This Week's Travel Reading, Up Up & Away edition

Growing up as an avid comic book reader, Superman was never one of my favorites. He was just too powerful, in body and mind, to hold my attention for long.

I much preferred the flawed, brooding characters over at Marvel comics: Spider-man, who was always nursing bruises (both physical and psychic); the Hulk, the story of a man trapped in a body over which he exerted little to no control (hello, teenagers everywhere); the X-Men, outcasts one and all.

I still read Superman from time to time--whenever relatives gave me comic books as presents for Christmas or my birthday, the stack invariably included at least on issue featuring the Man of Steel--but I never sought out his adventures.

So why, then, am I reading a history of Superman, you might reasonably ask?

Because the history of Superman is the history of comic books. Without the runaway success of Superman in 1938, you wouldn't have had Batman stories a year later. Or Captain America comics a couple of years after that. Or Captain Marvel tales. Or...you get the idea.

Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster (Superman's creators) paved the way for everything that was to come in the following years/decades. And author Larry Tye lays out the circumstances that created the mightiest man to ever walk the Earth (or, more likely, fly over it) in a clear, entertaining way.