Has anyone here read "Men of Tomorrow?"

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A history of the comics industry in the 1940's in New York, mainly. It's being touted as the "real life" Kavalier & Clay. I was flipping through it in Barnes & Noble this weekend and was wondering if anyone on ILC has rated it yet.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 18:14 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm waiting for the trade.

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 16 November 2004 18:19 (twenty-one years ago)

I started a thread about it (before it came out, admittedly) here:

Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the History of the Comic Book

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 18:35 (twenty-one years ago)

No really, I am. I might get it from the library though. I just can't justify dishing out for a hard cover.
I'm about halfway through Comic Book Nation, though, which is pretty good.

xpost

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 16 November 2004 18:35 (twenty-one years ago)

I should have used the search function.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 19:50 (twenty-one years ago)

It's an ILC first!

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 19:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Don't worry, I'll turn this thread into postulation about the inappropriate relationship between Batman & Robin in no time!

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 16 November 2004 19:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Gerard Jones alert!

(Elongated Man, JLE, Wonder Man, Green Lantern, Mosaic (which was sort of okay)... etc.)

― Chuck Tatum (Chuck Tatum), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 22:11 (twenty-one years ago)

I read it a couple of weeks ago, on loan from my local library. It's a pretty good read, with some factoids and interpretations of events that I had never encountered before. It loses something as it goes along though, once the focus switches from telling Siegel and Donenfeld's stories to providing capsule histories of other industry figures in a roughly chronological approach. I guess I wouldn't recommend buying it, as I can't imagine reading it more than once.

― Chris F. (servoret), Wednesday, 17 November 2004 03:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Very entertaining, esp. the chapter about William Moulton Marston/Charles Moulton and the origins of Wonder Woman... yikes!

― Douglas (Douglas), Thursday, 18 November 2004 03:42 (twenty-one years ago)

one year passes...

i've started reading this - it's pretty great! love love love love the gangster stuff, sorta surprised that i'm not really as sympathetic towards siegel as i should be (so far), really like how much it's about the birth of geeks as much as anything else.

― j blount (papa la bas), Monday, 5 December 2005 16:15 (twenty years ago)

I've told everyone that I want this for Christmas, but I think that no one in my family wants to condone my comix fixation/withdrawal from reality.

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Monday, 5 December 2005 16:19 (twenty years ago)

huk i bet they have this at yr library! that's how i found it - i had HOURS to kill at the library and i thought 'hey - they might have some graphic novels or something i can read here' and then i went to the comics section, which was suprisingly dire esp considering uga has a pretty big, good library - they had david boring, blankets, jimmy corrigan, a bunch of doonesbury and the recent fantagraphics peanuts comps and a few other things, plenty of identity politix comix for instance, but no spandex comix, just books about spandex comix, such as frinstance 'men of tomorrow'.

― j blount (papa la bas), Monday, 5 December 2005 16:29 (twenty years ago)

omg this book rules so hard - wolk otm re: wonder woman - ye gods. i found i didn't sympathise with siegel nearly as much as i thought i might, shuster otoh came off as almost historically sad, he came off as a bit of a cipher, i couldn't really get a grasp of what he was like while grasping all too well what siegel was like. i still actually teared up at the cronkite announcement though. the guy i actually liked best oddly enough was harry donenfield, one of them cheatin bizness men. i can't reccommend this book highly enough to anyone just interested in pop culture in general, nevermind just comix.

― j blount (papa la bas), Sunday, 11 December 2005 23:39 (twenty years ago)

cool! i should read this. still in hardcover though right?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 12 December 2005 01:12 (twenty years ago)

No, it's a trade paperback, though apparently there's a slightly revised/corrected MMPB coming soon.

― kit brash (kit brash), Monday, 12 December 2005 02:20 (twenty years ago)

"Corrected"? Grammar stuff or history?

― Chris F. (servoret), Monday, 12 December 2005 04:07 (twenty years ago)

History, interpretation of events, transcription. Nothing drastic, as I understand.

― kit brash (kit brash), Monday, 12 December 2005 05:21 (twenty years ago)

hey wow, my local library DOES have this! chiz thnx, blount.

― etc, Monday, 12 December 2005 05:41 (twenty years ago)

one month passes...

I bought it yesterday!

