Men Of Tomorrow (Gerard Jones)

Men Of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic BookBy Gerard Jones – Published by Basic Books – ISBN 0465036562 – 384 pages

The first few decades of the 20th century saw mass migration of persecuted European Jews out of their traditional homes and their relocation to the United States. Many settled in the heart of New York and came to dominate the financial life of the city through a network of mob connections. Other Jews moved to the suburbs or to industrial towns like Cleveland and integrated into small town USA. The growth of Pulps and comic books brought both groups together — the streetwise city centre Jews (the “Gangsters”) controlled the distribution and managed the publishing companies, while their suburban cousins (the “Geeks”) were the editors and writers who created the stories that fuelled the new media. This book follows the life experiences of major players from each community and shows that while they may have needed each other, they never really understood each other.Gerard Jones is no stranger to the world of comic books. He has written for most of the big companies including a long running stint on the Justice League franchise and he has the distinction of being the last writer of Green Lantern before the creation of Kyle Rayner. He has written an earlier history of the comic book industry, with Will Jacobs, called The Comic Book Heroes, but this new book takes a different track and is a far more personal history of a smaller number of key players. Jones also wrote Killing Monsters (with Lynn Ponton) a book which stands up for a certain measure of violence within a children’s fantasies as a safe way for them to explore the darker side of their developing emotions.

By Gerard Jones’s own admission this book is a biography and not a bibliography, it’s more about the real world Golden Age players than their brightly costumed alter egos. It should technically be described as a comparative social biography of Superman’s creators (Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster) and Superman’s publishers (Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz). The introduction is dynamite and really sets the scene for where Jerry Siegel was on the day Superman The Movie was announced. The first act paints a broad picture of 1920s and 1930s New York and Cleveland, and illustrates how different social conditions shaped the lives of very different groups of immigrant Jews.

The dense, dangerous world of early 20th century New York is perhaps the most emotive and Jones expertly draws the reader into the world of the street gangs and Prohibition era alliances that gave birth to the Jewish dominated New York mob. His portrait of Harry Donenfeld is as an opportunistic, if charismatic, rogue and he portrays Liebowitz as a humourless straight man – a real-life double act. By contrast Cleveland comes across as an icon of suburban American life and we get a real sense of Jerry Siegel’s childhood – including the revelation that Siegel’s father had been murdered. Of the four leads Joe Shuster remains the most enigmatic.

Woven through the these histories are the side stories of the elder and younger Gaines, Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Julius Schwartz, Mort Weisinger, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, and a host of other names. Most of them were from the same generation, most of them were Jewish and most of them were drawn to New York by a powerful new medium. Something Jones doesn’t do is to carry the sense of the Jewishness much further. He uses it to give us a sense of the New York scene and to show the growth of the businesses on the edge of the mob, but it isn’t followed through and all we are left with is links between former mob businesses. It would have been nice to have more of a sense of how the strong Jewish roots of the industry became eroded.

The same cast features prominently in the middle act of the book which chronicles the 1940s and the maturation of the medium. They are also followed through the last (third) act which deals with their post-1940s history. Jones glosses over much of the Silver Age and instead concentrates on how the first generation of comic book players faired in the post Comics Code world. The thread that ties the entire narrative together is Superman. From his inception, his influences, and his sale to the subsequent play and counter play between Siegel and Donenfeld. Jones never demonises either party and he aptly demonstrates how completely different life experiences created two people who simply didn’t understand each other. Each party feeling fully justified to claim Superman as their own.

Jones’s book is a rich look at the real world figures who inspired Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. A lot of the early material is based on extensive interviews with the surviving players and almost as importantly interviews with people from outside the comic book industry that knew the players. His writing flows easily and holds your attention, although the more well read fan may find themselves occasionally skimming through the more famous sections (a danger, as Jones often reveals new details). He digs into the industry’s self reinforcing mythology and strips it away to show the real people and their personal struggles.

Most comic book histories, many of them excellent, are based on first hand accounts from the surviving editors and artists (“the Geeks”) collected by fan historians (themselves “Geeks”) that are often focused more on the creative process than on the social history. Jones’s book focuses equally on publishers and the creators, and as I comic fan I was at times far more interested in the, to me, hitherto unknown world of Donenfeld and Liebowitz. This isn’t an apologist work, but it is balanced towards a wider audience than most comic book histories will reach.