Supermen! (2009)

The success of 
Superman, introduced in 1938's Action Comics #1, sparked something of a caped-crusader gold rush, with scads of publishers attempting to cash in. World War II effectively homogenized the genre, as attention turned from
 giant vultures, Indian sorcerers, and (ultra-un-PC) yellow mandarins to the Nazi threat. But Supermen!, this anthology lovingly assembled by Greg Sadowski, makes the case that these earliest endeavors by the future creators of masterworks like The Spirit, Captain America, and Plastic Man were more than crude throat-clearings — they were unfiltered manifestations 
of psyche, lousy with erotic charge and questionable politics. A–