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    Superman: The Definitive History
    Superman: The Definitive History
    Superman: The Definitive History
    Ebook1,037 pages7 hours

    Superman: The Definitive History

    By Insight Editions

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    Behold the most comprehensive book about Superman ever produced! From Krypton and Smallville to Metropolis and beyond, explore over eighty-five years of Superman’s history in radio, TV, film, animation, computer games, PSAs, advertising, merchandise and, of course, comics. This ultimate official book features a wealth of unpublished artwork, exclusive interviews, unique bonus inserts, and little-known facts detailing the long and extraordinary history of the world’s first, and greatest, costumed superhero.

    Since his 1938 debut in the pages of Action Comics #1, Superman was the very first superhero, and he has become an international icon and a cultural cornerstone, instantly recognizable to audiences everywhere. Following Kal-El from his escape from the dying planet Krypton through his humble beginnings in Kansas to his work as a part-time journalist and full-time superhero in Metropolis, this deluxe edition explores Superman across comics, TV, animation, film, video games, and beyond, creating a compelling portrait of one of the most recognizable characters in the history of popular fiction. Covering the complete history of Superman in vivid detail, this massive tome features exclusive commentary from the key creatives who have been instrumental in building Superman’s iconic legacy. Filled with exclusive insert items and extremely rare replicas, Superman: The Definitive History is the ultimate exploration of the template for all superheroes and his incredible and enduring impact on pop culture.

    COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY: Flip through over 400 pages detailing every adventure and incarnation of Superman across comics, TV, animation, movies, videogames, and beyond.

    ALL-STAR CONTRIBUTORS: Read essential interviews and insights from those who have shaped the Man of Steel’s journey and cultural impact, including filmmakers, actors, writers, illustrators, and many more.

    CAST OF THOUSANDS: Fully explores the entire Superman family including Superboy, Power Girl/Supergirl, the Legion of Super-Pets (Krypto, Streaky, Beppo, Comet, and Fuzzy the Krypto Mouse), Bizarro, and all the Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen comics. Plus, all the key villains: Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Mr. Mxyzptlk, Darkseid, Doomsday, General Zod, etc.

    EXCLUSIVE BONUS INSERTS: Filled with pull-out cards, posters, mini-books, and other interactive ephemera that bring the history of Metropolis’s protector to life.

    NEVER BEFORE SEEN IMAGES: Revel in exclusive, unseen treasures from the 85-year history of Superman taken directly from DC’s and Warner Bros.’ archives.

    COMPLETE YOUR COLLECTION: Batman: The Definitive History of the Dark Knight in Comics, Film, and Beyond, Batman: The Animated Series, DC Comics: Anatomy of a Metahuman, and DC Comics Variant Covers: The Complete Visual History also available from Insight Editions.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherInsight Editions
    Release dateDec 10, 2024
    ISBN9798886635935
    Superman: The Definitive History
    Author

    Insight Editions

    Insight Editions is a pop-culture publisher based in San Rafael, CA.

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      Superman - Insight Editions

      Cover: Superman: The Definitive History. DC.Superman: The Definitive History, by Edward Gross and Robert Greenberger. Written by Edward Gross and Robert Greenberger. Foreword by Mike Carlin. Introduction by Brandon Routh. Superman Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. By Special Arrangement with the Jerry Siegel Family. Insight Editions. San Rafael | Los Angeles | London.

      FOREWORD BY MIKE CARLIN

      FIFTY-FOUR YEARS AFTER his introduction to the world, I am best remembered as the ringleader of a ragtag band that had the audacity to kill the world’s first and foremost Super Hero! We killed Superman in 1992.

      Reporters asked me, How could you? How dare you? Why?! and the answer was simply, Because we thought people were taking him for granted. These same reporters would confess to me that they were inspired to become reporters because of seeing Clark Kent and Lois Lane in action. They thought they could do some good for the world with their powers and abilities for investigating and broadcasting—and they were right. But when I asked them, When was the last time you bought a Superman comic book? the answer was invariably, Oh, it’s been decades. So Superman was being taken for granted—by the very people he had inspired.

