He starred in a radio show in the ’40s (taking on the Ku Klux Klan in the first episodes) and became a movie star in an earlier serial but more significantly in the later films with Christopher Reeve in the starring role. Able to leap from medium to medium in a single bound, Superman was also a marketing goldmine. While he always fought for what was right, what was wrong would change, from fascism to pollution to greedy financiers, and so on. Siegel and Shuster soon lost artistic control of their superhero, but others maintained the core of his appeal while changing the details of his image and story to fit the times-a chiseled and invincible image in the 1950s, for instance, then a more nuanced and vulnerable image in the ’70s. Tye explores the reasons for Superman’s enduring popularity by examining the lives of the many people who created and re-created the Man of Steel. The brainchild of Jerry Siegel and illustrator Joe Shuster, two young dreamers from the tough Jewish precinct of Cleveland, Superman was an instant hit and remains an American icon. Superman made his debut in 1938 in Action Comics #1. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No! It’s Tye’s ( Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, 2009, etc.) merry, dizzyingly detailed history of America’s first and greatest superhero.
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