I'm glad I let my inner geek take over and read it anyway. Voloj and Campi are well aware they are walking a fairly worn path-these two volumes and eight others on the formation of the superhero comic book are listed in The Joe Shuster Story’s selected bibliography.Īs I said, I almost didn't read this book because I thought I knew the story. Almost a decade later, Brad Ricca expanded the story with his in-depth book, Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster-the Creators of Superman (St. In 2004, Gerard Jones told the story in Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book (Basic Books). Comics) treated the creators of Superman, the property that made the company wildly successful, is well documented. The shameful saga of how badly the Men of Steal who ran National (the company that eventually became D.C. Not only is the story familiar to me, but it also stirs up my dyspepsia something terrible. That’s what it became for Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, although in notably different ways, as The Joe Shuster Story vividly recounts. Look! Up in the sky! It’s… it’s the American Dream as a glowing green toxic Kryptonite nightmare. In fact, these are the very things the narrator of the 1940s Superman animated cartoons tells us the noble immigrant from the planet Krypton heroically fights for: “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.” Oh, the irony! You’d think genuine inspiration, talent, and hard work combined with fearless perseverance would lead to success. You’d think, if you and your pal come up with a brilliant new hit that makes tons of money, you wouldn’t have to struggle to pay your bills. One wonders what he felt when he saw so many cartoonists after him employ the template he designed for the first comic book superhero. Joe was proud of the fact that he co-created Superman but for most of his life, he remained in the shadows. This perfectly suits its subject: a quiet cartoonist who remained humble in spite of the seismic shockwaves his work sent through pop culture. Most of the meticulously researched graphic biography, The Artist Behind Superman: The Joe Shuster Story-written by Julian Voloj, visualized by Thomas Campi, and published by Super Genius Comics-is smartly visualized in understated, softly painted Edward Hopper-esque images.
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