver so he can share his location with the police. But then there's the Comet, who has the paired powers of jumping high and melting people with his vision, a combo that never quite coheres, even if it feels like it lends credence to a plot where he's hypnotized into being evil. Oh, and of course there's two showings from Fletcher Hanks, which reminds me I need to read more of his brand of bizarre nonsense.
Overall this was a neat little time capsule of early comics, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I did the similar collection of old horror comics. Maybe it's because with horror I'm more willing to go along with anything, since the tendency is for anthology with no expectation of continuity so throwing things at the wall is just fine. Maybe it's because I haven't done much Golden Age reading and I tend to find the style off-putting when it's not Jack Kirby or Superman. Or maybe it's just that when it comes to superheroes I can't help feeling like there's enough to read already with the big two that I can't find myself too interested in any sidelines as more than a brief curiosity. Whatever the reason, this was a neat collection but not one I'm likely to get back to and other than one or two exceptions it really didn't sell me on any of these characters.
This volume collects 20 stories from various publishers and authors. It's mainly what I would consider superheroes, but there are a number of stories focused more on Flash Gordon style guys zipping around in Art Deco space rockets that I feel are only really adjacent to the superhero business. A couple of these guys had reasonably long careers, especially the ones published by the company that would become Archie comics and a character or two who eventually got bought out by DC. But it's mostly heroes you've never heard of. Sure, the Clock is technically the first guy with a mask but it's not much of one. And the Shield had an American flag themed costume before Cap did, but it's not surprising that one is more famous.
It is fun seeing tropes and character ideas pop up here in the early days, before becoming more mainstream. Amusingly there's a guy named Daredevil, though he seems to be playing second fiddle to the Claw, a giant Yellow Peril villain who doesn't necessarily make others of that ilk look tame exactly, but he's still a hell of a lot by any standard. The Silver Streak is a speedster hero that I think predates the original Flash and has some fun with the whole speedster thing. I liked seeing that superheroes performing for orphans has been around basically since day one, even if the giant insects were kinda weird. Some characters have neat uses of powers, like Sub-Zero using ice to lift a telephone receiver so he can share his location with the police. But then there's the Comet, who has the paired powers of jumping high and melting people with his vision, a combo that never quite coheres, even if it feels like it lends credence to a plot where he's hypnotized into being evil. Oh, and of course there's two showings from Fletcher Hanks, which reminds me I need to read more of his brand of bizarre nonsense.
Overall this was a neat little time capsule of early comics, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I did the similar collection of old horror comics. Maybe it's because with horror I'm more willing to go along with anything, since the tendency is for anthology with no expectation of continuity so throwing things at the wall is just fine. Maybe it's because I haven't done much Golden Age reading and I tend to find the style off-putting when it's not Jack Kirby or Superman. Or maybe it's just that when it comes to superheroes I can't help feeling like there's enough to read already with the big two that I can't find myself too interested in any sidelines as more than a brief curiosity. Whatever the reason, this was a neat collection but not one I'm likely to get back to and other than one or two exceptions it really didn't sell me on any of these characters.
July 18, 2024
This is a totally sweet collection of public domain Golden Age superheroes. When I am in the right mood, Golden Age comics have so much charm that I can't get enough of them. The rawness of the artwork and the lack of refinement in the storytelling make this a blast to read.
There are some gems in this book: The Face is a really good concept, and Project Superpowers' Death Defying 'Devil is found in his second appearance as The Daredevil. The always brilliant Bill Everett's Sub-Zero tangles with "Professor X". The Comet also pre-dates Cyclops of the X-Men by some 25-odd years, with his visor and eye beam look and powers.
It's interesting how much Marvel swiped from the various Golden Age publishers who let their copyrights lapse. There are some stories in this book that I am dumber for having read, too. Stardust, the Super Wizard being one. It's tough to follow, and the artwork is Rob Liefeld bad. Instead of feet and the number of digits, Fletcher Hanks has trouble with necks. Stardust looks like a frickin' giraffe.
Spacehawk, Superhuman Enemy of Crime by Basil Wolverton is enjoyable. I've got to hand it to Fantagraphics, this is a great package. It's a softcover with heavy duty uncoated paper stock with sewn binding! Unfortunately, due to the thickness of the paper and the glue required to hold the softcover on, it does not lay flat.
The restoration was done rather interestingly. Rather than scan and clean up/ recolor old comics like Marvel does, this is straight up high resolution scans. For better or worse, you see the color limitations from the old oil based inks, the line bleed, the inconsistencies, and you know what? I love it! I like seeing this stuff spit-shined and restored, but this is like getting a mp3 rip off of vinyl. It has a different tonal quality that is somehow appealing, although I wouldn't want a steady diet of it. Whatever the case, it works here.
