A brief history of Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, and Superman
June 2nd, 1932, was a typical evening in Cleveland, Ohio. Jerry Siegel was hard at work on the next issue of his science fiction fanzine. Across town, his father, Mitchell, was busy closing up his men’s clothing store when the front bell rang.
Later that evening, a neighboring shop owner noticed the door to Mitchell’s shop was ajar. The light was still on long after closing time, but no sign of the store owner. He poked his head in only to find Mitchell’s lifeless body lying in a pool of blood from two bullet holes and an empty cash register on the counter. This is the catalyst that would make young Jerry Siegel dream of a hero that bullets would bounce off of. With the help of his friend, Joe Shuster, and a lot of science fiction stories, their creation would change the face of modern entertainment forever.
Jerry Siegel was born on October 17, 1914 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was the last of six children to be born to Mitchell and Sarah, two Lithuanian immigrants. Jerry was a shy boy, thin and unathletic with glasses constantly slipped halfway down his nose. He spent most of his time day-dreaming through school and working as a delivery boy, earning $4 a week to help keep the family afloat. At the age of 15, Jerry was a science fiction fanatic. Soon he would meet his kindred spirit.
Joe Shuster was born on July 10, 1914 in Toronto, Canada. He was the eldest of three children to be born to Julius and Ida, two European immigrants. Joe was also a shy boy, short with thick glasses and a readiness to draw anything at a moment’s notice. He worked as a newspaper boy for the Toronto Daily Star to help the family. Even so, the family barely made ends meet, let alone afforded the luxury of drawing paper for the young artist to practice his craft. As Joe recalled, “I would go from store to store in Toronto and pick up whatever they threw out. One day, I was lucky enough to find a bunch of wallpaper rolls that were unused and left over from some job. The backs were blank, naturally. So it was a goldmine for me, and I went home with every roll I could carry. I kept using that wallpaper for a long time.”
When Joe was ten years old, his father got word from a friend that a huge clothing manufacturing company was opening up. The Shuster family quickly packed their meager belongings and made their way to Cleveland, Ohio. Jerry and Joe met in 1931 at Glenville High School. Their friendship was forged through a love of science fiction and the first magazines to publish the genre regularly, Amazing Stories and Weird Tales.
It wasn’t long after that the pair would team up to create humor cartoons for the school paper, the Glenville Torch. Joe added humorous illustrations to Jerry’s comedic prose and the pair had a ball, growing in confidence and trust in one another’s gifts with each project.
Jerry was constantly submitting stories to the science fiction pulps (popular magazines printed on cheap, coarse paper) but he was always met with rejections. Eventually, this led to Jerry and Joe deciding to start their own little science fiction fanzine. Entitled Science Fiction, the pair utilized a mimeograph, a precursor to the photocopier, to produce their self-published, mail-order fanzine which debuted in October of 1932. The third issue of which would go down as a footnote in the annals of pop culture as it contained a story that would be the pair’s first attempt at creating Superman.
The short story, “The Reign of the Superman,” featured a bald, evil megalomaniac named Bill Dunn who develops extraordinary mental powers after he is exposed to an element found in a meteor from outer space. In the story, Dunn tries to take over the world only to be thwarted at the last minute by the effects of the meteor wearing off, stripping Dunn of his powers.
Science Fiction would come to an end after its fifth issue in early 1933 when Jerry and Joe discovered a new medium, comic books. The first comic books were collections reprinting comic strips from newspapers. This was the innovation of M. C. Gaines, a salesman at Eastern Color Printing in New York, as a way to keep the firm’s color presses in operation in between producing the Sunday color comics. What started out as a promotional item eventually was given a price sticker and sold in newspaper stands across the country to great success. Shortly after this, a Chicago outfit called Consolidated Book Publishers released a large black and white comic with a new twist, all original material. Upon seeing Detective Dan: Secret Operative No. 48, Jerry and Joe eagerly put together a new comic story to pitch to Consolidated titled The Superman.
Consolidated responded to Jerry and Joe’s pitch, but then just as quickly got out of the comic book business before another issue of Detective Dan was ever produced. Convinced his work was at fault, Joe burned every page of The Superman. Jerry was only able to rescue the cover from the blaze. Just what exactly this version of Superman was remains a mystery. Jerry did note later in life that “The Superman character was in the process of evolution” and both agreed that he was probably more of a two-fisted adventurer with no powers at this point. With their high school graduation around the corner, both Jerry and Joe were looking to the future with grim prospects on the horizon and the realities of the Great Depression looming nearer.
The setback was only temporary as Jerry hit upon an idea one evening in late 1934 that kept him up all night. When dawn finally arrived, he quickly rushed over to Joe’s with an arm full of scripts for a third take on Superman. The pair worked out the ideas as Joe made sketches. Before long, a tale of an alien with superpowers that rocketed to Earth from a decimated planet began to come to life.
