While the disheartening effect of the Great Depression put a damper on the New York publishing trade, the great newspapers, newsmagazines, and popular magazines survived even as their weaker competitors vanished. And even as the quest for profits grew more brutal and the scramble for jobs intensified, New York remained the center of the publishing industry in America. It offered the enterprising entrepreneur an opportunity to run with an idea, to forge a market, and to make a living. The keys to success were twofold: a good idea and a fighting spirit.
In 1933 an out-of-work, would-be publisher and newspaper comic strip aficionado named Max Gaines (he had changed his name from Maxwell Ginzburg to sound less Jewish) came up with one of those good ideas: to take daily and weekly comic strips from newspapers; to arrange them on pages of cheap newsprint; to staple the pages between glossy, four-color cardboard covers; and to market the books to kids. The Eastern Color Printing Company agreed to test Gaines’s concept and produced 35,000 copies of Famous Funnies, Series 1, for distribution as a free promotion to department stores. The entire print run vanished almost overnight, and Eastern rushed Famous Funnies, Series 2, to newsstands. This time the company sold copies for a dime apiece.
Eastern then launched an entire series of comic compilation books without the services of the disappointed Gaines. But the enterprising businessman—showing that fighting spirit—struck a profit-sharing deal with the McClure Newspaper Syndicate and set out to launch a competing line. As Gaines’s new titles became profitable, more publishers began bundling books of comic strip reprints and selling them at newsstands and dime stores. Before long the backlog of available newspaper strips had been exhausted, and existing content for new compilations was scarce.
That’s when the trailblazing publisher of National Allied Publications began hiring new writers and illustrators to create original strips and new characters. Other publishers followed suit. In this wild swirl of competition, the comic book industry began to take shape. Since almost all the major players were Jewish, Jewish writers and illustrators were free to apply for work. This was their chance to start a career in the broader publishing trade. As Jerry and Joe worked on new characters far away in Cleveland, the delivery system for their creations was being built.
By the mid-1930s a short, dapper, well-connected, and highly successful publisher named Harry Donenfeld was contemplating entry into the emerging field. Donenfeld had an appetite for success and the track record to prove it. He knew how to pick titles that sold, hire writers with sizzle, print on the cheap, and, if necessary, muscle his magazines into newsstands, drugstores, cigar stores, barbershops, and beauty salons. Wining and dining wealthy businessmen and powerful politicians at the best restaurants in Manhattan, he spared no expense for his potential clients, influential colleagues, and fun-loving friends.
Donenfeld had made a fortune back in the Roaring Twenties by publishing girlie magazines and racy pulp titles, which had sold as fast as his rackety printing presses could roll them out. With Prohibition in force, Donenfeld had supplemented his publishing profits by transporting stockpiles of bootleg whiskey into New York. He had hid the illegal booze in train cars carrying paper shipments from Canada and sold the hooch to speakeasies across the city, while marketing his magazines and books nationwide. Harry Donenfeld was living the high life—on his terms. His wife Gussie kept their home in the Bronx like a showplace as Donenfeld paraded his girlfriends through the glitziest clubs in town.
But those Roaring Twenties gave way to the Depression, Prohibition was repealed, and the world was far less forgiving of questionable business dealings. Political reformers were looking askance at big shots who cashed in on borderline pornography while millions of decent, out-of-work Americans scrambled to keep from starving. By 1937 New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was running for reelection on the promise of shutting down indecent books and magazines, and prosecutors were bringing indictments against risqué publishers. So Donenfeld set out to establish a more legitimate product line. He thought bigger and played harder than anyone else in the fledgling comic book field and figured he could get in on the ground floor and gobble up the profits. The comic book trade was still limited, but the potential for growth was promising. He needed a breakthrough title. He had no way of knowing that two young men in Cleveland had created a character who could provide that kind of breakthrough.
TO MOVE INTO THE COMIC FIELD, Donenfeld turned to his friend, business partner, and spiritual opposite Jack Liebowitz, a no-nonsense, detail-savvy accountant who had grown up in the same Lower East Side, New York, neighborhood as the flamboyant Donenfeld. In contrast to Donenfeld, during those same Roaring Twenties, Liebowitz had studied accounting at night at New York University and had gone to work as a financial manager for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. He got by on a modest salary while working to win higher wages and better working conditions for immigrants who toiled in crowded sweatshops for 12 to 14 hours a day.
Liebowitz, whose parents had left Ukraine and settled in New York City when he was three, could relate to the hardworking garment makers and believe in their cause. But by the early 1930s, with the Depression bearing down, the striking union out of money, and radical communists attempting a takeover, Liebowitz was more than ready to go into business with a smooth operator from the old neighborhood.
So, the mild-mannered accountant and the back-slapping business tycoon cast their gaze on the emerging comic book business. As the first commercial comic books rolled off the same presses that printed cheap pulp magazines like Ghost Stories, Strange Suicides, and Medical Horrors, Donenfeld and Liebowitz maneuvered for an opening. By 1938 the pair had taken over National Allied Publications and DC Comics (publisher of Detective Comics), thus setting themselves up as major players in the emerging comic book industry.
* CHAPTER 5 *
CHAMPION OF THE OPPRESSED
AS THE COMIC BOOK INDUSTRY took shape in New York, Jerry and Joe were eking out a living by operating their own two-man comic business in Cleveland. The aspiring writer and illustrator were living with their parents to save on expenses, working from a makeshift studio in Joe’s attic, and working menial part-time jobs to make ends meet. Having managed to get a couple of contracts with new comic book publishers in New York, the pair developed a few interesting characters. Their title Federal Men featured a wisecracking Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent named Steve Carson who worked undercover to find kidnapped babies and shut down criminal gangs. Spooky Dr. Occult was a brash, supernatural ghost detective who tracked down zombies, vampires, and other spectral figures. In some episodes the evil Dr. Occult even donned a red cape and took flight as the creators tried out a bit of their Superman material. As the work ebbed and flowed, Jerry and Joe waited for their big break. That’s where Superman was supposed to come in.
At first Jerry insisted on holding back the Superman character from the low-paying comic book publishers in hopes of selling it to an established newspaper syndicate. A major syndicate like King Features or United Features could place a Superman strip in hundreds of newspapers nationwide and generate thousands of dollars in royalties in the process. A portion of the royalties would go to the creators week after week, month after month, year after year, for the life of the strip. Strips like Little Orphan Annie and Popeye had been popular in newspapers for years, and their creators were dining at the top of the comic-art food chain. But the strategy of saving Superman for syndication had produced only a drawer full of rejection letters from syndicate executives, who claimed that an all-powerful being from another planet, dressed in tights and serving the public good, was too far-fetched for a broad newspaper audience comprised mostly of adults. One editor from United Features indelicately summed up Superman as “a rather immature piece of work.”
Losing patience with rejections, Jerry and Joe finally sent off Superman samples to comic book publishers, only to receive more negative feedback. With no one in the publishing business showing interest in the Superman chara
cter, the Man of Steel sat on the shelf. Then, one day in the spring of 1938, Jerry and Joe opened the mail to find an intriguing proposal from DC Comics—Harry Donenfeld’s promising new venture. The letter came from editor Vin Sullivan, who had been assigned to launch a new title, Action Comics (AC), to build on the success of DC Comics. Jerry and Joe had created a couple of the lesser characters for Donenfeld’s publications, but this new one sounded bigger. Sullivan wanted a 13-page Superman adventure as the lead story for the debut issue of AC. Sullivan was desperate for a good character and didn’t have time to start from scratch with a new concept. He had come across an old, rejected Superman proposal, and he was willing to pay Siegel and Shuster to recraft it for AC—pronto. Jerry and Joe’s company would have to produce the four-color cover and 13 pages of illustrated text in a couple of weeks to meet a fast-approaching deadline.
Tired of watching their best character sit on the shelf as new comic books rolled out new superheroes every week (even the word “super” was turning up regularly), Siegel and Shuster accepted the offer and began scrambling to fill the order. After a series of back-and-forth rewrites, remakes, and spats between the Cleveland collaborators and the New York publishers, 200,000 copies of the comic went to press in the summer of 1938. Action Comics No. 1 hit the newsstands with Superman on the cover. The hero is effortlessly lifting a car as men scramble in stupefied horror.
Although the story would be embellished and refined in future editions, the first page of panels in Action Comics No. 1 lays out the superhero’s basic origins and core identity. It also reveals his decidedly liberal leanings. Superman bursts onto the scene as the New Deal blend of optimism and social responsibility, a muscular do-gooder with a boundless passion for justice. Or as Action Comics No. 1 puts it:
Superman! Champion of the Oppressed. The physical marvel who has sworn to devote his existence to helping those in need.
The first page sums up the origin of Superman in a manner that would hold up for decades to come:
“As a distant planet is destroyed by old age, a scientist placed his infant son in a hastily devised space-ship, launching it toward earth.” The baby is found by “a passing motorist, who, discovering the sleeping babe within, turned the child over to an orphanage.” The baby amazes the orphanage staff with incredible feats of strength, “including lifting a chair over his head with one hand.” Named Clark, the boy can leap 1/8 mile, hurdle a 20-story building, and outrun a train. In addition, “Nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin.” Clark is driven to “turn his titanic strength into channels that would benefit mankind, and so was created ‘Superman,’ champion of the oppressed.”
Over the next 13 pages, Superman sets out on a furious series of missions, all reflecting the ideals of democracy, compassion for the weak, hope for the future, defense of the rule of law, and respect for justice. The staccato style of the writing, the redundancies in the wording, and the hectic pace of the panels all reflect the hurried nature of the production and the relative inexperience of the creators. But despite these shortcomings, the essence of the character lived up to the hype as “the most astounding fiction character of all time.” Standing for good government, general prosperity, and an equal chance for all, the Man of Steel had arrived on the scene with strength, power, and plenty of good intentions.
In one scene, Superman flies to the governor’s mansion to save an innocent woman from wrongful execution. Tearing off the door to the governor’s bedroom, he explains, “Evelyn Curry is to be electrocuted in 15 minutes for murder. I have proof here of her innocence, a signed confession.” After the amazed governor reads the confession from the real murderer, he calls the state prison to halt the execution. Superman vanishes in a flash but leaves behind a note—and the actual murderer, bound and gagged, is on the front lawn of the governor’s mansion. The governor tells his aides, “Gentlemen, I still can’t believe my senses. He’s not human. Thank God he is apparently on the side of law and order.”
In another quick set of panels, a frantic call comes in to the newspaper office. The caller reports that a man is beating his wife. Clark races out of the office to cover the story. He arrives at the couple’s apartment in his Superman outfit to find the woman lying on the floor, her abusive husband standing over her with a strap. The abuser attacks Superman with a knife, but “with a sharp snap the blade snaps on Superman’s hard skin.” After Superman warns, “You’re going to get a lesson you’ll never forget,” the man faints, and the police arrive to take him away.
The early Superman adventures of 1938 also feature a story that underscores Superman’s impatience with wealthy industrialists who put profit ahead of public good. In this tale Superman takes his New Deal spirit to an extreme, and a band of rich partiers almost pays the price with their lives. Superman descends into a coal mine to save a miner trapped in a cave-in. After discovering that the cave-in resulted from unsafe conditions—the owner of the mine had failed to maintain the safety equipment and an alarm signal—the Man of Steel swings into action. Rushing to the mine owner’s mansion, Superman crashes a party of well-to-do socialites and promises to let the mine owner and his high-society guests “see how the other side lives.” Then he leads them all into the mine.
Deep below the Earth’s surface, the socialites twirl their pearl necklaces, fiddle with their top hats, and express their astonishment that “people actually work down here.” Then Superman pulls down a beam that supports the mine walls, which causes another cave-in and traps the partiers in an underground hole. Since the emergency alarm doesn’t work, the trapped socialites have no choice but to dig their way out: “Knee deep in stagnant water, struggling with unwieldy tools, slipping, frequently falling, the entrapped pleasure-seekers seek desperately … to batter down the huge barrier of coal.” In the end the mine owner vows to run the “safest mine in America,” and Superman rescues the party.
The debut issue also introduces Lois Lane and sets up her complex relationship with Clark and Superman. Lois, a strong woman working in a man’s world, knows exactly what she likes. She likes the supremely confident, splendidly sculpted, all-powerful Superman. She merely tolerates the meek and squeamish Clark Kent.
The final lines of the Superman adventure in Action Comics No. 1 urge readers to look for more in the future:
And so begins the startling adventures of the most sensational strip character of all time.
SUPERMAN!
A physical marvel. A mental wonder. Superman is destined to reshape the destiny of the world.
The entire print run of Action Comics No. 1 sold out, and Siegel and Shuster were commissioned to generate more content. Toward the end of 1938 it was clear: The Man of Steel was a hit. Customers were asking for the next installment of Superman rather than the next edition of Action Comics.
By the end of 1938 the print run exceeded one million, and sales topped $11 million. In episode after episode the Man of Steel defends democracy; sticks up for the oppressed; and thwarts criminals, corrupt politicians, and greedy industrialists. Siegel and Shuster’s character was raw, rough, tough, and unpredictable. At times he threatened his adversaries with serious injury—even death—for failing to follow his commands. One of his favorite tactics was to grab an adversary by the scruff of the neck, fly him thousands of feet into the sky, and threaten to let him fall to a certain death unless he confessed or incriminated others. Superman distrusted government authority and reveled in bringing extravagant wealth and privileged arrogance to justice. He showed a concern for international affairs, and his exploits often transcended national borders. He was the champion of oppressed people everywhere and would often fly to South America to stop brutal dictators from exploiting the masses. This superhero—the first to become an icon of modern pop culture—knew few limits. In some episodes, the creators let Superman’s Jewish roots slip out. Action Comics No. 7 opens with this line: “Friend of the helpless and oppressed is Superman, a man possessing the strength of a dozen Samsons.”
/> For Jerry and Joe it was a dream come true. They had their names on a wildly popular comic book, were earning excellent wages, and were part of the big-time publishing scene in New York City. Sure, they had relinquished the copyright to DC Comics but that was standard operating procedure at the time. Looking ahead to the future, wondering about the possibilities of this fantastic character, they felt the sky was the limit.
* PART TWO *
EMERGING FROM THE SHADOWS
The Ku Klux Klan was shrouded in mystery. The robed and hooded vigilantes held bizarre rituals in the dead of night, in the light of their emblematic burning cross. The organization’s Imperial Wizards and Grand Dragons appealed to white protestant men to rise up against Jews, Negroes, immigrants, and their supporters. Tapping in to fear and ignorance, the KKK promised its followers that America could be ruled by one race, one religion, and one color. In the rural South, an iconoclastic young man was getting a firsthand education in the ways of the Klan. He would go on to try to tear off the mask of the secret society.
* CHAPTER 6 *
ORANGE GROVES & HOODED HORSES
SEVEN-YEAR-OLD Stetson Kennedy took a seat on the curb on Main Street in downtown Jacksonville, Florida. The air was warm, the crowd was festive, and the parade was about to begin. Crooking his neck for a better view, he immediately became engrossed in the spectacle. First came a row of men wearing white robes and hoods and mounted on great white stallions. Even the horses were bedecked with flowing saddle covers and ornamental hoods. When the riders pulled on the reins, the steeds rose up on their hind legs, whinnied, snorted, and furiously pawed the air. Following the riders were dozens of robed and hooded men marching four or five abreast. As Kennedy recalls, “One of the mounted knights of the KKK bore a flaming fiery cross, while the other blew long, mournful blasts on a bugle.” Kennedy was awestruck. This was his introduction to the Ku Klux Klan.
Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan Page 3