      In June 1938, in a relatively newfangled pulplike thing called a comic book, Superman first caught the imagination of people who wanted to believe in hope and doing right. Within ten years, Superman’s inspirational adventures could be heard on the radio, seen in animated movies and serials, and read in newspaper comic strips as well as in comic books.

      Two decades later, he had become a staple on television—and would remain so for decades to come. After thirty to forty years, so many copycats and derivatives had appeared that the original was getting crowded out of his own milieu—but Superman was still there. But around the half-century mark, it seemed time to maybe scrape off some barnacles and slap on a new coat of paint, which helped for a time.

      Unfortunately, antiheroes were on the rise, and more admiration was going toward shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later types like Rambo and Lobo, which felt wrong. Superman was still there, but we felt that what he stood for was being forgotten.

      So, as nefarious as it sounds, we reasoned that we needed to remind people of what Superman stands for, and why he will always matter as an inspiration—by taking him away from them.

      Suddenly, the world took notice. People became concerned—even angry—that someone would take Superman from them. Superman had simply always been there, whenever someone needed him, for the last fifty-plus years. Our goal was to let people know that—even with all his powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men—even Superman could use some help every now and then. And it worked.

      The real world reacted the way the citizens of Metropolis reacted to Superman suddenly being gone, and everyone rallied, doing what they could to keep hope alive and carry the message Kal-El from the planet Krypton has always embodied: No matter what your talent or ability is, use your powers for good, and the world will always be a better place.

      Lesson learned.

      And with the world back on board for the Never-Ending Battle, by the end of 1993, Superman once again overcame insurmountable odds and fought his way back to life. (We weren’t stupid—he was always going to come back! Why would we put ourselves out of business?)

      And now, decades after our failed attempt to murder the Man of Steel, he’s still flying higher than ever because he inspires. He survives because he’s stimulated creative people to pass down his exploits to the next generation of fans and creators. He thrives because he emboldens readers and viewers across the board by simply trying to do what’s right—which is all any one of us can do.

      Lesson learned: No matter how evil any Super-Villain (or editorial team) thinks they are—ya can’t kill SUPERMAN!

      MIKE C

      April 2024

      Mike Carlin was vice president, executive editor, senior group editor, director of animation, and a writer of comics and television for DC Comics. He is most well-known for his stint as the editor of the Superman comics line.

      Doomsday! Cover art by Dan Jurgens (pencils), and Brett Breeding (inks). Superman Vol. 2, #75 (January 1993).

      INTRODUCTION

      SUPERMAN: THROUGH THE AGES

      WHAT IS A HERO? Why do we need heroes? Do we respect heroes? What makes a hero?

      It’s now been nearly twenty years since Superman Returns was released, and in that time, I’ve had the unique privilege of hearing about many of the wide-ranging positive impacts Superman has made on people’s lives.

      People have, when seeing the film for the first time, developed relationships and created fond memories with loved ones who have since passed, and members of the armed services have reported watching it when they needed something to hold onto as they faced unimaginable situations. Generally, Superman has served as a beacon of hope and light to all who have needed him.

      For many years, it was challenging for me to fully accept all the gratitude and thanks that came my way. I am not Superman. I am a flawed human being like everyone else. But thankfully, over the last few years, I’ve found a more holistic view of the experience with fans. I’ve begun to step into a deeper understanding of what it means to portray the Man of Steel. I am—like every other actor, artist, writer, inker, etc.—a conduit. Part of the story of Superman. Part of the evolution. Part of the healing that can come from sharing his heroic journeys.

      And though we may not be able to have Superman’s physical superpowers, I firmly believe we have the ability to nurture and grow his nonphysical attributes—his grace, his calm, his empathy, and his love and acceptance of all humankind.

      But Superman didn’t start out with all the tangible and nontangible superpowers he has at present. Each generation has added more aspects, more abilities, and even greater challenges and foes. These changes seem to mirror the human experience. As we have evolved over the past eight decades since Superman first appeared in the pages of Action Comics, so has he. Even though we all still don’t agree on what is best, a few prevailing themes and ideals have endured and have been strengthened recently as we become more connected through technology.

      Although in years past, Superman has been used to strengthen US war efforts, he has more recently been used to help raise awareness about removing land mines. While he started out a hero protecting America, he’s become a global hero, working to protect all of humankind. He was, after all sent to Kansas by Jor-El to protect not only the USA but also all inhabitants of Earth.

