Superman

• 1. Introduction

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  Superman first appeared on the 18th of April 1938, inside issue number one of Action Comics, and nothing in American popular culture has been quite the same since. The character who stepped off those pages wore a brightly colored costume, went by a codename, and possessed abilities that no human could match. Within a few years, he had seeded an entire genre. He remains, across the full sweep of superhero history starting in 1938, the highest grossing superhero of all time.

  The questions his story raises are not small ones. How did two teenagers from Cleveland invent a figure that would echo through cinema, radio, television, and theater for nearly a century? Why did a character rejected by every major newspaper syndicate end up on the cover of the best-selling single comic book issue ever printed? And what does it mean that a being born on a distant planet named Krypton became, for millions of readers, the quintessential symbol of American identity?

• 2. Two Boys in Cleveland

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  Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster met in 1932 at Glenville High School in Cleveland, bonding over their shared love of pulp fiction and adventure magazines. Siegel wanted to become a writer; Shuster wanted to become an illustrator. Siegel was already self-publishing a magazine called Science Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization, and Shuster drew the illustrations.

  In January 1933, Siegel published a short story in his own magazine titled "The Reign of the Super-Man". That original Super-Man bore almost no resemblance to the hero the world now knows. He was a homeless man named Bill Dunn who was tricked by an evil scientist into consuming an experimental drug. The drug gave Dunn powers of mind-reading, mind-control, and clairvoyance. He used these abilities for personal gain. When the drug wore off, he was a powerless vagrant again. Shuster illustrated Dunn as a bald man.

  The pair then tried to break into newspaper syndication, showing their ideas to editors across the industry. The editors were unimpressed. They told Siegel and Shuster that any successful comic strip had to be more sensational than anything else on the market. That criticism pushed Siegel back toward Superman. He gave the character superhuman strength and bullet-proof skin instead of psychic abilities, and flipped the moral equation: this Superman fought crime rather than exploited people. The villain had become a hero.

  Over the next several years, Superman's origin story shifted considerably. In a 1934 script sent to an artist named Russell Keaton, who drew the Buck Rogers and Skyroads strips, Superman was no longer a man from the future but a child sent back in time from a dying Earth by the last surviving man. The Kents who found him were named Sam and Molly. The boy was left in an orphanage before the couple adopted him. Only later did the origin crystallize into the version the world recognizes: an alien from the planet Krypton, sent to Earth as a baby before his world was destroyed.

• 3. The Road to Action Comics

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  Rejection followed Siegel and Shuster for years. When Siegel grew frustrated enough to look for a different artist to replace Shuster, Shuster reacted by burning their rejected Superman comic. He spared only the cover. The two eventually reconciled and kept working together.

  In June 1935, they found steady work with National Allied Publications in New York, a company owned by Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. He published two of their strips in New Fun Comics number 6, titled "Henri Duval" and "Doctor Occult". Wheeler-Nicholson also offered to publish Superman in one of his magazines that October. Siegel and Shuster refused because they considered him an irresponsible businessman: he had ignored their letters and had not paid them for their work in New Fun Comics. They kept working for him anyway because he was the only publisher buying their material.

  Wheeler-Nicholson's finances deteriorated until, in 1936, he formed a joint corporation with Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz called Detective Comics, Inc. In early January 1938, Donenfeld and Liebowitz forced Wheeler-Nicholson's company into bankruptcy and took it over. Just weeks earlier, in early December 1937, Siegel had visited Liebowitz in New York and proposed new stories for an anthology magazine called Action Comics. He did not offer Superman. At that point, Siegel and Shuster were still trying to sell Superman to the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.

  McClure rejected Superman in early January 1938. An employee of McClure named Max Gaines asked Siegel whether he could forward the Superman strips to Liebowitz for consideration. Siegel agreed. Liebowitz and his colleagues were impressed. They asked Siegel and Shuster to develop the strips into 13 pages. The two men had grown exhausted by rejection and accepted. They submitted their work in late February and were paid ten dollars per page. In early March they signed a contract giving away the copyright to Superman to Detective Comics, Inc. The practice of signing over copyrights was standard in the industry, and they had done the same with all their previous work. No one, including Siegel and Shuster themselves, anticipated what would follow.

• 4. Building a Mythology

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  The costume Shuster designed drew from an eclectic range of sources. The tight-fitting suit and shorts came from the costumes of wrestlers, boxers, and strongmen. The emblem on the chest was inspired by heraldic crests. The cape followed the tradition of pulp action heroes and swashbucklers. In early concept art, Shuster gave Superman laced sandals like those of classical heroes, but these were eventually replaced with red boots. Superman's face was modeled on Johnny Weissmuller, with touches derived from the comic-strip character Dick Tracy and from the work of cartoonist Roy Crane.

  The Clark Kent persona had its own constellation of influences. Shuster told an interviewer in 1992 that the name Clark Kent derived from 1930s cinematic leading men Clark Gable and Kent Taylor, but that the persona itself came from bespectacled silent film comic Harold Lloyd. The classic Lloyd character was a mild-mannered man who absorbed punishment from bullies before snapping and fighting back. Siegel later admitted that the love triangle between Lois Lane, Clark Kent, and Superman was drawn from his own awkwardness with girls. Kent works as a journalist because Siegel often imagined himself becoming one after leaving school.

  Lois Lane appeared in Action Comics number one alongside Superman. As Siegel conceived her, she found Clark Kent to be a wimp while being thoroughly infatuated with the bold Superman, unaware the two were the same person. Siegel resisted any suggestion that Lois discover the truth, because he believed the love triangle was too central to the book's appeal. The home city of Metropolis took its name from the 1927 film of the same name.

  The supporting cast expanded steadily. Editor Mort Weisinger, who ran Superman comics from 1941 to 1970, demanded a more disciplined mythology and oversaw the introduction of Bizarro, Supergirl, the Phantom Zone, the Fortress of Solitude, and multiple varieties of kryptonite. Kryptonite itself had first appeared in a 1943 episode of the radio serial before arriving in comics in Superman number 61 in December 1949. Weisinger also introduced letters columns in 1958 to build a closer relationship with readers.

• 5. Copyright and Its Consequences

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  In a contract dated the 1st of March 1938, Siegel and Shuster gave the copyright to Superman to Detective Comics, Inc. for no additional payment. The $130 DC paid them covered their first Superman story, not the character itself. Between 1938 and 1947, DC Comics paid them together at least $401,194.85 in total. But Superman grew into something far more valuable than any of them had anticipated, and both men deeply regretted giving away the rights.

  While Siegel was serving in the United States Army in Hawaii, DC Comics published a story featuring a child version of Superman called Superboy, based on a script Siegel had submitted years earlier. DC did this without purchasing the character. After his discharge, Siegel and Shuster sued DC in 1947 for the rights to both Superman and Superboy. The judge ruled that Superman belonged to DC but that Superboy was a separate entity belonging to Siegel. The pair settled out of court for $94,013.16, which gave DC full rights to both characters. DC then fired both of them.

  The legal struggle continued for decades. DC rehired Siegel as a writer in 1959, but fired him again in 1965 when he and Shuster attempted to reclaim rights using the Copyright Act of 1909. In 1975, they launched a public campaign for better compensation. Warner Brothers responded by granting them a yearly stipend, full medical benefits, and credit in all future Superman productions, in exchange for their agreement never to contest ownership. Both men accepted. Shuster died in 1992. Siegel died in 1996. Their heirs pursued further legal action under the Copyright Act of 1976, which eventually produced a negotiated settlement in which DC agreed to pay the Siegel heirs several million dollars and a yearly stipend of $500,000, plus the line "By Special Arrangement with the Jerry Siegel Family" in all future productions. The Siegels accepted this offer in an October 2001 letter.

