Christopher Irving provides a history of this particular avenue of cinema and comics history in his new book Cliffhanger! Cinematic Superheroes of the Serials: 1941-1952. Like the best serial episodes or comic issues, Cliffhanger! is neatly structured. Each chapter homes in on a particular serial, providing a bit of backstory about the comic that inspired it, casting, and production, as well as a description of the end product with some light critique.
The most immediately striking thing about this history is how dangerous some of these cheap-o productions were, as when a stuntman was killed while filming an installment of the Perils of Pauline series (the first serial, incidentally) or an actress was mauled by one of the title creatures of The Lion's Claw. But I assume most productions, serial or non-serial, were equally loosey-goosey about safety back then. There's also the shoddiness of many of these productions, which found Captain America barely resembling his comic book self or Batman looking like your sloppy uncle in Underoos a few sizes too roomy for him. Plus there's the persistent racism embodied by the sinister Asian characters that tended to sub for more outlandish villains of comic pages, though again, that kind of insensitivity wasn't too unusual in general in 1930s/1940s Hollywood. Mostly, Irving portrays the serials as a bit of fun from a long-gone era with his light tone and tongue often placed in cheek.
Because Twomorrows is publishing this book, it also offers a wealth of pictures to illustrate the story, and these are typically terrific and varied (head shots, stills, posters, comic pages, etc.). They make Cliffhanger! that much more pleasurable to read, though its story is interesting enough to stand on its own, particularly since Hollywood gave up on this kind of storytelling on the big screen long ago.
