Simon Fraser's story about Superman: From the 30s to the 70s

I was given this book when I was maybe 9 years old. I have an Aunt who had very insightful taste in Christmas presents. This one was her triumph , bearing in mind my subsequent career as a Comics Artist. I've maybe read this book over 100 times in the course of my life. It's at once comforting and inspiring. It's a childs power fantasy, raw escapism (and some of the early stuff is very raw), it's the dream of a brighter, more optimistic new world. Superman is the embodiment of an ideal, power guided by altruism. His greatest superpower perhaps is the ability to discern what is the right thing to do. X-Ray vision maybe, but also great clarity of vision. The best Superman stories weren't about solving problems with his fists, but with his imagination and sometimes some very lateral thinking. The very best Superman stories were about ideas. Not dogma and not politics, but perhaps a little religious.

The modern world has endlessly reworked and regurgitated these original ideas until all that's left is a garish kind of cultural toxic-waste. The whole comics medium was an embarrassing ghetto for decades as the fanboys took over the industry and made more and more ludicrous and violent iterations of that one original idea.The greatest Superhero of them all still manages to sit apart from it though and this book shows us why.

My original paperback copy is now hopelessly dog-eared and I've bought a hardback replacement. I can't bear to get rid of the original though, so they sit side by side on my shelf and always will.