{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.025667707249392994, 'fraction_numerical': 0.003815469996531391, 'mean_word_length': 4.779559118236473, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Fan phenomena: Batman, edited by Liam Burke

complicated nature of Siegel and Shuster’s success as creators. As many readers will know, Siegel and Shuster infamously signed away the full rights to Superman for $130, very soon revealed to be a tiny fraction of what the character would be worth. While Siegel and Shuster continued to work on the Superman comics for many years, the tension that this caused between them and the legal owners of Superman becomes the central focus of Ricca’s narrative. This culminates in their lawsuit against what would become DC Comics for their use of Superboy, who was eventually ruled to be a separate character; however, winning the lawsuit cost Siegel and Shuster their jobs, leading to the pair spending several years on the brink of poverty. Part 3, ‘Steel’, focuses on the two men’s twilight years and the ongoing lawsuits they and their families brought against DC. It begins with a reflection on the extent of the two men’s financial problems, particularly those of Shuster, who was less successful in getting follow-up work than Siegel: ‘The sign on the door downstairs read “Furniture for Sale. Also Records. Best Quality” .... He seemed very sad and sat silently in a chair as people came in and looked his things over’ (p. 271). Ricca’s intensive review of the legal documents involved in the various lawsuits is, at times, overwhelming to a non-expert reader; however, his narrative is once again grounded and humanised by his interviews with the friends and family members involved. Much of the legal wrangling between DC and the Siegel/Shuster estates is ongoing, and so Ricca could not effectively conclude this part of the account; nevertheless, his return to the death of Siegel’s father, and the revelation that Michel Siegel died of a heart attack following a robbery rather than being murdered, provides a sense of closure at the end of the work. Super Boys is a comprehensive and thoroughly readable account of the lives and work of Siegel and Shuster, covering topics that will be of interest to a wide range of comics fans and researchers. It focuses on as varied an array of subjects as the history of the Golden and Silver ages, the early comics industry, literary interpretations of the Superman and Superboy stories, and the sociopolitical context of Jewish immigrants in the United States of the 1930s. Ricca’s style is often speculative; in addition to describing a fictionalised version of Siegel and Shuster’s thoughts and feelings, he suggests that the circumstances of Michel Siegel’s death, and Siegel’s own estrangement from his son, provoked him to create a series of strong father figures in his fiction. The extensive research involved in producing the book means that Ricca has created a highly credible, as well as highly engaging, resource for anyone interested in the history of comics and graphic novels.