by Larry Tye
That $130 contract signaled the beginning not just of the Superman character but of what would become a multibillion-dollar industry: comic book superheroes. It also was the defining narrative—the original sin—in the relationship between comic book creators and owners. Jerry and Joe may have brought to life their superhero, but that is not what mattered. What counted then and for decades after was who had the money to put that hero on the printed page and deliver those pages to the public. To the publishers went not just the profits but the power. Each writer or artist who took up that cause in the future would hark back to what Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz did to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. As if to underline the point—to demonstrate that for $130 Jerry and Joe, like all comics creators back then, were giving up everything—their Superman artwork was destroyed soon after it was used. There would be no chance for them to sell it again or save it for posterity.
IT WAS APRIL 1938 and the world was holding its breath. The Führer’s storm troopers had just occupied and annexed Austria and were ready to steamroll into Czechoslovakia. Joseph Stalin had shown the West and his countrymen that he was as ruthless as the Nazis by staging a show trial for Nikolai Bukharin, a champion of the revolution, and then liquidating him. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was in full motion, but one in three Americans remained ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished, and 250,000 teenagers had taken to the road to earn money to send home. Never had America so craved a hero, if not a messiah. Never had a publisher so perfectly timed its release of a new title.
The very cover of Action Comics No. 1 signaled how groundbreaking—how uplifting—this Superman would be. There he was, in bold primary colors: blue full-body tights, a yellow chest shield, and candy-apple cape, booties, and briefs worn over his tights. He looked every bit the circus acrobat, only stronger, more agile, ready for action. No mask for this adventurer; he wanted the world to see who he was. While it was left to the imagination just whom he was fuming at, it was clear that no one would want to suffer the rage of a being who could single-handedly lift a car into the air and smash it against a rock. Hopefully he was on our side. The date printed on the top of the page was a standard bit of misdirection: It said June when, in a bid to ensure it would still look fresh if it sat unsold two months later, it actually went on sale in April. There was little doubt that this was a comic book that would justify its ten-cent price and deliver on its name, Action.
The first inside page introduced readers to the handsome, brash avenger that Jerry and Joe crafted during that sleepless night of writing and frenetic day of sketching three years earlier. A scientist on a faraway planet placed his infant son in a spaceship headed to Earth just before his planet died of old age. The child was found by a passing motorist, who turned him over to an orphanage. Reaching maturity in just the fourth panel of the comic, Superman was able to leap an eighth of a mile, vault a twenty-story building, and hoist tremendous weight. Nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin. How was that possible? The “scientific explanation” was there on page 1: He did it the same way a lowly ant supported weights hundreds of times its own, or a grasshopper leaped what to a man would be several city blocks. That was it: the entire birth, growth, and backstory of a breathtaking superhero laid out in a single comic book page measuring 7¾ by 10½ inches.
By page 2 he was a full-grown Superman, racing off on adventures that didn’t stop until the story did, eleven pages later. Along the way he saved an innocent woman from electrocution, beat up a wife-beater, rescued Lois Lane from kidnappers, and intercepted a warmonger. No worries here about laws or social niceties. Bursting into the governor’s house was the only way to stop an unjust execution? Barrel ahead. Dashing across live electrical wires could make a lobbyist see the evil of his ways? Up we go. This Superman was a hell-raiser and an insurrectionist. Half Huckleberry Finn, half Robin Hood, he had a technique as straightforward and a purpose as pure as those of his teenage truth-and-justice-seeking creators. His story accounted for just thirteen of Action No. 1’s sixty-four pages, but those are the only pages the world remembers.
Literature’s most gripping love triangle also was there from the first, or at least the hint of it. Clark Kent was smitten with Lois Lane, asking her out on a date on page 6. Lois agreed, but when he pressed to find out why she was avoiding him, she let him have it: “Please Clark! I’ve been scribbling ‘sob stories’ all day long. Don’t ask me to dish out another.” A page later, she walked out on her timid colleague after he let a thug cut in on their dance, explaining, “You asked me earlier in the evening why I avoid you. I’ll tell you why now: because you’re a spineless, unbearable coward!” Lois’s time with Superman in this first story was too brief for her to fall in love, or for him to dodge. Not yet. Their newspaper already had a name, The Daily Star, but Clark and Lois’s boss was identified only by the nameplate on his desk: EDITOR.
