Empire of the Superheroes: America’s Comic Book Creators and the Making of a Billion-Dollar Industry

World Comics and Graphic Nonfiction Series

by Mark Cotta Vaz

Superman may be faster than a speeding bullet, but even he can't outrun copyright law. Since the dawn of the pulp hero in the 1930s, publishers and authors have fought over the privilege of making money off of comics, and the authors and artists usually have lost. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman, got all of $130 for the rights to the hero. In Empire of the Superheroes , Mark Cotta Vaz argues that licensing and litigation do as much as any ink-stained creator to shape the mythology of comic characters. Vaz reveals just how precarious life was for the legends of the industry. Siegel and Shuster—and their heirs—spent seventy years battling lawyers to regain rights to Superman. Jack Kirby and Joe Simon were cheated out of their interest in Captain America, and Kirby's children brought a case against Marvel to the doorstep of the Supreme Court. To make matters worse, the infant comics medium was nearly strangled in its crib by censorship and moral condemnation. For the writers and illustrators now celebrated as visionaries, the "golden age" of comics felt more like hard times. The fantastical characters that now earn Hollywood billions have all-too-human roots. Empire of the Superheroes digs them up, detailing the creative martyrdom at the heart of a pop-culture powerhouse.

Genres: Comics

488 pages, Hardcover

Published January 5, 2021

About the author

Mark Cotta Vaz is the author of over twenty-one books, including four New York Times bestsellers. His recent works include Mythic Vision: The Making of Eragon, The Spirit: The Movie Visual Companion, and the biography Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper, Creator of King Kong, which was a Los Angeles Times bestseller.

Reviews

[Avi Pollock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really detailed look at the history of comics through the lens of the creators and their battles over decades to get credit for their works. I was surprised though that the book didn’t reference the big shift in creator rights when the top creators at Marvel left to form Image Comics. Would have given the book a good coda.

[Dan Newland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vaz did a great job of explaining how comic book copyright works, and how creator rights have been undermined by the industry since its beginnings. Highly recommended!

Full Review: https://www.comicbookyeti.com/post/em...

[Michael Rhode · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good basic history of the legal issues of comics history.

[David Weathersby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here’s the problem, there is an incredible error in the book. And it’s such a glaring mistake, it calls into question every single fact in it. If that simple mistake is made, the book cannot be trusted with the legal research. It’s very disappointing.