      Global acceptance and empathy for different races, religions, sexual orientations, and gender identities has unfortunately—and often tragically—been a very slow-moving process. The humanity and tolerance Superman and his family have demonstrated have helped bridge this gap and helps normalize diversity. Many kinds of people inhabit Earth, and in Superman’s eyes, heart, and soul, all have value, and all deserve protection from those meaning to do them harm.

      From his bird’s-eye view in the sky, from his perch in space above our planet, he has learned to watch and listen. This affords him the ability to observe the chaos, the hate, the loneliness, the apathy, the love, and the pain that swirls down below. He sees how interconnected we all are, as well as how our fear of the other drives and empowers our disconnection. He recognizes the pain we can cause each other—but how caring we can be as well.

      BRANDON ROUTH

      May 2024

      Brandon Routh as Superman in Superman Returns (2006).

      Chapter 1: “Look! Up in the Sky!”

      ORIGINS AND BEGINNINGS

      JERRY SIEGEL, JOE SHUSTER, Jack Liebowitz, and Harry Donenfeld—four nondescript names that wouldn’t, under normal circumstances, trigger so much as the raise of an eyebrow on the public’s part. Yet when it comes to them collectively, they represent an integral part of pop culture history, their influence—followed by countless writers, artists, filmmakers, and actors—having spanned more than eighty-five years. Without each of those four people playing their particular role, there might never have been a Superman—or, quite possibly, even a comic book industry.

      Before any discussion about comic books can take place, one has to take stock of the pulp magazines—not the sensational or lurid ones, but those that appealed to a different part of the imagination, whether that was in terms of sci-fi/fantasy or adventure, with such titles as Flying Aces, Startling Stories, Science Fiction Quarterly, Spicy Mystery, and Wonder Stories, among many others. The medium started around 1896, and its popularity soared until the Great Depression, when pulp magazines fell into decline due to the cost of printing paper.

      Robert Maxwell, Paul Sampliner, Harry Donenfeld, Jack Liebowitz, M.C. Gaines, and Whitney Ellsworth in the National Comics offices. On the wall is the first full painting of Superman by H.J. Ward. This is the only existing photograph of the original painting before it was retouched (see insert on Page 443

      ). Photo by Larry Gordon from The Saturday Evening Post, June 21, 1941.

      It was in this world that Major Wheeler-Nicholson first involved himself in publishing in a big way. Born January 7, 1890, in Greenville, Tennessee, he served in the US Army as a cavalry officer from 1917 to 1923. Writing became a vocation for him in 1922 when he wrote the nonfiction book Modern Cavalry: Studies on Its Role in the Warfare of Today, with Notes on Training for War Service and the Western novel Death at the Corral. He also began writing historical and adventure fiction for pulp magazines like Argosy and Adventure while ghostwriting six adventure novels featuring an air hero named Bill Barnes.

      Wheeler-Nicholson saw a decline in pulp sales and the simultaneous success of a publication called Famous Funnies in 1933—a magazine that featured reprints of comic strips—and, with an eye on the future, he hatched an idea of his own. He started National Allied Publications in 1934, with the first comic being New Fun #1, which hit the newsstands in January 1935.

      As Wheeler-Nicholson began working in comics, he concluded that pulplike stories would serve as fodder for the medium, with standard, easy-to-read plots, and classic heroes and villains.

      About as far removed from publishing as one could get was Jacob S. Liebowitz, born October 10, 1900, in Proskuriv, Russia (known today as Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine). His family immigrated to the United States in 1910 and settled in New York’s Lower East Side, a locale for many Jewish immigrants. Taking on the name Jack, he’d discovered by the time he entered high school an inherent talent for accounting, which he imagined could lead to a more fiscally secure future.

      Sketch of Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster commissioned for Martin Sheridan’s 1942 book Classic Comics & Their Creators. Original art (pen and ink) by Joe Shuster.

      Superman writer and co-creator Jerry Siegel in a luxurious bed for a photoshoot and article in The Saturday Evening Post (June 21, 1941) in which revealed he enjoyed reading biographies of real supermen. Photo by Dork.

