Superman: The High-Flying History of the Man of Steel

Admittedly, we are massive, monster, huge, epic Superman fans. And yes, we are actually in this book…annnnnd to be even more honest I was a bit taken aback to discover my wedding was in a book thanks to my most beloved husband. Surprise! However, we own a lot of Superman books.

Like…umm…over a zillion. He keeps buying them. Sometimes the same ones. There are at this very moment 15 that have spilled over onto my shelf from his bookcase. I have to concede, this IS a great Superman read. Why? Because it is an easy, light FUN read. and it is part of every child’s imagination.

This isn’t a heavy tome dedicated to the Mythology of the Superman image–got that one–it hasn’t really been read completely. It isn’t a comic type homage filled with fluff photos and zero content. It actually is a really nicely balanced view of what Superman has been to our culture, and how the idea of one Superhero has become part of so many lives on a personal level.

Is it an academic read? Ehhh..I could cite it–but I read it on the couch. And I laughed, because I found other folks like us who have embraced the Superman ideal and their stories were shared. So for a sweeping overview of an icon pretty good read, for a personal glimpse into the lives of others (and my wedding!), it was cool.

For one of the few times, I’m really glad this one was added to the shelf.

This is an excellent piece of social and cultural history that traces the comic book hero, Superman, from his origins during the Depression to his place in movies and TV in the 21st century. The book is well-written and meticulously researched and is a real delight to read. I remember reading Superman comics back in the 1950s and finding out how my boyhood hero evolved was really fun. I had always heard that the two young men who created Superman were cheated by the brass at DC comics but Tye sets the record straight and demonstrates how they received a considerable amount of money from DC later in their lives. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in American social and cultural history or anyone interested in the history of comic books. Well done.

As a 7 year old growing up in rural Colombia I obsessed about Superman. He was all I wished to be: strong, noble and beloved by all. Instead of enslaving all of humanity as many would have done in his place, Supes dedicated himself to serving others and even seemed to enjoy playing the role of nerdish weakling Clark Kent (I, as all children, assumed that Kent was the me that was and Superman was the me that could be, just waiting under my shirt). The TV cartoons were the highlight of my week (in black and white, natch and sometimes almost undeciferable due to poor signal). The comic books were hard to come by- they could only be had when someone traveled to larger towns over unpaved roads. They were the wonderful Editorial Novaro Mexican editions, which in my humble view were lovelier than the US editions.

One never gets over a first love, and mine was Superman, although I empathized more with Superboy who after all also lived in a small town with his (step-) parents and had a crush on lovely redhead Lana Lang. Don’t even get me started on the Legion of Superheroes. I still recall the large size Legion v. Mordru special where Superboy gets to kiss the beautiful (although blue-tinged) Phantom Girl and then both of them and some of their colleagues bury Mordru under a huge diamond. Don’t tell me that wouldn’t be great.

Anyway, I love books about Superman. It becomes harder for these books to say things we (faithful, true-blue) Superman fanboys don’t know or expect, so there’s no way there won’t be overlap with other books, such as Jake Rossen’s “Superman v. Hollywood”, or Gerard Jones’s “Men of Tomorrow” or David Hadju’s “The Ten Cent Plague”. There’s no way the author won’t make mistakes or ommissions that we will notice gleefully, like assuming that all super-creatures (including Titano and Streaky) originate from Krypton, or that there’s no crystal Kryptonite. But we still enjoy these books, particularly when, as in this case, there is so much love and respect for Superman and the people who created him and brought him to us.

Superman stands aside from the sordidness of business dealings and the grabbiness of executives and of his creators and their relatives, from the tacky merchandising and the failed movies and weak storylines, from the current prostration of the comic book business. From the talk about synergies and multiple platforms. He stands inside many of us, untouched and pristine, as we were in our childhood.

I grew up on “Adventures of Superman” with George Reeves and read comics in the late 50’s and early 60’s. I own the TV series and two movie serials and have always been a fan. Have watched the Reeve movies and most recent reboots. I had not kept up with all of the updates and variations that have occurred in the world of Superman. This book is a very good history of the character giving how all of the formats tied in with each other or in some cases didn’t until a later time when there was more reinvention of his history and powers or the villains or his “costars”. The only reason I didn’t rate this with five stars is that it wasn’t as fast a read as I thought it would be but I was still very pleased with it. Not a kids’ book in the way it is handled.

This painstaking and dispassionate history of how Superman came to be, in all the media and product incarnations, tells a riveting, exhaustive American story. While Superman’s origins were in the Jewish immigrant and son-of-immigrant slice of America, his story is universal: being an Other, a stranger in a strange land with invisible powers that are always used for good.
If you are not interested in Superman or grew up without Superman, Batman, Spiderman, or any other superheroes in your consciousness, don’t bother reading this book; but if you sneaked comic books passed adults, tied a towel around your neck to run around playing, and you want some insight into a large chunk of American and kid DNA, read it and enjoy.
Well written, well researched.

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