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Wednesday, 25 January 2006 20:16 (twenty years ago)

I still haven't read this...Superhero Sadface ahoy.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Wednesday, 25 January 2006 20:18 (twenty years ago)

If I read it fast, maybe I'll put it up for a trade, but bundle it with the CRisis novel!

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Wednesday, 25 January 2006 20:25 (twenty years ago)

Huk—from what I know of based on what you write here, you WILL NOT BE ABLE TO PUT THAT GODDAMN THING DOWN!!!!! You will plotz, as I did.

Everybody else who hasn't, do so posthaste

― veronica moser (veronica moser), Wednesday, 25 January 2006 22:03 (twenty years ago)

yeah you'll read it fast - i tore thru this mother. i'd reccommend leg mcneil's porn oral history 'the other hollywood' for anyone interested in some interesting parallels.

― j blount (papa la bas), Wednesday, 25 January 2006 22:10 (twenty years ago)

Comics and porn: a match made in my pants.

― David R. (popshots75`), Wednesday, 25 January 2006 22:11 (twenty years ago)

ORAL history huh

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 25 January 2006 22:13 (twenty years ago)

Whhhheeeeee! Finished this last night (and then undid whatever branial benefits reading a pictureless book gives you by reading another 40 pages of Showcase Presents the Green Arrow).
I'll never read Wonder Woman the same again.
I was amazed at how unsympathetic Siegel & Shuster came across. Everything I'd ever read about them was so reverent and lionizing.
Lots of talk about/around Thrill Power (w/o mentioning it, of course).

Did Howard Chaykin recently do a comics version of Philip Wylie's Gladiator?

― He was a beatnik. I was a martian. (Huk-L), Monday, 6 February 2006 14:43 (twenty years ago)

I have both this and Kavalier & Clay, and was saving them both as holiday reads. Is this madness? And if not, which order should I read the two in?

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Monday, 6 February 2006 15:30 (twenty years ago)

Men of Tomorrow makes several references to Kav & Clay, and Kav & Clay makes ZERO references to MoT, ergo, K&C-->MoT.
Also, it's probably more fun, to go fiction-->non-fiction of similar (with the option of going back to the fiction for added perspective).

― He was a beatnik. I was a martian. (Huk-L), Monday, 6 February 2006 15:36 (twenty years ago)

I still fear the Gerard Jones. But I'm going back to Toronto for a few weeks, and this'll do nice.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Monday, 6 February 2006 16:38 (twenty years ago)

Oh, his post-Giffen JL Euro totally deserves a second look. It fails on many levels, but he's definitely giving it a shot, and daring to make it something out of the half-chewed leftovers he'd been handed.

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Monday, 6 February 2006 16:46 (twenty years ago)

I felt they were a bit self-conscious, sort of "Hey, I too can be crazy like those crazy Brit writers! Watch me be crazy!" But that Shadow thing was pretty good, and Mosaic sort of worked, if only for being both (a) a lot of fun and (b) the most cancellable comic in existence.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Monday, 6 February 2006 17:29 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, but if he'd had a better art team, willing to "GO THERE" with him - instead of dressing everybody up in the worst costumes imaginable - it would have come across a lot better.

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Monday, 6 February 2006 17:41 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, that art was apalling (Ron Randall? Even worse than Bart Sears.) Actually, I've just realised I quit reading comics when Giff&DeM left JLI, and started buying them again when "FKAJL" started up.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Monday, 6 February 2006 17:53 (twenty years ago)

That's pretty much the same for me. I bailed on superheroes during the General Glory storyline (kept on reading Hellblazer for another year, I think) and my first single issue back was FKAJL #4!

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Monday, 6 February 2006 18:01 (twenty years ago)

sort of "Hey, I too can be crazy like those crazy Brit writers! Watch me be crazy!"

I'm still annoyed with him for his attack on Morrison in the second version of The Comic Book Heroes-- IIRC, he describes Animal Man and Doom Patrol as pretentious wank for college dropouts, before describing Mosaic as an attempted hybrid between traditional superheroes and Morrison's DP!

― Chris F. (servoret), Tuesday, 7 February 2006 00:57 (twenty years ago)

It's the Wild Palms to Doom Patrol's Twin Peaks!

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Tuesday, 7 February 2006 01:07 (twenty years ago)

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