This is a first rate collection.
There are some gems in this book: The Face is a really good concept, and Project Superpowers' Death Defying 'Devil is found in his second appearance as The Daredevil. The always brilliant Bill Everett's Sub-Zero tangles with "Professor X". The Comet also pre-dates Cyclops of the X-Men by some 25-odd years, with his visor and eye beam look and powers.
It's interesting how much Marvel swiped from the various Golden Age publishers who let their copyrights lapse. There are some stories in this book that I am dumber for having read, too. Stardust, the Super Wizard being one. It's tough to follow, and the artwork is Rob Liefeld bad. Instead of feet and the number of digits, Fletcher Hanks has trouble with necks. Stardust looks like a frickin' giraffe.
Spacehawk, Superhuman Enemy of Crime by Basil Wolverton is enjoyable. I've got to hand it to Fantagraphics, this is a great package. It's a softcover with heavy duty uncoated paper stock with sewn binding! Unfortunately, due to the thickness of the paper and the glue required to hold the softcover on, it does not lay flat.
The restoration was done rather interestingly. Rather than scan and clean up/ recolor old comics like Marvel does, this is straight up high resolution scans. For better or worse, you see the color limitations from the old oil based inks, the line bleed, the inconsistencies, and you know what? I love it! I like seeing this stuff spit-shined and restored, but this is like getting a mp3 rip off of vinyl. It has a different tonal quality that is somehow appealing, although I wouldn't want a steady diet of it. Whatever the case, it works here.
This is a first rate collection.
October 26, 2017
A delightful little coffee table book full of very old stories from the beginnings of the superhero era. I would have preferred the notes on each comic to be presented individually before or after each comic, not en masse at the end as this would have given a nice justification/ explanation as to the history of the strip and why it was in the collection. Also some fine examples of where time has changed!
November 15, 2022
This is a collection of some early comic book heroes that never really made the big time. But, it still interesting to look at especially considering the fact that some of these artsist and writers had much more success with other characters.
May 8, 2024
A fascinating look at the beginnings of the Comic Book Hero craze. I highly recommend reading the notes at the back of the book. They give details information on the comics presented in the book and how they lead to the comics that we know and love!
June 8, 2021
A wild assortment of the interesting to the strange.
June 8, 2023
Golden Age'de çıkan çizgi romanların özellikle süper kahraman çizgi romanlarının toplaması.Güzel bir tarih kitabı ama çizgi roman olarak bakarsak maalesef çoğu okunmayacak durumda.
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October 26, 2024great collection, but what was new to me was "Fero: Planet Detective"- REAL stand out, this + original Batman the Mad Monk would be fantastic companion pieces...
December 6, 2016
Again, I regret that I don't have time to give this the full and comprehensive review that it deserves.
I was a little familiar with this primal burst of Superhoero stories from the FLetcher Hanks collection 'I Shall Destroy All Civilized Planets' from the collected edition of Basil Wolvertons 'Spacehawk' and from 'The League of Regrettable Superheroes.
I did a small review of the use of colour in 'Spacehawk' and now that I've read a lot more comics from this era I can see that many of the qualities I was looking at there, the world-of-objects, the tessellation of opposing primaries on a page, the stained glass effect and a bunch more were at least as much to do with the form as with Wolvertons use of them.
The work in 'Supermen!' is playful, anarchic, intense and deranged. And, as seems usual for this era, anything to do with the japanese seems pretty racist, even for the era.
In the case of 'The Claw' we move from 'pretty racist' to so racist I'm not sure if it can even be qualified as racist any more. A twenty foot yellow skinned giant born from a flaming cauldron with bright yellow skin, bat fangs, slits for eyes covered by shaggy yellow eyebrows who builds an tunnel from Tibet to invade New York and fulls it with trainfulls of yellow skinned bald uniform slaves riding train cars emblazoned with deaths heads and who speaks in his own giant 'oriental' font.
Superheroes haven't learnt not to kill yet so its perfectly reasonable to have, for instance, a superhero who's thing is that he has a fucking flamethrower and a superher who disintegrates people he looks at and who gets mind controlled and straight-up explodes, atomises and melts a whoooole bunch of utterly innocent people during his adventure.
No-one really knows or cares how magic works, or what the divisions between magic and science might be in the imagined world so heroes dreamed up by young bowery jews and wifebeaters* bestride their realities like insane old testament gods or deranged trickster spirits.
