Aldo Regalado offers fresh insight into the origins of the American superhero. In particular he traces how the interconnected racial and gendered concerns embodied in superheroes played out in the early years of comic books. The depth of scholarship and the quality of writing are top notch and this will be a go-to work for scholars in the field.”—Ian Gordon, associate professor of history at the National University of Singapore, author of Comic Strips and Consumer Culture, and coeditor of Film and Comic Books (University Press of Mississippi)""Much discussion of the superhero figure focuses on what superheroes are, who wrote, drew, published, and read them, when and where, and even how the market, legal, and cultural conditions of the New York publishing world laid the groundwork for the creation of the superhero genre, but rarely do scholars address the most difficult question of why the superhero arose specifically in late Depression-era urban America. Regalado’s answer—a response to modernism and the superhero’s ongoing engagement with the changing nature of modernism and postmodernism in America—presents a cogent, deeply sensible, and convincing answer. Regalado takes into account consumers, creators, and producers of superhero comics and the conversation between them that shaped the genre’s ongoing response to modernism and its changes and discontents. This work is ever sensitive to the humanity, needs, drives, and concerns of those involved in the production and consumption of superhero narratives."" - Peter Coogan, director of internal operations, Institute for Comics Studies
