Supermen! is a rambunctious anthology of the earliest superhero stories—gaudy, crude, infernally potent things, cranked out by young cartoonists… (The New York Times Book Review, Douglas Wolk)Supermen! is an interesting book. All these knockoffs of Superman have a certain creepy charm—like an off-brand children's entertainer—and there is some art, especially by Basil Wolverton and Jack Cole, that is literally decades ahead of its time. (Paul Constant, The Stranger)Supermen!, this anthology lovingly assembled by Greg Sadowski, makes the case that these earliest endeavors by the future creators of masterworks like The Spirit, Captain America, and Plastic Man were more than crude throat-clearings—they were unfiltered manifestations 
of psyche, lousy with erotic charge and questionable politics. [Grade:] A–. (Entertainment Weekly)If nothing else, Supermen! puts Fletcher Hanks’ career in perspective... These are comics designed to make you tear your hair out waiting for the next issue, just to see if these guys could top themselves. Great fun all around. (Tim O'Shea, Robot 6, "What Are You Reading?")This Greg Sadowski-edited and designed anthology of early superhero comics is, like Paul Karasik's Fletcher Hanks collection and DC's Jack Kirby omnibuses before it, a real "here's how it's done" moment.... In a time when the major superhero companies seem dead-set on creating the most uniform tone possible across their lines...evidence that superheroes can behave in any number of ways against any number of threats is indeed liberating, perhaps even necessary. (Sean T. Collins, AllTooFlat.com)What was once mundane had become utterly fascinating in Fantagraphics’ superb collection Supermen! (Bookgasm, Rob Lott) Product DescriptionThe enduring cultural phenomenon of comic book heroes was invented in the late 1930s by a talented and hungry group of artists and writers barely out of their teens, flying by the seat of their pants to create something new, exciting, and above all profitable. The iconography and mythology they created flourishes to this day in comic books, video, movies, fine art, advertising, and practically all other media. Supermen! collects the best and the brightest of this first generation, including Jack Cole, Will Eisner, Bill Everett, Lou Fine, Fletcher Hanks, Jack Kirby, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, and Basil Wolverton. If the reader is expecting to find an All-American group of altruistic do-gooders, he in for quite a jolt. As Jonathan Lethem writes in his Foreword, “A collection like Supermen! works like a reverse-neutron bomb to assumptions about the birth of the superhero image: it tears down the orderly structures of theory and history and leaves the figures standing in full view, staring back at us in all their defiant disorienting particularity, their blazing strangeness.” Beautifully designed and produced in full color, Supermen! contains twenty full-length stories, ten full- sized covers, and a generous selection of vintage promotional ads, and is indispensable to anyone interested in the origins of superheroes and the history of the comic book form

I have looked forward to the release of SUPERMEN! THE FIRST WAVE OF COMIC BOOK HEROES 1936 - 1941 solely due to the horrible experience I had reading Jim Krueger and Alex Ross' PROJECT SUPERPOWERS. The promo material for PS looked great and really got me interested in its modern take on a selection of public-domain Golden Age heroes, but the result was a catastrophe. When I learned that SUPERMEN! contained classic appearances from some of those very same characters, I decided that it was time to wash out my mouth with a sample of their original adventures. SUPERMEN! is a selection of covers, ads, and stories featuring forgotten characters such as Dr. Mystic, the Clock, the Face, the Flame, Skyman, Blue Bolt, the Comet, and many more. Creators include a who's who of comic history: Jack Cole, Will Eisner, Bill Everett, Gardner Fox, Jack Kirby, Ogden Whitney, & Basil Wolverton, just to name a few. These stories are from the earliest days of the comic industry, and many of them, even though written by acknowledged founding fathers, are pretty laughable in terms of plot; however, the art, whether realistic or cartoonish, shows an inspired creativity that would shape the medium for decades. In any case, this book achieves exactly what it sets out to do: to give forgotten work from the Golden Age of comics its due. Jonathan Lethem provides an excellent introduction that really hits home, making me feel like we are long-lost brothers. In fact, it's one of the few truly worthwhile intros I've ever read in a comic collection. The end notes by editor Greg Sadowski wrap the book up nicely, providing interesting tidbits on the creators, stories, and characters. Fantagraphics has once again done fans a great service by releasing a beautiful, inexpensive reprint of obscure Golden Age material. SUPERMEN! is presented in a similar format to the bestselling I SHALL DESTROY ALL THE CIVILIZED PLANETS! It's a bit smaller and thicker, but it features the same garish colors, production values, and paper. I'm certainly hoping for additional volumes.