Arts & Culture

On January 16 and beyond, take a moment to remember comic book hero Superman and the Canadian who created him in drawings, Joseph “Joe” Shuster (Born: July 10, 1914 in Toronto, Ontario Died: July 30, 1992 in Los Angeles, California). Shuster, a first cousin of Frank Shuster of Wayne and Shuster fame, moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio in 1924. Subsequently attending Glenville High School, Joe Shuster and his friend, Jerome “Jerry” Siegel (1914-1996), began collaborating on a fanzine called Science Fiction in which “The Reign of the Superman” (1933), whose main character was an evil villain, was published with Siegel writing and Shuster illustrating the short story. This character did not resonate well and Siegel and Shuster remodeled Superman into a heroic character with a milquetoast alter ego named Clark Kent modelled on Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Harold Lloyd respectively. The name “Clark Kent” itself came from actors Clark Gable and Kent Taylor.

A failed attempt to get Consolidated Book Publishing to publish Superman almost resulted in the complete expunging of the character by a frustrated Joe Shuster, only to see Jerry Siegel save some representations of Joe Shuster’s drawings of Superman. Shuster and Siegel had better luck with National Allied Publications (a forerunner of DC Comics) which published an image of Superman on the front cover of Action Comics #1 (June 1938). A syndicated daily comic strip of Superman began running in newspapers on January 16, 1939 with a separate Sunday comic strip added on November 5, 1939. These comic strips were published until May, 1966.    

One interesting aspect of this story was that Shuster and Siegel had initially sold their rights to Superman for US$130. However, in 1946-1947, a lawsuit was launched to regain their creative rights or at least be properly compensated instead. The 1947 court decision upheld DC Comics holding copyright of Superman and the company compensated Shuster and Siegel to the tune of US$94,000. However, the 1947 decision also acknowledged separately that Siegel held the rights to Superboy. A subsequent 1973 lawsuit initially ended in defeat for the pair that claimed that Superman was created as a work-for-hire, which was not the case, and a successful appeal reversed that ruling. However, DC Comics agreed to pay out lifetime US$20,000 annuities (later increased to US$30,000) to Shuster and Siegel, provided that they did not challenge the rights to Superman.

The sad side to this story is that Joe Shuster died blind, in debt and poverty.  Jerry Siegel outlived his friend by several years. However, the story then turned to Siegel’s wife, Joanne Siegel, and daughter, Laura Siegel Larson, who began their efforts in 1997 to gain copyright control of Superman through the use of copyright termination provisions of a 1976 American statute that allows heirs of creators to recover copyright control in certain situations. A federal court judge ruled that Mrs. Siegel and Mrs. Larson had recaptured the rights to Superboy as of November 17, 2004.

Consider the following titles for borrowing from Toronto Public Library collections: