In March Hermes Press will release two volumes that chronicle critical elements of comic book history--Thomas Andrae’s Creators of the Superheroes ($39.99), a 224-page full color trade paperback history of the chief creators of the first wave of Golden Age superheroes and Christopher Irving’s From Four Color to the Silver Screen: The First Movie Superheroes ($39.99), a 208-page full color volume that highlights the little known first superhero movies, most of which were either serials or theatrical cartoons.

 

In Creators of the Superheroes Andrae, a pop culture historian who co-wrote Batman and Me with Bob Kane, focuses on top Golden Age creators with definitive interviews with Superman originators, Siegel and Schuster, Batman creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger, and Jerry Robinson who came up with Robin the Boy Wonder and The Joker.  A lengthy series of interviews and commentaries covers the entire career of Jack “King” Kirby, and Andrae also includes a 12-page Wonder Man story.  The volume concludes with extensive interviews with comics grandmaster Will Eisner, who discusses his creation The Spirit.

 

In From Four Color to the Silver Screen, Christopher Irving, the author of The Blue Beetle: His Many Lives from 1939-to Today, covers the movie incarnations of Superman, Batman, Captain Midnight, Spy Smasher, Captain Marvel, Vigilante, and other comic book heroes of the 1930s and 40s.  Starting with the Fleischer Superman cartoons and continuing through the Saturday morning serials from Republic and other studios, Irving covers the exploits of comic book heroes on the big screen during an era when their budgets were as tight as their spandex costumes.