      These unpublished frames by Joe Shuster possibly come from either Daisy’s Superman Krypto-Ray Gun projector or Acme’s Cine Vue Film Viewer toys licensed in the early 1940s. Note a rare scene of Clark Kent revealing his secret identity by having bullets bounce off his chest. Images courtesy of the Robert V. Conte collection.

      By the 1920s, he was married and had set up his own accounting firm in New York City, the sole client being the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Things went very well for several years, but in the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1929, he left the union. It was at this point that Liebowitz’s father, Julius, approached rising businessman and acquaintance Harry Donenfeld about a job for his son, which saw Jack hired as Donenfeld’s personal accountant.

      Donenfeld was born on October 17, 1893, in Iaşi, Romania, and, like Liebowitz, immigrated to the US, spending his early years dropping in and out of school and street gangs. His first known job was as a clothing salesman, and in 1918—thanks to a loan from his mother-in-law—he was able to open a clothing store located in Newark, New Jersey. As the 1920s progressed, however, the business went under, and he found himself working at his brothers’ printing company, Martin Press, as a salesman and fourth partner.

      The popular belief is that his connection with gangster Frank Costello gave him the push to grow the company, and, in 1923, he took control of it, ousting two of his brothers and leaving a third as a minority partner in what was renamed Donny Press. Two years later, he moved into the world of pulps—particularly, the niche known as girlie pulps, which had more salacious content—and nearly landed in jail under obscenity charges. When he brought Liebowitz in as accountant, they worked well together, growing the company, and, in 1932, Donenfeld formed the Independent News Company, a publishing and distribution business.

      The Advance Guard of Future Civilization This sci-fi fanzine was created by Siegel and Shuster and mailed out to subscribers. Science Fiction Vol. 1, #1 (November 1932).

      This cover has been hand-colored in blue pencil. Science Fiction Vol. 1, #4 (February 1933).

      THE MEN BEHIND THE MAN OF STEEL

      Meanwhile, Jerome Jerry Siegel was born on October 17, 1914, in Cleveland, Ohio. His parents left Lithuania for America in 1900 and moved to Glenville, Ohio, in 1928, where Jerry, one of six children, attended Glenville High School. His father, a tailor with his own clothing store, was assaulted by a shoplifter in 1932 and suffered a fatal heart attack as a result. Nine years later, Jerry’s mother died of a heart attack as well. But by then, at sixteen, Siegel had met Joe Shuster in school.

      Joseph Shuster was born three months before Siegel in Toronto, Ontario, after his family sailed over from Rotterdam. Shuster worked as a newspaper boy for the Toronto Daily Star, but the family struggled financially. Already interested in art, he drew on whatever he could, including unused wallpaper rolls and butcher paper he found. Then, in 1924, the family moved to Cleveland, where, several years later, he attended the same school as Siegel.

      When Joe and I met, it was like the right chemicals coming together. We immediately began working on a wide variety of different types of comic strips.—Jerry Siegel

      As Siegel told comics historian Tom Andrae, It was shortly before that I was talking to my cousin and told him I was interested in comics and was starting to collaborate through the mail with some cartoonists. He told me about Joe. He said that Joe was very good and was moving into my neighborhood and the two of us ought to get together. That’s what led to the two of us meeting at school.

      Finding they had a lot in common—not the least of which was the fact that they were both picked on by other students—the pair ended up working together on the school paper, the Glenville Torch. Siegel and Shuster also began to collaborate on Science Fiction, which is believed to be the second sci-fi fanzine. (Siegel claimed to have written and edited the first, Cosmic Stories, when he was fourteen years old.) I do remember when I showed the material to my English teacher, she gave me a little lecture that it was a pity I was wasting my time writing such trash when there were so many wonderful types of literature I could be writing instead, he said, and I replied, ‘Well, I like this kind of stuff, and that’s why I write it.’

      Science Fiction Vol. 1, #3 cover (January 1933).

      Reproduction of letter and sample Superman script sent from Jerry Siegel to Russell Keaton dated June 12, 1934.

      The Reign of the Super-Man The very first Superman story that Seigel (under the pseudonym of Herbert Fine) and Shuster collaborated on. However, the titular character looks and acts more like the Man of Steel’s eventual nemesis, Lex Luthor, at this point. Science Fiction Vol. 1, #3 (January 1933).

      AN IDEA IS BORN

      It was certainly what he continued focusing on in Science Fiction, where he and Shuster offered their first take on a Superman-like character in a story titled The Reign of the Super-Man. In it, the titular character, Bill Dunn, a homeless man, finds himself endowed with telepathic powers and attempts to use them to take over the world but is prevented when the powers prove to be temporary. "This Super-Man has more in common with the larger-than-life villains to be found in the films of the German director Fritz Lang, such as Dr. Mabuse, or Rotwang in the silent movie Metropolis—the title of which suggests that Lang influenced Siegel and Shuster," points out comics writer and historian Peter Sanderson. Sanderson adds that the idea of a superman was not entirely without precedent; philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had popularized the word (übermensch, in his native German) in the nineteenth century. The difference was that his concept of a superior human did not entail actual superhuman powers.

      "From Nietzsche, the playwright George Bernard Shaw picked up the term and used it early in the twentieth century in the title of his great play Man and Superman, Sanderson says. But the idea of a superhumanly powerful hero goes back to the dawn of human history. One of the earliest known works of literature, the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, concerns just such a ‘superman.’ The Old Testament gives us Samson, who was strong enough to pull down an entire temple, killing his enemies. Heroes with extraordinary physical strength can be found throughout the world’s legends—perhaps, most notably, Hercules in Greek and Roman mythology."

      From there, Siegel and Shuster began developing a variety of comic strips—both comedic and adventurous—with the hope that they would be able to break into the newspaper comic strip business. Being in comic strips was a big deal from 1900 right up to the ’40s, points out animation historian and author Jerry Beck. People not only knew the strips but looked forward to them, followed them feverishly. They knew who wrote and drew them, and those people were stars. Creators who had successful comic strips made a lot of money, and as a result, most cartoonists were aspiring to have a newspaper comic strip, as did Siegel and Shuster.

      Slam Bradley’s typically unorthodox two-fisted solution to any situation. Art by Joe Shuster. Detective Comics Vol. 1, #7 (September 1937).

      The two of them began to think that this Superman (a term also applied to pulp hero Doc Savage in 1934) from their fanzine story could work, particularly since Siegel was considering making the character a hero rather than a villain. I thought that might make a great comic strip character in the vein of Tarzan, only more super and sensational than that great character, he said.

      In 1933, Siegel and Shuster reused the name Superman, this time without the hyphen, for a heroic crime fighter, Sanderson elaborates. This Superman had superpowers and was considerably handsomer than the bald ‘Super-Man’ but still had no real costume. They wrote and drew a whole comics story, ‘The Superman: A Science Fiction Story in Cartoons,’ but were unable to find a publisher.

      That was so frustrating to Shuster that—eventually, much to the horror of future generations of historians—he tore up everything, with the exception of the cover. It wasn’t really Superman, the artist told comics historian Tom Andrae. That was before he evolved into a costumed figure. He was simply wearing a T-shirt and pants; he was just a man of action. But we called him ‘the Superman.’ That was the second time we used the name, but the first time it was used for a character of goodwill. Siegel briefly flirted with the idea of looking for a different collaborator and wrote to several established newspaper strip artists, including Russell Keaton, sending him a Superman script in June, 1934. Keaton drew several sample strips, but the collaboration went no further.

      BIG FUN

      As fate would have it, Siegel and Shuster’s desire to break into comics dovetailed with Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson deciding to publish New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine. The first word of his efforts appeared in the January 11, 1935, edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which heralded the arrival of New Fun, referring to it as "a tabloid-sized juvenile magazine published in cooperation with the Eagle, and as a periodical designed to please ‘boys and girls from 2 to 90’ with its predominant pictorial contents of new comic strips and special departments devoted to aircraft, sports, the radio, and the movies." Coincidentally, that issue of the Eagle was released on the same day as New Fun and was also printed by National Allied Publications.

      Comic books began as reprints of the comic strips, but then they started to do new, original stories, says Beck. The thinking at the beginning was, ‘Let’s get these aspiring cartoonists and their ideas out there.’ Obviously, to our eyes all these decades later, these originals were pretty poor and were poorly drawn. They were really nothing but the phenomenon of being able to buy new comics without having to wait until the Sunday newspapers and the color section.

