Jerry and Joe’s tale could be delivered more tightly, and indeed has been in Gerard Jones’s great 2004 history of the comic book business, Men of Tomorrow. Ricca has nonetheless produced a sad pleasure of a book, despite his curiosities and faults as a journalist and historian (more on which later). Jerry and Joe’s story is Ricca’s best possession, and he tells it with a decent amount of care, and perhaps a bit too much verve in this, their first serious biography. Jerry and Joe watched their creation conquer the world, raking in million after million, not for themselves, but for businessmen like comic book moguls Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz, who, they felt, bullied and disrespected them. Superman’s owner, DC Entertainment, has been celebrating this anniversary with, among other things, a new movie, Man of Steel, alone grossing over $650 million worldwide.īrad Ricca, a poet who previously made a documentary film called Last Son about Siegel and Shuster, tells in Super Boys the story of their youth, success, and the long, depressing aftermath. They were classic schlemiels, awkward and almost delusionally dreamy, bad with women, and so bad with business they sold one of the most valuable inventions in literature for $130, 75 years ago.
More people could likely identify Perry White and Lex Luthor than could identify the men who created Superman: two Jewish kids from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. IT’S THE OLDEST STORY in comic book history: a wild dream transmogrifies into a money-minting machine, and its creator doesn’t get what he/she earned - neither the money nor the recognition.
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