Superheroes!

This reference volume follows the costumed heroes of American comics from their modest beginnings to their present place at the center of global entertainment. Young writers and artists, many barely out of their teens, created the first of these characters during a period of worldwide conflict, and the stories were printed on inexpensive paper for children. Over the decades the form grew into a cultural force with a vast audience and spread into film, television and many other media.

The book covers early comic books, independent titles that broke from the mainstream, and the sprawling shared universes run by DC and Marvel. It presents the superhero as a distinctly American creation that carries forward the myths and legends of earlier eras. Its subjects include Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Captain America, the X-Men, the Justice League and the Avengers, characters that express both our highest aspirations and our darkest impulses.

Author Brian Solomon, a pop culture specialist, traces the history from the Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages of comics through the Modern Age of enormous studio films and beyond. The genre has lasted and flourished for roughly eighty years, and the book introduces the people who shaped it: illustrators Jack Kirby and Jim Lee, writers Stan Lee and Alan Moore, actors Christopher Reeve and Robert Downey Jr., and directors Tim Burton and Joss Whedon.