      Slam Bradley at the 1940 World’s Fair A Siegel-penned adventure featuring his and Shuster’s hardboiled detective. Art by Howard Sherman New York World’s Fair Comics Vol. 1, #2 (July 1940).

      Wheeler-Nicholson began reaching out to aspiring writers and artists. Siegel and Shuster sent him a proposal for a strip called Doctor Occult, Ghost Detective, which the publisher accepted.

      Another successful pitch was Slam Bradley, which Siegel and Shuster considered—along with their Spy strip in Detective Comics—a dry run of sorts for Superman. It would, as things worked out, bring them closer to what would be the forerunner to DC Comics. Although Wheeler-Nicholson would publish several issues of the comic and add additional titles, he struggled financially to pay off his distributor (Independent News), his printer (World Color Press), and his engraver (Photochrome) in addition to his personal bills, as well as money due his writers and artists. As a result, in 1937, he took on Harry Donenfeld as a partner. Conditions did not improve, however, and the company was forced into bankruptcy, its assets liquidated. DC, via a third party, purchased the two titles, More Fun Comics and New Adventure, for $2,000.

      This sketch of, and for, George Roussos (c. 1942) who worked on Batman and, later, Superman reads, Best regards to an exceptionally talented gent who can’t fail to reach the top! signed by Siegel and Shuster. Original art (pencil) by Joe Shuster.

      With Wheeler-Nicholson out of the comics business, Donenfeld and Liebowitz did right by his debts that had accrued to writers and artists, among them Siegel and Shuster, and brought them aboard. Tim DeForest, author of Storytelling in the Pulps, Comics, and Radio: How Technology Changed Popular Fiction in America, notes that early on there were tons of comic book companies, and they were all pretty much throwing story concepts at the wall to see what stuck.

      The genres that were already popular in comic strips or the pulp magazines, like crime and science fiction, appeared in a lot of comic books, he states. The various media cross-pollinated each other, and what would become DC was, I think, one of the bigger companies even before 1938. They had pretty good sales but would, of course, eventually strike gold with Superman.

      A SUPERMAN FOR SYNDICATION

      Four years earlier, in 1934, there had been a night when Siegel realized they should submit the Superman concept for newspaper syndication. That evening ideas kept coming to him and he sat down and wrote several weeks’ worth of strips. He described it to the Saturday Evening Post thus: I am lying in bed counting sheep when all of a sudden, it hits me. I conceived a character like Samson, Hercules, and all the strong men I ever heard of rolled into one. Only more so. I hop right out of bed and write this down, and then I go back and think some more for about two hours and get up again and write that down. This goes on all night at two-hour intervals, until in the morning I have a complete script.

      That morning, he shared what he’d written with Shuster, and they spent the day fleshing it out further, with Shuster whipping up sketches based on what they were discussing. Shuster recalled that day to Tom Andrae, coauthor of Bob Kane’s Batman and Me, stating that he’d been caught up in Siegel’s enthusiasm and that he began drawing as fast as he could use his pencil. My imagination just picked the concept right up from Jerry, he said. We worked very closely. At the beginning, he would sit down next to me at the drawing board. We would sit side by side.

      Shuster felt they were creating a true collaboration; Siegel would have his script and describe the scene to him, at which point he would absorb it and visualize it and they’d realize they were thinking along the same lines. He said that Siegel would describe the positions of Superman he wanted and how the character would act. It was almost like a movie scenario, he pointed out. He did almost everything except draw it—he really visualized everything for me, and I picked it up.

      When they were finished, says Sanderson, "all the familiar elements fell into place. Siegel made him an alien from another world with superhuman powers. Shuster gave him a colorful costume, complete with the S emblem and cape. And when he was not fighting crime, they gave him a secret identity: Clark Kent, who would pretend to be as timid and ineffectual as the Pimpernel and Zorro did in their off-hours."

      INSPIRATION FOR AN INSTITUTION

      As Shuster explained, the Superman costume was inspired by the sort of outfits Douglas Fairbanks Sr. wore in films like The Mark of Zorro, Robin Hood, and The Black Pirate. Fairbanks would swing on ropes very much like Superman flying, or like Tarzan on a vine, he said. Before I ever put anything on paper, Jerry and I would talk back and forth. Jerry would say, ‘Well, how about this or how about that, or how about doing him like this?’ And I agreed on the feeling of action as he was flying, or jumping, or leaping—a flowing cape would give it movement, and it really helped. And it was easy to draw. I also had classical heroes and strongmen in mind.

      Tim DeForest believes that at the time, the Man of Steel’s costume was unique, the closest comparison possibly being that of the title character of Lee Falk’s comic strip The Phantom. A lot of the heroic characters didn’t even have costumes, he points out. The Shadow had his cloak and hat, but, again, outside of the Phantom, Superman may have been one of the first overtly costumed ones. And his really was a unique image.

      In Brad Ricca’s 2014 nonfiction book Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster—The Creators of Superman, one of the author’s main points of focus was how the overall concept originally came together. If you take just one step back from the character, it’s so strange and weird-looking, he opines. In the beginning, I was in kind of disbelief, and by the end I just wanted to know the ‘recipe.’ I came to realize that the recipe for Superman was a Frankenstein’s monster. They just took all these pieces from everywhere, including their own lives.

      Comics writer Mark Waid points out, Jerry Siegel wrote an unpublished autobiography, which helps to flesh him out in his own words. Here’s a guy who, clearly, was looking for a champion on several levels. First off, he’s a puny high school kid who’s picked on. He’s the Jewish kid in an area that’s not heavily Jewish. And then his father dies as a result of a robbery—it doesn’t take a genius to draw a line between that and a champion of the oppressed and weak. I’m sure he was looking for something.

      Superman sketch (c. 1940s) Inscription reads Best wishes from the artist-creator of Superman. This was a standard sketch that Shuster produced on multiple occasions for fans.

      We discussed the ‘S’ in detail. We wanted to use the first letter of the character’s name. Then we said, ‘Well, it’s the first letter of Siegel and Shuster.’ —Joe Shuster

      When you realize that Superman basically begins as a kind of memoir that they put their trauma into, Ricca adds, all of a sudden, it becomes this really interesting, layered, totally different thing: Rocket from the planet Krypton, Kal-El becomes Superman—that’s all there and that part’s awesome, but this is art. They were putting all their personal experience into this guy with his underwear on the outside. There’s just a huge appreciation for what they did and for the character.

      Meet the Creators An unusual feature in comics at the time placed Siegel and Shuster front and center. Superman Vol. 1, #1 (summer 1939).

      Jerry Siegel’s payment slip for Superman, Slam Bradley, and other scripts, signed by editor Vin Sullivan and dated August 24, 1939.

      While Siegel never acknowledged the personal-trauma elements incorporated into the character, he did admit that it came from his and Shuster’s private lives, including the fact that as a high school student, he imagined becoming a reporter one day, and he had crushes on several attractive girls who either didn’t know he existed or didn’t care. But what, he wondered, if he were actually real terrific and had something special going on for him? Would they notice him if he could throw cars around or leap over buildings? That night, when all the thoughts were coming to me, the concept came to me that Superman could have a dual identity and that in one of his identities he could be meek and mild, as I was, and wear glasses, the way I do, he told Tom Andrae.

      Those were the personal elements that went into the origins of Superman and his alter ego, Clark Kent, but there were many others, including Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter of Mars. When I did the version in 1934, the John Carter stories did influence me, said Siegel. Carter was able to leap great distances, because the planet Mars was smaller than the Earth, and he had great strength. I visualized the planet Krypton as a huge planet, much larger than Earth, so whoever came to Earth from that planet would be able to leap great distances and lift great weights.

      Mark Waid believes that Philip Wiley’s 1930 novel Gladiator, with Hugo Danner as a genetic superman of sorts, was a huge influence, and, to a lesser degree, so was the character of Doc Savage. In 1933, Siegel and Shuster first pitched Superman, so it had been sitting in Siegel’s head for a long time, he says. "Siegel did that story in his fanzine Science Fiction, and that story was very Hugo Danner if you ask the question ‘What if Hugo Danner was a total villain?’ "

      "Everyone says, ‘Oh, Superman is Gladiator,’ notes author Brad Ricca. I don’t think Jerry even read Gladiator, but he definitely read John Carter, except Jerry does the genius thing and he reverses the concept, so instead of the guy going to Mars, the alien comes to Earth. I love John Carter, but Jerry takes it and makes it even more interesting."

