Superman may have gotten his start in comic books and strips, but he's also been the star of screens small and big, the Broadway stage, novels, toys, and a vast assortment of housewares. Superman is super strong and super marketable, and the whole super story is told in Superman: The Definitive History.
Edward Gross and Robert Greenberger do not screw around in this book. They tell the very full story of how a couple of bully-magnets found their inner muscle men by writing and drawing Supes and how their character has morphed into a variety of entities with varying powers throughout the decades. They cover Superman's backstory, his favorite haunts, his family, friends, and foes, analyzing the significance of it all.
But if there's one thing that this definitive history is not, it's academic. And we can all heave a sky-scraper-leveling breath of relief over that, because something as fun as Superman has no business under the academic microscope. Not that the writers aren't braniacs, but they keep the storytelling brisk, accessible, and well in the spirit of their topic. And not four inches of page-space passes without some wonderfully colorful image flying by: comics covers, preliminary sketches, film and TV stills, props and costumes, records, Mego action figures, pinball games, roller skates. Ten pages from the very first Superman comic story from legendary Action Comics #1 appear in their entireties.
No fooling, there's nearly 500 pages of this stuff in Superman: The Definitive History, which means you might need to be a Kryptonian in the presence of the Earth's yellow sun to lift it, but for serious Superman fans in search of a super-fun tome, it's worth a bit of back strain.
