Were the Shuster pictures fairly well-known in certain circles before the book was published?
No, they were totally unknown. I discovered one of the booklets at a rare antique book sale, and what made it so rare was that they probably only printed about a thousand copies of these. The mayor of New York assigned 80 detectives who descended on the Times Square bookstores who were selling these under the counter. They arrested the owners, and the case eventually went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, in a sad day for freedom of the press, banned these and ordered the copies destroyed. As a result, these are very, very rare and unknown to students of comic history. Was it difficult to secure the rights to them, in light of that history? Well, there was a whole thing behind that that I had to work through…but as you can see, it all worked out. Was Shuster’s family involved at all with the creation of the book? No. I kind of wanted to keep things objective while I was writing it, though eventually Joe Shuster’s sister wrote me. I sent her a copy of the book, after it was publi