  Under current United States copyright law, Superman's first appearance in Action Comics number one is scheduled to enter the public domain on the 1st of January 2034. That will apply initially only to the 1938 version of the character. DC retains its trademarks on Superman's name, image, and S logo, and those trademarks do not expire as long as they remain in use.

• 6. The Franchise Expands

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  The Adventures of Superman radio show ran from 1940 to 1951, producing 2,088 episodes, most aimed at children. Episodes were initially 15 minutes long and were later extended to 30 minutes. Most were performed live. Bud Collyer voiced Superman throughout most of the run. That same radio serial made two decisions that became permanent fixtures: it changed Superman's employer from The Daily Star to the Daily Planet, and it gave Superman the ability to fly, which the original Action Comics stories had not included.

  Paramount Pictures released a series of animated theatrical shorts between 1941 and 1943, seventeen episodes in total, each 8-10 minutes long. The first episode carried a production budget of $50,000, and the remaining episodes cost $30,000 each. That was exceptionally high for animated shorts, where $9,000-$15,000 was more typical. Joe Shuster provided model sheets so the visuals would match the contemporary comic book aesthetic.

  The first live-action film serial arrived in 1948, with Kirk Alyn as the first actor to portray Superman on screen. It became the most profitable movie serial in film history. The first big-budget feature film came in 1978, starring Christopher Reeve and produced by Alexander and Ilya Salkind on a budget of $55 million. The film ran 143 minutes and carried a soundtrack composed by John Williams that earned an Academy Award nomination. Adjusted for inflation, the 1978 film remains the most successful Superman feature film at the box office.

  Screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz made an explicit creative decision in writing the 1978 film: he constructed Superman as an allegory for Jesus Christ. Baby Kal-El's ship was designed to resemble the Star of Bethlehem, and Jor-El gave his son a messianic mission to lead humanity forward. The 2013 film Man of Steel revisited this theme, with Jor-El asking Superman to guide humanity away from the path of eugenics that had corrupted Krypton.

  In November 2025, a near-pristine copy of Superman No. 1, the 1939 issue that introduced the character in his first solo title, sold at Heritage Auctions for a record $9.12 million.

• 7. Wider Meanings

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  Writing in Time in 1971, Gerald Clarke argued that Superman's enormous popularity signaled the beginning of the end for what he called the Horatio Alger myth of the self-made man. Clarke saw the character as a reflection of the national mood, suggesting that in the modern world, only a figure with superpowers could truly survive and prosper.

  A.C. Grayling traced Superman's shifting political relevance across the decades in The Spectator, noting that the 1930s stories responded to a nation under the influence of gangsters like Al Capone, that the 1940s saw Superman selling war bonds, and that by the period after the Cold War the stories narrowed toward the personal. Jules Feiffer argued that Superman's true innovation was not the hero himself but the Clark Kent persona: the idea that a meek, bespectacled reporter was the hidden face of extraordinary power. Siegel himself supported this reading, saying the dual-identity concept came directly from wish-fulfillment he and Shuster experienced as young men who felt constrained by their own inhibitions.

  Scholars have also examined Superman as an immigrant story. Gary Engle argued that the character asserted with complete confidence the value of immigrants in American culture, and that Superman allowed the superhero genre to displace the Western as the dominant expression of immigrant sensibilities. Clark Kent represents the assimilated individual who has absorbed the new country's customs, while Superman expresses the cultural heritage of origin for the greater good. Junot Díaz argued that the character resonates specifically with the experiences of undocumented immigrants in the United States.

  The radio program that ran from 1940 to 1951 took on social causes directly. A 1946 broadcast featured a thinly veiled version of the Ku Klux Klan as its villain, and other episodes addressed antisemitism and discrimination against veterans. The S emblem on Superman's chest began as simply an initial for the name. It was Tom Mankiewicz who, while writing the 1978 film script, transformed it into the crest of Superman's Kryptonian family, the House of El. In the comic story Superman: Birthright, it was described as an ancient Kryptonian symbol for hope.