Have you ever read an old comic book?
By old, I mean from the 1940s and 1950s, the genre’s Golden Age, when “Superman,” “Batman,” and “Wonder Woman” were just being scribbled to life. Since I was weaned on comics from the ’80s and ’90s — titles like “Sandman,” “Swamp Thing,” “X-Men,” “Hellboy,” all of which were captivating, literary, and, to those willing to overlook popular stigmas, sophisticated — it was difficult for me to access early “Superman” archives in any genuine emotional sense. Though I ended up reading them through, I found the content, while left-leaning and vivid, very much a product of its time, sometimes gruff, sometimes macho and, as far as current standards go, predictable. The main interest I took was historical, anyway, a glimpse into wartime and American identity as portrayed by Jewish immigrants, with identities of their own. But being brought up around the onset of the millennium I often felt as though I was being asked to marvel at the genius of a fort composed from twigs and mud, knowing all too well that the museum housing it had walls concealing reinforced titanium.
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