It did not take long for the buzz to begin. Just who was this costumed hero anyway? writers, artists, and publishers wanted to know. And who were Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the uncredited creators who were unknowns in both the old world of comic strips and the new one of comic books? Was their Superman an original or a knockoff? Would he sell? Would he last? Those questions still resonate seventy-five years later.
There was no question that Superman built on what came before. He was as strong as Samson, as fast as Hermes, and as brain-bendingly smart as Micromegas. Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and Rudolph Valentino were his model swashbucklers. Popeye and Tarzan showed him how to be a strongman. Whom better to look to for guidance on foppish dual identities than the Scarlet Pimpernel and Zorro? The Shadow offered up an alter ego named Kent and a female sidekick named Lane. Jerry and Joe made no secret of any of their inspirations, just as they acknowledged being saps for the endless newspaper comics, dime novels, science fiction tales, and cliff hanger movies they took in as kids, from Mutt and Jeff to the Merriwell brothers.
When does influence became borrowing and borrowing become plagiarism? Doc Savage lent Superman some of his best stuff. In less heroic settings, Doc used his formal first name, Clark, a nod to film star Clark Gable. Superman picked the same name with the same nod to the King of Hollywood. Doc had superhuman strength and a moral compass that compelled him never to kill an enemy unless there was no other way; so would Superman. Doc’s nickname was the Man of Bronze; Superman’s was the Man of Steel. There was no room for dames in Doc’s life, or in Supe’s. The borrowing was not confined to general concepts: Gimmicks like putting bad guys to sleep by pressing a nerve in the neck were fair game, as were entire plot lines. Jerry Siegel acknowledged having read Doc “with fascination,” but that was as far as he went. Comics historian Will Murray, who has documented the close connection between Doc and Superman, says Jerry may have stopped there for fear of being sued, but future Superman writers borrowed even more from Clark Savage, Jr.
The case for a connection with Philip Wylie’s Hugo Danner was even stronger. Hugo hurdled across rivers, bounded into the air, raised a cannon skyward with one hand, and lifted an automobile by its bumper. Like Superman, Hugo was said to be as strong as steel, and both used their strength to take on evildoers ranging from arms merchants to entire armies. How did Hugo get to be so strong? “Did you ever watch an ant carry many times its weight? Or see a grasshopper jump fifty times its length?” Professor Danner asked his son, invoking the precise natural principles—even the very same insects—Jerry would to explain Superman’s prowess. Philip Wylie’s whole approach in Gladiator, blending science fiction with action lore, seemed state of the art when he published his novel in 1930 and a bit less fresh when Superman came along eight years later.
But was superhuman Hugo Danner actually Superman? Wylie thought so. In their first two years of writing and drawing the character, Jerry and Joe “used dialogue and scenes from GLADIATOR,” its author wrote a colleague in 1970. “I even consulted my lawyer to see if I ought not to sue for plagerism [sic]. He agreed I’d possibly win but found
the ‘creators’ of ‘Superman’ were two young kids getting $25 a week apiece, only, and that a corporation owned the strip so recovery of damages would be costly, long, difficult and maybe fail owing to that legal set-up.” Wylie was right: He might have won had he sued, much as Superman’s publishers did later when they went after his imitators. Doc Savage’s creators—Lester Dent, John Nanovic, and H. W. Ralston—might have as well, and even Edgar Rice Burroughs. But as Wylie himself conceded later in his letter, “We all borrow in ways from others, tho. The first Superman wasn’t my Gladiator but Hercules or Samson.”
That was the point. Jerry and Joe did not cook up Superman from scratch. They built on as well as borrowed from a long line of mythmakers and storytellers, the same way Burroughs borrowed from Homer and Wylie from the ancient Hebrews. “Our concept,” Joe said, “would be to combine the best traits of all the heroes of history.” He and Jerry sometimes took more than they might have, with too little paraphrasing or crediting. But Doc Savage was an earthling whose hardest job was building his muscles and brainpower; Superman was an alien whose biggest challenge was deciding what to do with the powers he was born with. Danner, too, was decidedly different, a dark presence done in by his worry that mankind could not abide a superhuman such as him. Superman was a creature of light, and it was that very optimism that America loved most. And although Savage and Danner were human and Superman wasn’t, his pairing with Clark Kent gave him a groundedness and humanity Doc and Hugo couldn’t match.
What the two Cleveland teenagers had done was inspired. They had reached into the melting pot of fantastic characters bubbling up in the 1930s, picking out the choicest features then carefully reformulating them. Voilà: a freshly minted Man of Tomorrow for a world not sure it had one. Superman was an alien shipped to Earth rather than an earthling exploring the universe, like Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon—and he had come to help. Superman was no mortal donning an exotic costume like Zorro or the Lone Ranger; just the opposite, this honest-to-God extraterrestrial walked and worked among mortals like us by disguising himself as a bumbling reporter. No wonder we adored him. Although his enemies included run-of-the-mill rogues tracked down by the likes of Dick Tracy and Sherlock Holmes, Superman also took on the demons of his day, from abusive husbands to war profiteers to a penal system that executed the innocent—all in the very first issue.
By his own admission, Joe’s renderings of Superman, Lois, and all the rest of Action No. 1 lacked luster and gloss. But that was their genius. They were straightforward and unprettied, making them as easy to follow as an architect’s blueprints. His skyscrapers were impressionistic shafts, his criminals had angular mugs and stiff features. Primitive, yes, but primal and even ethereal. Likewise, Jerry’s stories had his superhero racing up the sides of buildings and jerking getaway cars off the road: just the thing for ten-year-olds and for a nation tortured by self-doubt. Their creation was brilliant, whether or not Jerry and Joe themselves were. Superman was the ideal character at the right moment, and the boys sensed it even if they couldn’t foresee how long it all would last. Jerry and Joe simply wrote and drew what they knew—which is why Superman embraced the vigilante justice that Jerry longed to mete out to his father’s robbers, why Lois and Clark’s Daily Star was modeled not on a U.S. newspaper but on the Toronto Star, whose cartoons Joe’s father had read to him, and why Superman’s alter ego looked and acted so much like the young Messrs. Siegel and Shuster.
CHAPTER 2
A Hero for His Times
IT HAD TAKEN SIX YEARS for Jerry and Joe to bring Superman to life in a comic book, six years that seemed like an eternity. It took six weeks for Jack and Harry to send him hurtling onto the bestseller list, and it seemed like an instant.
Turning the newly minted hero into a blockbuster was not a matter of meticulous plotting or cagey strategizing. Neither Harry nor Jack had much clue what they were doing when they took Action Comics No. 1 out for sale in 1938. The partners, whose slicked-back hair and unctuous smiles made them look like the scoundrels in that first Superman story, were pros in printing and delivering magazines. To them, publishing meant pornography and pulps. What did they know of kids or comics? Comic books themselves were new enough never to have produced a runaway hit. The anxious entrepreneurs did print up twenty thousand promotional posters for the newsstands, pharmacies, corner stores, groceries, and bus and train stations that sold National Allied Magazines’ comics. But so doubtful were they that their costumed hero would catch fire that they already had resolved to take Superman off the cover after that inaugural issue. They had also arranged for Action No. 1 to stay on store shelves for six weeks rather than the standard four, hoping that if it sat there long enough someone might notice.
Someone did. There were two ways publishers back then learned how a magazine was selling. Dealers counted the comics gone from the spinner racks and overhead displays, recorded their tally on a penny postcard left by the distributor, and dropped it in the mailbox. They did that fifteen days after the comics were delivered and again near the end of the month. Jack the accountant pored over every card that came through the mail slot, but he and Harry knew that system was hit-or-miss. Some shopkeepers didn’t keep a precise count; others didn’t even mail back the cards. A more exact tally would come at the start of the following month, when trucks delivering new issues would pick up unsold old ones. Yet by then it would be too late: All returns were fully refundable, and too many could put them out of business.
Each new postcard raised hopes. The publishers dispatched their agents around Manhattan to check demand at kiosks and druggists; sales seemed brisk, but New York was not America. What would Youngstown think? Miami? Jack and Harry had printed up 202,000 copies of Action No. 1 and were worried they had placed too much trust in a hero Harry himself had said was a long shot. Finally, with all the numbers in, the verdict was clear: They had guessed right. Vendors had sold 130,000 comic books, or 64 percent of the print run. Anything over 50 percent constituted a success and guaranteed a profit. To top that by 14 percentage points, on the first issue, barely a month after they had taken over from the Major, was more than they had let themselves dream. This new adventure could work after all. Superman just might fly.
To be sure, Harry and Jack ran a test. They wanted to know that it was Jerry and Joe’s caped hero who had driven those sales, not “Zatara Master Magician,” “Sticky-Mitt Stimson,” or any of the eight other features in that first issue, so in Action No. 4, readers were asked to list in order of preference their five favorite stories. As an incentive to respond, twenty-five one-dollar prizes were offered for the best accompanying essay. The results dispelled any doubts: 404 of 542 respondents named Superman as tops, with 59 more listing him second. It did not take a master magician to figure out who was driving sales. The publishers were beside themselves. Even as he waited for the returns, Jack was looking to drive demand. He printed only 200,000 copies of the second and third issues of Action, knowing that would leave some shopkeepers with fewer than they wanted and hoping that would build interest, not resentment. He was rewarded with a cry from wholesalers to “give us more copies.” Sales, meanwhile, continued to climb—to 136,000 for the second issue, 159,000 for the third, 190,000 for the fourth, and 197,000 for the fifth. Action No. 13, released on the first anniversary of the original, offered up 415,000 reasons to celebrate. National printed 725,000 copies of Action No. 16 and sold 625,000—an unheard-of success rate of 86 percent.
Who were the buyers? There were no sophisticated surveys, but the drift was clear. Most were schoolchildren. Boys outnumbered girls, but not by much. And they all loved their Superman. He had quickly become the big brother every kid needed, especially half-pints who were being bullied by playground toughs or babied by teachers and parents. TV wasn’t around yet to seduce kids, and radios were oversized consoles shared with the family. The one thing youngsters had that was theirs was what they read, and now they read Superman at night, under the bedcovers, using a flashlight to illumina
te the pages. They brought him to school, camouflaged in their Dick and Jane readers. No highfalutin dialogue in these books, or ambiguity over right and wrong, winners and losers. Superman should win and did, which is just how kids would have it. He was unadult enough to be appealing, and he was the right price—ten cents—for consumers whose only income was their modest allowance and the pennies they dug out of the sofa. Nine and ten-year-olds finally had a language and hero who was theirs alone. Libraries got the message, too: Children’s rooms began promoting books by saying they had Superman’s seal of approval, which carried more clout than a recommendation by a librarian or schoolmistress.
And it wasn’t just kids. All-Star pitcher Lefty Gomez recalled walking down the street with his Yankees teammate and roommate Joe DiMaggio when “he suddenly turns to me and says, ‘Lefty, you know what day today is?’ I say, ‘Yeah, Wednesday.’ Then he says, ‘No, no, today is the day the new Superman comes out’ … So now he sees this newspaper stand and looks to see if they got comic books. He points to it and wants me to get it for him. He stands off to the side. Hell, he was Joe DiMaggio and if the newsstand guy saw him buy Superman comics it would be all over the world. I got one of those faces nobody could ever recognize so he wants me to buy it for him. ‘Joe, is this what you want, the Superman comics?’ He looks around at a couple of people there and he says, ‘No, you know I wouldn’t buy that.’ Then I walk away and he motions again. I finally buy it for him and he stuffs it into his pocket. He spends the night with Superman.”