About the Author

Gerard Jones, comic book writer and author of The Comic Book Heroes and Killing Monsters, draws on exhaustive research to portray how the immigrant experience and the collision of Yiddish and American culture - forged in the crucible of two world wars - shaped the vision of the make-believe hero. He chronicles how the comics sparked a frightened counterattack that nearly destroyed the industry in the 1950's, and how later they surged back at an underground level, to inspire a new generation to transmute those long-ago fantasies into art, literature, blockbuster movies and graphic novels.