Written by Gerald Jones, it's full title is Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book.
Great, GREAT book! My highest possible recommendation.
It's a wonderfully compelling narrative of the early days of the comics industry. Out own Uncle Mort is featured fairly predominatly. If that alone is not enought to make the book A/R for you, the Legion is mentioned by name a couple of times.
Posted by Stealth on :
This sounds like a fascinating true story, and even though I'm not a fan Jones's comic writing, a non-fiction book is a horse of a different color.
Thanks for mentioning this book, I'll seek it out.
Posted by matlock on :
I haven't had a chance to read that yet, but I did enjoy his earlier non-fiction comics work, I think it was called The Comic Book Heroes or something. It details the Silver Age through the late 90's or thereabouts. It was co-written with a fellow named Will Jacobs, though the updates to the second edition seem to be by Jones only. The second edition is more thorough than the first but seems to me to be tainted by Jones' unhappy stint in comics. Most creators are either genius mavericks who were "too good for comics" like Jim Steranko, or freakish outsiders who probably hated their fathers. Oh, and also not much love for the Image crew can be detected. The Legion gets a pretty good amount of coverage in it for you A/R fans.
Jones also published a really good book about the history of the TV sitcom called "Honey, I'm Home" which I highly recommend though I don't think it's still in print.
Posted by Fanfic Lady on :
Well, I did buy it, shortly after I made that post, and I loved it, except that I thought Jones gave Julius Schwartz short shrift. A minor quibble, though.
My enjoyment of Grant Morrison's somewhat similar "Supergods" has inspired me to start re-reading this book. Will share my thoughts as I work my way through it.