      DETECTIVE COMICS ON THE CASE

      Having developed the character and concept as much as they had, Siegel and Shuster prepared a week’s worth of inked daily strips. On top of that, they created—but did not ink—three additional weeks of material, for which Siegel worked up a synopsis of the story continuity. All this was intended to interest syndicators, who were recipients of the synopsis and copies of the first week’s worth of inked strips.

      A 1983 recreation of Shuster’s own cover for Action Comics Vol. 1, #19 (December 1939). Original art (colored pencils and pastels) by Joe Shuster.

      Shuster in 1983 with his artwork shown in the image above. Photo by Charlie Roberts.

      All of this had been done more than three years before Joe Shuster and I had any contact with Detective Comics Inc., Siegel pointed out. In 1935, Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson expressed interest in Superman and tried to persuade us that the property would be more successful if published in comic book form, where it would be seen in color, than it would be in a black-and-white daily strip. Our experience with him had been such that we did not consider him the publisher to entrust with the property, and his proposal was rejected.

      Co-publisher M. C Max Gaines in the All-American Comics offices in 1942.

      The Siegel and Shuster story is about two guys that weren’t good at anything and used to failing… Then they succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.—Marc Tyler Nobleman

      Unfortunately, in turn, the newspaper syndicators rejected Siegel and Shuster, an outcome that didn’t surprise author Tom Andrae. If you look at the strip, it’s very well done, he says, but part of the problem they had was, they went to the wrong venue with Superman.

      Comic books were a very new medium at the time, or in 1933, when they created Superman, Andrae adds. "They worked on the comic strip version in 1934 and tried to get it published as a newspaper comic strip. That was a more sophisticated medium than comic books, and you had fine draftsmen working there. People like Alex Raymond with Flash Gordon, you’ve got Hal Foster with Tarzan, The Phantom, and others. Newspaper comic strips had a sophisticated readership. Their Superman, on the other hand, had a real childlike quality to it and appealed to children, particularly. It was the wrong venue."

      However, Siegel and Shuster did find an ally in syndication editor Sheldon Mayer—who would go on to become an important editor and illustrator at DC—but he was unable to convince his superior, M. C. Gaines, to publish Superman as a comic strip. Gaines (who went on to co-own All-American Publications with Jack Liebowitz), worked with with the McClure Syndicate at the time to create licensed comic strip publications, so he sent the Superman material over to Vin Sullivan at National Comics Publications, who eventually bought the comic.

      Siegel recounted that in 1936 and 1937, he and Shuster were providing several comic strips to Wheeler-Nicholson, two of which the Major paid them for; they appeared in Detective Comics in 1937. But toward the end of 1937, the publication fell behind on payments for the strips the duo had sent in, and in December of that year, Siegel received a letter from Liebowitz, introducing himself as the half-owner and treasurer of Detective Comics and paying the money due them for the strips they’d furnished. In return, he wanted them to sign a contract that would assure him he would receive artwork and scripts for specific features for a length of time to be agreed on. And that’s what Siegel did, traveling to New York to sign the agreement for Slam Bradley and Spy. After that, he had to get Shuster to sign the contracts and mail them back.

      "In 1938, Mr. Gaines informed me that it might be a good idea to furnish Detective with the Superman material I had left with him, and I gave permission, Siegel added. But we had no responsibility to Detective regarding Superman. We could well have ignored its requests and placed the property elsewhere."

      SUPERMAN SOLD

      In the end, the duo agreed to allow National to publish Superman when Gaines convinced editor Vin Sullivan to make the character the lead feature in the company’s new publication, Action Comics. "Considering Siegel and Shuster’s extreme difficulties in finding a publisher for Superman, and that no one could possibly have imagined how popular and profitable the character would become, it should not be surprising that they sold all the rights to DC, observes Sanderson. This was, after all, standard procedure in those days."

      Any history of Superman has to note the events of March 1, 1938, the day Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster signed a check from National Comics in the amount of $130 as well as a contract that

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