MEN OF TOMORROW GEEKS GANGSTERS & BIRTH OF COMIC BOOK SC

(W) Gerard Jones Animated by the stories of some of the last century's most charismatic and conniving artists, writers, and businessmen, Men of Tomorrow brilliantly demonstrates how the creators of the superheroes gained their cultural power and established a crucial place in the modern imagination. The story begins early in the last century, on the Lower East Side, where Harry Donenfeld rises from the streets to become the king of the "smooshes" - soft-core magazines. Later, two high school friends in Cleveland, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, become avid fans of "scientifiction," the new kind of literature promoted by their favorite pulp magazines. The disparate worlds of the wise guy and the geeks collide in 1938, and the result is Action Comics #1, the debut of Superman.