This version of Superman had it all. Unlike their original version, he had super-strength instead of mental powers. He could also leap 1/8th of a mile, outrun an express train, and was bulletproof. The pair also took inspiration from the pulp heroes they loved, like The Shadow and Zorro, and gave Superman an alter ego. With Jerry and Joe’s background working at the Glenville Torch, it was only natural that Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent, would be a reporter. In an effort to make the strip feel more realistic, Joe hired a model that he found in an ad in Cleveland’s Plain Dealer. Thus high schooler Joanne Carter became the basis for Superman’s love interest, Lois Lane. And with that, all the pieces seemed to finally be falling into place for Jerry and Joe’s dream project. However, it would still take another four years and hundreds of rejection letters before Superman would finally be viewed by the general public.
According to Jerry, “Just about every comics editor in the country turned us down.” Then in 1938, Superman was finally given his chance to shine when the pair were approached by Detective Comics, which would one day become known as DC Comics. The owners, Jack Liebowitz and Harry Donnenfeld, were planning a new publication called Action Comics and wanted a thirteen page story featuring Superman. After years of rejection, Jerry and Joe were elated for the chance to f inally see their brainchild in print and quickly turned in the story along with the then customary release form relinquishing all rights to the character. In return, the pair received $130 or $10 a page which they split evenly amongst themselves.
The publication of the first Superman story could easily be qualified as an experiment. Action Comics #1 appeared on the newsstands in April of 1938. Detective Comics did nothing to promote or advertise their new comic. No one aside from Jerry and Joe seemed to have much faith in Superman. Detective Comics was cautious, keeping the print runs low for the first few issues of Action and even featuring other characters on the covers of subsequent issues. It wasn’t until a few months after the first issue appeared that a reader poll revealed that they had a hit. People were asking the newsvendors not for Action Comics, but for the magazine with Superman in it.
Excited to finally see his character in print, Jerry pitched the idea of Superboy to Detective Comics on November 30, 1938. Still not entirely sure of what they had and fearful that it wouldn’t last, Detective Comics passed on the idea. However, they had no reason to fear as Superman quickly became an overnight success. And as Detective Comics owners began to reap the rewards and license out the character, Jerry and Joe were left with the overwhelming feeling that they had been cheated and were being exploited. Jerry voiced the pair’s concerns to Donnenfeld and Liebowitz in a multitude of letters, but was met with lip service and the reminder that Superman was no longer theirs as they had signed over the rights.
In a fitting turn of irony, the strip that had been rejected by almost every newspaper syndicate across the country was now the hottest commodity that every newspaper hoped to publish. The McClure Syndicate, the country’s oldest newspaper syndicate and a company that had passed on the property twice before, won the bidding war for the comic strip. Donnenfeld and Liebotwitz offered Jerry and Joe a 50% share of the strip’s net profits if they agreed to do the strip and work for Detective Comics exclusively for the next 10 years at $35 a page. Jerry and Joe jumped at the chance to finally have a newspaper strip and Superman debuted in newspapers across the country on January 16, 1939. By 1941 the strip was in hundreds of newspapers with a readership of more than 20 million.
Superman’s popularity was rocketing upward so much that by the summer of 1939, Detective Comics launched a new comic book featuring the character. Superman #1 was something different for the time, a comic book dedicated to stories of a single character. Superman now had the distinction of being the world’s first superhero as well as being the first ever hero character to be featured in more than one comic magazine. In addition, the 1939 New York World’s Fair hired an actor to don Superman’s tights to make a personal appearance. The event naturally resulted in a new comic book, New York World’s Fair Comics, which a few years later would transform into World’s Finest Comics. Jerry and Joe were kept so busy that they opened a studio in Cleveland and hired additional artists to help with all the Superman work. Even with the extra help and Joe’s slowly deteriorating eyesight, Joe still insisted on inking every face of Superman.
By the time Paramount Pictures released the Fleischer Studios produced theatrical Superman cartoons in 1941, the character was already everywhere. He was on a popular radio show and his likeness could be found on a flood of products, everything from paint sets and bubble gum to figurines made of wood and metal. Daisy Manufacturing even issued an Official Superman Krypto-Raygun. And that’s not even taking into account the slew of new superheroes that Superman’s success spawned. Some of which, like Fox Publications’ Wonder Man, were so similar that they ended up in court for copyright infringement.
On June 28, 1943, with the United States’ entrance into World War II, Jerry briefly left Superman behind and joined the Army. Joe, unfortunately, couldn’t get in due to his poor eyesight. While away, Superman’s popularity continued to soar and demand grew. More and more people became involved in creating his adventures, not just people from Jerry and Joe’s studio. In 1944, in an effort to continue to capitalize on Superman’s success, Detective Comics released More Fun Comics #101 in which Superboy made his first appearance. Joe supplied the art, but Detective Comics had never bought the idea from Jerry and no input or approval was ever given as he was still off serving his country.
In 1947, Jerry and Joe finally had enough. They were tired of watching everyone else make fortunes on their creations while their own income was steadily declining. Jerry and Joe went to court in an attempt to regain the rights to Superman and Superboy. The judge would rule that the rights to Superman were signed over to Detective Comics and he belonged to them. Superboy, on the other hand, was a separate creation and it belonged to Jerry. Jerry and Joe would end up settling out-of-court and the pair were paid $94,013, roughly $1 million today, by Detective Comics for full rights to both Superman and Superboy. After the court case, Detective Comics promptly fired Jerry and Joe and removed their names from the Superman byline. They would no longer have any part in their creation; they had been erased.
