In the new, upscale communities Bob came to live in, kids from all backgrounds went shopping or embarked on day trips to the beach together. As a teen Joffe listened with one ear to his parents’ stories of life in the old country and with the other to big band music on the radio. Like Jerry Siegel and Stetson Kennedy, Bob imagined the possibility of becoming a writer. Close to the gleaming office towers of New York, he looked out at the opportunities of the publishing industry and entertainment business. Driven by ambition that could be mistaken for arrogance, he wanted a bite of the Big Apple.
CHAMPION OF
THE OPPRESSED
SUPERMAN was introduced to the world in 1938 as the Champion of the Oppressed. In time his moniker morphed into the defender of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. In his journey through comic books, comic strips, radio and TV programs, movies, and more, the character has kept a careful watch over the less fortunate and the downtrodden. From defending coal miners against unsafe working conditions (1938) to supporting protesters opposing the oppressive regime in Iran (2011), Superman has maintained a social conscience that is as strong as steel.
MANY FACES OF
SUPERMAN
FOLLOWING THE BLUEPRINT laid down by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, a continuous stream of artists contributed to the evolution of Superman’s character. Over the years, comic-book illustrators, TV producers, moviemakers, and digital designers have constantly modernized the look and feel of the character and his surroundings. Given the continued success of the Superman enterprise, this process seems certain to continue for years—if not generations—to come.
SUPERMAN
IN WARTIME
SWIMMING TOWARD a German U-boat. Riding a missile toward a Japanese target. Conducting special missions on the front lines. Tying cannon barrels into knots. Superman served as a stalwart supporter of the troops during World War II and in all the wars that followed. Even more important, Superman comic books provide overseas troops with much-needed relief from the stresses of war.
SPINOFF
SUPERHEROES
THE SUCCESS OF SUPERMAN spawned the creation of new comic-book superheroes. From Batman and Robin to Wonder Woman, these exciting new characters thrilled increasing numbers of readers with their amazing powers and heroic deeds. As the comic-book industry grew, stories of violent criminals and bloodthirsty vampires began crowding the newsstands. All the “blood and thunder” provided ample fodder for comic-book critics, who eventually forced the industry to impose a rigid censorship code.
In his early 20s Bob was living at home and working as a writer, although his prose might not have met the approval of his respectable parents. He had started out with plans of becoming a songwriter but ended up churning out risqué romance novels, gritty detective stories, and blood-and-guts murder tomes for publishers in New York. Writing under the pen names Bob Maxwell, Jack Keene, and even Claire Kennedy, he learned to write fast, with sizzle and intensity, and to give the publisher exactly what he wanted: a book that would sell. His biggest client was the backslapping, money-making Harry Donenfeld, who considered Bob one of the best “smooch” writers in his stable. Donenfeld admired Bob’s lurid fiction—packed with action, tinted with sex, and punctuated with violence. Some people may have written Bob off as a bottom-feeding pulp hack, but Donenfeld knew talent and saw it in his promising protégée.
In fact, Donenfeld saw the young, ambitious, well-spoken young man as more than a writer. Convinced that Bob could succeed on the business side of the publishing game, Donenfeld gave him a big assignment. Harry placed him in charge of the subsidiary Superman Inc., a separate company set up to promote the Superman character and to license the name and likeness to companies seeking to get their products to a growing market of children and teens. The idea was to put the character’s name and image on products ranging from toys and cereal boxes to pajamas and lunch pails. Robert Maxwell Joffe—by then going by the less Jewish-sounding name Bob Maxwell—saw Superman Inc. as his route to the more lucrative side of the entertainment business.
SURE ENOUGH, Bob Maxwell thrived in the new role. Working with DC Comics publicity chief Allen Duchovny, he persuaded companies that linking their names to that of Superman would sell their products to a new generation of adolescent consumers. Within a year the Superman name and likeness decorated sweatshirts, baseball caps, greeting cards, dolls, puppets, and pajamas. An 80-foot Superman helium balloon even floated above the crowd at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Before long, thousands of kids were spending their nickels and dimes to cover their dues to the Superman fan club (motto: strength—courage—justice). By 1940 the Superman character was showing promise of becoming a multi-million-dollar phenomenon. Fans could read Superman’s adventures in both Action Comics and the bimonthly Superman magazine, which together were selling more than 2.5 million copies per month. The “Superman” newspaper strip—Jerry and Joe’s original dream—was appearing in nearly 300 daily and 100 Sunday newspapers. In addition, Max Fleischer Studios would soon release a series of animated cartoons, which opened as part of the Saturday matinee at more than 17,000 theaters nationwide. The Superman empire was taking shape, and Maxwell was in the center of the action.
