Men of tomorrow

the long version

"Gerard Jones, a longtime insider to the comic book business, draws on years of research and interview to reveal how the collision of Yiddish and American culture shaped the modern vision of the hero. He recounts the frightened counterattack against comics that nearly destroyed the industry in the 1950s and traces the underground resurgence that inspired a new generation to transmute those long-ago fantasies into art, literature, and blockbuster movies. Along the way he uncovers never-before-told stories about the makers of America's most peculiar art form." "Far more than the story of superheroes, Men of Tomorrow tells of the growth of geek culture from its birth in the science fiction fandom of the 1920s to its conquest of mass media sixty years later and tracks pop culture's transformation from the freewheeling, pickpocket entrepreneurship of the early twentieth century through immigration, technological upheaval, and a pair of world wars to the corporate control of the AOL/Time Warner era."--BOOK JACKET.