Publishers Lunch is reporting that Bradley J. Ricca sold Super Boys: Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, and the Creation of Superman to Michael Homler at St. Martin’s via agent Scott Mendel of Mendel Media Group. The author is a comic book scholar at Case Western Reserve University.
PL reports that the book is to be “the first-ever biography of the creators of Superman, detailing the complex lifelong collaboration and occasional betrayals, private dramas and public struggles, that accompanied their creation of perhaps the most iconic fictional figure of the 20th century.” That “first-ever” part was the cause of some surprise here, but further research seems to show it might indeed be the first, at least for adults. Author Marc Tyler Nobleman and illustrator Ross MacDonald’s Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman was a 40-page hardcover published for children by Knopf in July 2008. We fully admit that we don’t know everything. Do you, the readers, know of any other biographies of Siegel and Shuster? And if there aren’t, can anyone think why it took so long to get these first two?
Edited 31 August: Ricca writes to tell us more about himself: “I teach a comics course at Case with Mike San Giacomo (a reporter who also wrote the award-winning Tales of the Starlight Drive-In graphic novel). I published an essay on Women Super-Heroes in The Encyclopedia of Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy and have presented papers at the Popular Culture Association and at San Diego Comic-Con (all on Superman). I also wrote and directed a documentary on Superman’s origins called Last Son, which is currently playing at film festivals.”
He also adds to the question of “first”, by reminding us of Gerard Jones’ Men of Tomorrow.