Jerry and Joe were riding the wave too. They were earning more money and enjoying more fame than they had ever imagined growing up in Glenville. The good pay was particularly useful to Jerry, who had married a girl named Bella from the old neighborhood and wanted to share his good fortune with her. Jerry bought a new house in the nice Jewish neighborhood of Jackson Heights in Queens, another New York City borough, so he could spend more time with an ever-widening circle of bosses, colleagues, and collaborators in the city.
Jerry and Bella also maintained a home in Cleveland, where press coverage of Superman’s meteoric rise to fame had made him a local celebrity. Jerry was so well known that neighborhood kids would turn up at his door in search of Superman. Playing along with the game, Jerry would pull his authentic red, blue, and yellow costume out of the closet and whisper that the caped hero would be soaring through the skies of Cleveland later that day. Then he and Bella would pack up for another trip to New York to keep pace with the more experienced, more assertive publishers, editors, and promoters who were driving the business.
Even though the focal point of the Superman enterprise had moved to New York, Joe Shuster stayed put in Cleveland. He used his escalating paycheck to rent a $30-a-month studio and hired a number of art assistants to help keep pace with the mounting workload. This was critical, since poor eyesight was preventing Joe from meeting the demand for more and more comic book and newspaper-strip illustrations on his own. Even in his teens, Joe had squinted through thick lenses at the images on the old, brown butcher paper laid out on his mother’s cutting board, but his eyesight had worsened with time.
The added income also allowed Joe to join a health club, where he embarked on a muscle-building regimen that boosted his weight from 112 to 128 pounds, while his hot new platform shoes added an inch to his five-foot-two height. The new look—combined with the status that came from cocreating a popular media figure—seemed to bolster his bravery with women. Joe would often sketch pretty girls at restaurants or outdoor cafés and present the pictures to them as an opening to a conversation, in which he would subtly drop the fact that he had cocreated Superman.
Despite their success, Jerry and Joe had a beef with the world. Back in 1938 they had signed away the Superman copyright to Harry Donenfeld for $130—$10 for each of the 13 pages of Action Comics No. 1. True, they were now making well above the standard industry rate and had a ten-year contract that assured them steady work and a good income. But they knew that millions were flowing in from the merchandise sales and media ventures, and most of it was ending up in the pockets of other people. And why should Harry Donenfeld get rich off Superman? He hadn’t envisioned the character and spent years perfecting it. As the Cleveland collaborators churned out page after page, week after week, month after month, Donenfeld contin
ued to build the Superman empire, even as he added new superheroes and comic books to his stable. Before long, friends would greet the party-loving publisher in fancy restaurants with the line “Hiya, Superman,” at which point he would tear open his shirt and throw out his chest to expose his blue T-shirt with the big red S on the front.
* CHAPTER 11 *
“MAYHEM, MURDER, TORTURE, & ABDUCTION”
AS SUPERMAN SOARED TO FAME, he naturally spawned a new line of evil adversaries. His archnemesis, Lex Luthor, premiered in Action Comics No. 23. Luthor would live up to his billing as a power-mad, evil scientist of high intelligence and incredible technological prowess. His dedication to killing Superman en route to world dominance never wavered. Superman also spawned dozens of new superheroes. The Man of Steel remained the king of the genre, even as scores of costumed crusaders began soaring through the imaginations of millions of children and adults. Batman and Robin, Hawkman, and the Shadow were soon on newsstands too. At the beginning of 1940 market research studies showed that more than 15 million comic books were sold each month and that five or six kids read each book. One study found that 90 percent of all fourth graders described themselves as regular comic readers.
The growing popularity of comic books gave rise to a chorus of criticism over their perceived effect on young minds. The anti-comic book crusade began on May 8, 1940, with a scathing editorial in the Chicago Daily News. Penned by the newspaper’s literary editor Sterling North and entitled “A National Disgrace,” the editorial assault was based on an examination of 108 comic books. Likening the rise of comic books to a “poisonous mushroom growth,” North wrote:
[S]ave for a scattering of more or less innocuous “gag” comics and some reprints of newspaper strips, we found that the bulk of these lurid publications depend for their appeal upon mayhem, murder, torture and abduction—often with a child as the victim. Superman heroics, voluptuous females in scanty attire, blazing machine guns, hooded “justice” and cheap political propaganda were to be found on almost every page.