"KALORA! Become Pigs!"
"I'll transform you into a WORM for the vultures to eat!"
Some art is like building lego, assembling things in the neocortex, and some is like throwing up, excavating stuff from deep inside. When you through up you might find a lot of interesting stuff in it but you don't have much choice about what you're going to get.
Fuck it, I'm giving it five stars as well.
*Only one mainly-confirmed scumbag really.
I was a little familiar with this primal burst of Superhoero stories from the FLetcher Hanks collection 'I Shall Destroy All Civilized Planets' from the collected edition of Basil Wolvertons 'Spacehawk' and from 'The League of Regrettable Superheroes.
I did a small review of the use of colour in 'Spacehawk' and now that I've read a lot more comics from this era I can see that many of the qualities I was looking at there, the world-of-objects, the tessellation of opposing primaries on a page, the stained glass effect and a bunch more were at least as much to do with the form as with Wolvertons use of them.
The work in 'Supermen!' is playful, anarchic, intense and deranged. And, as seems usual for this era, anything to do with the japanese seems pretty racist, even for the era.
In the case of 'The Claw' we move from 'pretty racist' to so racist I'm not sure if it can even be qualified as racist any more. A twenty foot yellow skinned giant born from a flaming cauldron with bright yellow skin, bat fangs, slits for eyes covered by shaggy yellow eyebrows who builds an tunnel from Tibet to invade New York and fulls it with trainfulls of yellow skinned bald uniform slaves riding train cars emblazoned with deaths heads and who speaks in his own giant 'oriental' font.
Superheroes haven't learnt not to kill yet so its perfectly reasonable to have, for instance, a superhero who's thing is that he has a fucking flamethrower and a superher who disintegrates people he looks at and who gets mind controlled and straight-up explodes, atomises and melts a whoooole bunch of utterly innocent people during his adventure.
No-one really knows or cares how magic works, or what the divisions between magic and science might be in the imagined world so heroes dreamed up by young bowery jews and wifebeaters* bestride their realities like insane old testament gods or deranged trickster spirits.
"KALORA! Become Pigs!"
"I'll transform you into a WORM for the vultures to eat!"
Some art is like building lego, assembling things in the neocortex, and some is like throwing up, excavating stuff from deep inside. When you through up you might find a lot of interesting stuff in it but you don't have much choice about what you're going to get.
Fuck it, I'm giving it five stars as well.
*Only one mainly-confirmed scumbag really.
September 27, 2012
It was only several months after reading this book, when I started to delve into Golden Age comics for myself, that I realized what a great foundation Sadowski had given me with this collection. This is really an essential book if you're wondering what makes shitty Golden Age comics great. The answer: their shittiness. If it weren't for Greg, I'd still be holding the Golden Age to Bronze Age standards, which isn't fair to the comics' creators or to a medium in its infancy.
December 16, 2020
Many of these stories are pretty blah. Perhaps the most fascinating part is the well-researched and well-written notes section in the back. Fantagraphics always comes through on presentation and historical information.
* * *
On re-read, still a slog. I wish that the notes came before the comics so I had some context for the hard-to-follow biffsocko
* * *
On re-read, still a slog. I wish that the notes came before the comics so I had some context for the hard-to-follow biffsocko
October 12, 2015
A nice collection of (mostly) little-known heroes from the beginning of the Golden Age, getting outside the usual Marvel-DC (or what would become Marvel-DC) axis. Quite a few were less than stellar, but in among them were some surprisingly skillful, well-developed comics.
May 31, 2016
Fun collection of early superhero stories. The art is primitive and the stories are formulaic, but I enjoyed seeing characters I'd never heard of, like Dr. Mystic, Skyman, Cosmic Carson, and Rex Dexter of Mars.
April 3, 2009
Long, tedious review here:
http://blog.newsarama.com/2009/04/02/...
http://blog.newsarama.com/2009/04/02/...
July 22, 2009
what a kick! some of the best comics i've read.
August 24, 2009
Collection of 1939-40 first superhero comics. Eh.
July 15, 2011
These are great! It's hilarious how dated the content is - very pro America and all enemies are "Oriental" - hilarious. Definitely a reflection of the time - 1939-1941.
July 25, 2011
There's more to early comics than Supes and Bats.
March 20, 2014
An important anthology that showcases a lot of the earliest comic books. It's interesting to see the kernels of the modern in the book but don't expect an easy read.
May 3, 2025
enormous historical document that i am so very glad exists...that being said i just got in the work of Fletcher Hanks because his stories here wipe everything else so hard it kinda feels unfair!
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews