SOURCE: "The Spawn of M. C. Gaines," in All in Color for a Dime, edited by Dick Lupoff and Don Thompson, Arlington House, 1970, pp. 21-43.

In the following essay, White profiles an early history of comic books, culminating in the creation of Superman and Batman.

It's a story which has grown into modern myth—a myth which in some respects equals and parallels the myth of Superman himself—the story of how two boys, Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster, fresh out of high school, sold their dream comic strip and achieved world fame.

As science fiction fans, Siegel and Shuster had published an early science fiction fan magazine, the title of which was, not so surprisingly, Science Fiction. It was a mimeographed publication and appeared in the early 1930s. In many respects, including the poor paper on which it was published, it resembled more closely fan magazines being...