In the depths of the Depression, out of the crowded tenements of New York and Cleveland, the comic book superhero leapt into being. Out of a mix of geekiness, science fiction, and outsider yearning, a crew of young men from working-class Jewish neighbourhoods and shady backgrounds created a series of blue-eyed, chisel-nosed crime fighters and adventurers who quickly captured the imaginations of young and old. Within a few years their creations had spawned a new genre that still dominates youth entertainment seventy years later. Eisner Award-winning author Gerard Jones draws on exhaustive research to portray how the immigrant experience and an outsider mentality shaped the vision of the make-believe hero, while a bizarre melting-pot of left-wing politics, mob money and the worlds of soft-porn and detective magazines contributed to the publishing world that produced the comics and brought them to millions. He chronicles how the success of the comics provoked a backlash that nearly destroyed the industry in the 1950s, and how later they surged back, inspiring a new generation to transmute pre-war fantasies into art, literature, blockbuster movies and graphic novels. Men of Tomorrow rivetingly demonstrates how the creators of the superheroes established their crucial place in the modern imagination.

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

Arts & Photography

Gerard Jones

History & Criticism

Arrow Books

Animated by the stories of some of the last century's most charismatic and conniving artists, writers, and businessmen, Men of Tomorrow brilliantly demonstrates how the creators of the superheroes gained their cultural power and established a crucial place in the modern imagination. "This history of the birth of superhero comics highlights three pivotal figures. The story begins early in the last century, on the Lower East Side, where Harry Donenfeld rises from the streets to become the king of the 'smooshes'-soft-core magazines with titles like French Humor and Hot Tales. Later, two high school friends in Cleveland, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, become avid fans of 'scientifiction,' the new kind of literature promoted by their favorite pulp magazines. The disparate worlds of the wise guy and the geeks collide in 1938, and the result is Action Comics #1, the debut of Superman. For Donenfeld, the comics were a way to sidestep the censors. For Shuster and Siegel, they were both a calling and an eventual source of misery: the pair waged a lifelong campaign for credit and appropriate compensation." -The New Yorker

Basic Books

Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-believe Violence

Children choose their heroes more carefully than we think. From Pokémon to the rapper Eminem, pop-culture icons are not simply commercial pied pipers who practice mass hypnosis on our youth. Indeed, argues the author of this lively and persuasive paean to the power of popular culture, even trashy or violent entertainment gives children something they need, something that can help both boys and girls develop in a healthy way. Drawing on a wealth of true stories, many gleaned from the fascinating workshops he conducts, and basing his claims on extensive research, including interviews with psychologists and educators, Gerard Jones explains why validating our children's fantasies teaches them to trust their own emotions and build stronger selves.

Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

FIRST EDITION 1983 by Crown Publishers,paperback 110 pages

The Beaver Papers: The Story of the Lost Season

Humor & Entertainment

Will Jacobs

Television

Crown, Publishers

The first edition of Jacobs' and Jones's classic history of comics, very different from the 1995 version. A unique view of the development of superhero comics from 1956 to the mid-1980s through the lens of the lives and times of their creators.

The Comic Book Heroes: From the Silver Age to the Present

Literature & Fiction

Humor & Satire

Crown

Inu Yasha A Feudal Fairy Tale (Viz Graphic Novel) (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

Comics & Graphic Novels

TAKAHASHI, RUMIKO

Manga

Turtleback Books

The Amalgam Age of Comics: The Marvel Comics

Howard Mackie

Karl Kesel

John Ostrander

Chuck, Dixon

DC Comics

Trouble With Girls

Graphic Novels

Eternity publishing / Malibu Graphics

For decades, Will Jacobs and Gerard Jones’s cult classic The Beaver Papers has been the only published chronicle of how the world’s literary, artistic, and intellectual communities rose up in a doomed crusade to stop the cancellation of the iconic sitcom, Leave it to Beaver. Now, at long last, it can be revealed that the story did not end that day in 1963 when ABC TV finally pulled the Cleaver family’s plug. In The Beaver Papers 2: The Fall of the Beaver, Jacobs and Jones detail the heroic quest of the Beaver cast to find a new home for their beloved show, a quest that led them through the darkest corners of the TV, movie, theater, and even comic book industries. Along the way they present twenty-five new Leave It to Beaver adventures as if written by world-renowned authors, including J. D. Salinger (The Beaver in the Rye ), H. P. Lovecraft (The Mayfield Horror), Flannery O’Connor (A Good Beaver Is Hard to Find), Vladimir Nabokov (Pale Beaver), and Ayn Rand (Cleaver Shrugged). If The Beaver Papers demonstrated just how dubious the distinction is between literature and popular culture, The Beaver Papers 2 positively obliterates it.

The Beaver Papers 2: The Fall of the Beaver

Jacobs, Will

Humor

Atomic Drop Press

Dragon Ball Z.

AKIRA, TORIYAMA

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Books by Gerard Jones