Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero

I'm the odd geek who isn't interested in superheroes or comic books.  They just never grabbed me.  I do have a soft spot for Superman and Superman II.  Some of that affection is nostalgia - they were the first crush-movies for my friends, one of whom kept me on the phone for 45 minutes in 5th grade as she wrote (and tore up) a very gushy fan letter.  She was not one of the friends I invited over two years later to watch the movie on VHS (later that day, my mom found kiss-marks on the TV).  Despite my relative indifference, I realize how important Superman is to the American psyche.  Created by two Depression-era teens, he's a prime example of what my History and Fiction professor said - our literature shows both who we are and who we want to be.  A war hero (fighting racially stereotyped villains) in the 40s, the square-jawed hero of low-budget 50s TV, a Saturday morning member of the Legion of Justice in the 70s, and a modern teen in the 2000s, Superman has been both constant and altered to our ever-changing times.  Larry Tye's Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero traces our hero's history.

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two outcast kids in a hardscrabble Cleveland high school, dreamed up Superman in the early 1930s.  Siegel was the writer, and the hustler - he wanted to make it, somehow.  Superman was his idea, but he needed someone to draw his creation so he turned to (or used) his classmate.  They hired a local model (actually another teenager who a decade later married Siegel), and poured their fantasies onto the page.  They should have been set for life.

They weren't.  Siegel and Shuster's character ended up in the hands of Jack Leibowitz, a pornographer who bought the Action Comics (later DC) from the more artist-accomadating but less business minded Harry Donenfeld and spent the rest of their lives alternating between mostly menial jobs and begging Leibowitz for payouts.  Superman thrived at DC, selling millions of comics and an almost unfathomable amount of tie-in merchandise.  He appeared on TV, radio, movies, and even in a Broadway musical.  Everyone knows Superman, and he's the hero you want or need him to be - even a stand in for Jesus.  He's showed us who we are as well as who he is.

A few words on the Superman Curse.  It's easy to believe - Christopher Reeve spent his last years paralyzed after a riding accident, George Reeves died in a suspicious suicide, and Siegel and Shuster lived most of their lives in or near poverty.  Tye addresses the curse, and demonstrates how it's not really true.  Reeve's accident was a freak event, but the other tragedies can be explained.  Additionally, there are the stories of Kirk Allyn (typecast, but not much of an actor, he spent decades happily cashing in on his fame, Noel Neil and Jack Larson (long lives and a life-long friendship), and Bob Holliday, the star of the Superman musical who left show business for a successful career in contracting in Pennsylvania where his former fame is a source of civic pride.