This cruel turn of events was made bearable for Jerry by an unexpected reunion at a costume party in New York put on by the National Cartoonist Society. There, dressed as comic strip character Dixie Dugan, was Joanne Carter. It had been ten years since she had modeled for Lois Lane, Joe had kept in contact with her by mail over the years, but it was Jerry that fell madly in love with her. A few months later they were married.
Jerry and Joe would spend the next decade picking up random comic work where they could. They’d go on to create new characters, mostly all forgettable and nothing that captured the public’s imagination like Superman. Eventually, in 1957, Detective Comics, now known as DC Comics, rehired Jerry as a writer. He would occasionally write for Superman, but all of his scripts were written anonymously and no credit was given to him in the publications. Shuster would occasionally be hired for freelance work, but his eyesight was now steadily failing him. It wasn’t long before he’d no longer be able to work at all.
Then, in 1965, Jerry and Joe would make one last attempt to regain the rights to Superman utilizing the renewal option in the Copyright Act of 1909 which allowed for works to be copyrighted for a period of 28 years from the date of publication. Again the court ruled that Jerry and Joe had given their rights, including any renewal rights, to DC Comics in 1938. The pair appealed, but with no luck. Subsequently, DC Comics fired Jerry again.
Jerry would briefly go on to work as a writer and then a proofreader at Marvel under the pseudonym “Joe Carter.” Then, in 1968, he and Joanne would move to Los Angeles, California where he would eventually get a job as a file clerk making $7,000 a year. Joe, now legally blind, would end up unemployed and sharing an apartment with his younger brother in Queens, New York.
In 1975 the news was abuzz about the $20 million Superman movie in the works with a script by none other than Mario Puzo, acclaimed writer of The Godfather. Elsewhere, in Los Angeles, a quiet, tormented cry came out from Jerry as he sat down and wrote what would become a 9 page single spaced press release telling his and Joe’s story. It went over their mistreatment, their struggles, and pointedly asked for a public boycott of the movie and that “loyal Superman fans stay away from it in droves. I hope the whole world, becoming aware of the stench that surrounds Superman, will avoid the movie like a plague.” He then sent the press release out to thousands of newsrooms across the country and waited.
It didn’t take long for the press to see this for the great story it was. A Washington Star reporter visited Joe in his apartment in Queens where he was “slowly going blind, still hoping his Superman would come to his rescue.” The next month the New York Times interviewed Jerry who similarly said “For years I’ve been waiting for Superman to crash in and do something about it all.” Soon talk shows like the Today Show, the Tomorrow Show, and Howard Cosell latched onto the story as well.
The pair even had their own superhero in Neil Adams, at the time a comic book artist superstar, who made it his personal mission to help Jerry and Joe. Adams stirred up the comics community, making posters of Superman carrying Jerry and Joe that read “Does Superman Have the Power to Save His Creators?” And with the help of Batman artist Jerry Robinson and the Cartoonists Society, he made the case to DC Comics new owners, Warner Communications. Warner was left with a decision to make. Longtime marketing whiz and executive vice president, Jay Emmett, was tasked as point man in the publicity scandal. Emmett found himself stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, his uncle, Liebowitz, was adamant that Jerry and Joe signed away their rights to Donnenfeld and himself in 1938 and didn’t deserve anything. On the other hand, Warner was a huge media conglomerate and was making money hand over fist with its Superman franchise. How would it look if they turned their back on the creators of their golden goose?
Two days before Christmas that year, it happened. Warner Communications made good. They agreed to give Jerry and Joe a $20,000 a year stipend for the remainder of their lives, an amount that was initially intended to be fixed, but ended up being raised throughout the preceding years. The pair was also given full medical benefits and each of them were given a one time bonus of $17,500. Most crucially though, their bylines were restored. Finally, after almost 30 years, in every comic book and nearly everywhere else Superman appeared, including the opening credits of Superman: The Movie and its sequels, it would read “Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.”
References:
- “Great Krypton! Superman was the Star’s Ace Reporter (Joe Shuster’s final interview)” by Henry Mietkiewicz, The Toronto Star
- “Joanne Siegel dies at 93; model for Superman character Lois Lane” by Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times
- “Newsmakers” – Newsweek, December 22, 1975
- “Supersuit” – Newsweek, April 14, 1947
- “How a couple of Glenville High kids created Superman and almost got rich: The Mythmakers” by Dennis Dooley, The Plain Dealer Magazine except from “Superman at Fifty: The Persistence of a Legend” published by Octavia Press
- Superman: The High-flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero by Larry Tye
- Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster – the Creators of Superman by Brad Ricca
- Superman the Complete History: The Life and Times of the Man of Steel by Les Daniels
- Superman: The Action Comics – Archives, Volume 1
- Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book by Gerard Jones
- Why Comics?: From Underground to Everywhere by Hillary Chute
- The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum