mrneoluddite/comics

He Believed a Man Could Fly
By Dave Sikula
Fri, October 17, 2008

You'd think a guy who created one of the world's most famous fictional characters would spend the rest of his life on Easy Street. In most cases, you'd be right. But in the case of Jerry Siegel, you'd be wrong.

Siegel was born on October 17, 1914, and grew up loving comic strips and science fiction. His world was shattered, though, when his father died of a heart attack brought on by the armed robbery of his haberdashery. Perhaps inspired by the crime, Siegel created a bulletproof Man of Tomorrow -- a "Superman," to borrow Nietzsche's term -- who would help the powerless. Siegel's final version of Superman was created with artist Joe Shuster, although recent research has shown that he first approached other artists, but this earlier vision of the superhero differed from the one we've come to know over the ensuing 70 years.

Siegel and Shuster tried to sell Superman to comic strip syndicates, but no one was interested until 1938, when DC Comics paid $130 for the rights to the character -- a move Siegel came to regret even before DC fired him in 1947. He was rehired in 1959, and wrote some of the greatest Superman stories of the 60s before being fired again in 1967.

In the 70s, as Warner Bros. was publicizing the then-upcoming Superman movie, Siegel and Shuster launched a campaign of their own, telling how DC had mistreated them. Eventually, the publisher was shamed into granting the men lifetime pensions and a guarantee that all depictions of Superman would carry their credit.

In recent years, the two men's families have sued to regain the copyright to the Man of Steel, and a court case is pending. In 2006, author Brad Meltzer launched a campaign to save the Cleveland house where Siegel created Superman. It's far from a Fortress of Solitude, but in its own way, it's as important to American pop culture as Broadway or Hollywood.