Warning that tens of millions of copies of these “sex-horror serials are sold every month,” North blamed comic books for everything from corrupting young minds to straining young eyes to overstimulating young nervous systems: “Their crude blacks and reds spoil the child’s natural sense of color; their hypodermic injection of sex and murder make the child impatient with better, though quieter, stories.”
North’s answer: Parents should substitute comics with classic children’s literature like Treasure Island. His diatribe would establish the pillars of an anti-comic book movement that would grow in intensity for decades to come. North was joined by even more vocal critics, including child psychiatrists, psychologists, educators, and political mavericks. In time the anti-comic book crusaders would carry their cause even further. They called upon district attorneys to appoint decency committees that would ban the most offensive publications. The crusaders even incited communities to sponsor comic book burnings outside public schools, where children collected thousands of comic books from their friends and tossed them into roaring bonfires. As the symbol of the genre, Superman was usually the first to burn.
As the anti-comic book crusaders railed against fictional characters, a far more sinister force was stepping out of the shadows in the real world. The Ku Klux Klan was talking of revival and aligning itself with other racist hate groups. The sleeping giant was stirring again.
FOLLOWING THEIR RISE to influence in the 1920s, the national Ku Klux Klan leadership had found themselves steeped in controversy with the federal government breathing down their necks. So the secret order of hooded vigilantes employed the approach it always turned to in times of trouble: It played possum. In the 1930s the national organization dissolved its charter, shut down the Imperial Palace, and told the world it was out of business. Then KKK leaders hunkered down to operate in the shadows and keep the flame of hate and bigotry alive in the United States.
While many Ku Klux Klan chapters did shut down, others continued operating as independent local groups still dedicated to white supremacy, Christian dominance, and rigid morality. While many continued to use the KKK name, language, and garb proudly, others adopted new names to obscure their identities. As the White Cross Clan pressed its racist agenda in Oakland, California, other Klan front groups attacked minorities and preached hate in other cities. By maintaining only loose ties with national KKK leaders, these local groups avoided possible prosecution in federal court as well as the requirement to pay federal taxes. Like-minded local politicians often protected the newly named chapters. Even as the national press wrote the KKK’s obituary, local newspapers were writing about radical racist groups operating in their midst.
Then, in the summer of 1940, a bizarre and frightening development took place. As Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime flexed its muscles far away in Europe, resurgent Ku Klux Klan factions began flirting with a new breed of Nazi hate groups in the United States. The Klan was cozying up to the German American Bund, an association led by Nazi sympathizers who praised Hitler, preached fascism, wore Nazi uniforms, and snapped off stiff-armed salutes to flags decorated with a swastika. The powerful and resilient New Jersey Klan led the negotiations with the Bund and arranged a joint rally at a Bund training camp outside Andover, New Jersey.
On August 14, 1940, more than a thousand robed and hooded Klansmen and several hundred gray-shirted Bundsmen assembled on the grounds of Camp Nordland for a day of anti-Semitic speeches and Negro bashing. As the Bundesführer moved to center stage and proclaimed, “The principles of the Bund and the principles of the Klan are the same,” the KKK Grand Giant from New Jersey stepped forward and clasped the Bundsman’s hand in a show of unity. After the speeches a Klan wedding was held beneath a fiery cross, as if to symbolize a new union between the international and American forms of fascism. As the event reached a crescendo, hundreds of incensed citizens from nearby Andover decided they had had enough of the Nazis and the Klan in their own backyards. The mob gathered at the camp gate and screamed chants like “Burn Hitler on your cross.” The forces of hate were threatening to get out of control.
* CHAPTER 12 *
ON THE AIR
WITH THE SUPERMAN JUGGERNAUT seemingly moving faster than a speeding bullet, Bob Maxwell turned his attention to an even more alluring prospect: The Adventures of Superman on the air. Convinced that a radio program aimed at kids would lift the entire enterprise to new heights, Maxwell and DC Comics press agent Allen Duchovny produced four sample audition discs and began pitching them to potential sponsors and lining up radio stations to carry the show. Early in 1940, Superman made his radio debut in ten selected cities with these words:
Faster than an airplane.
More powerful than a locomotive.
Impervious to bullets.
Up in the sky—look.
It’s a giant bird! It’s a plane!
It’s Superman.
And now, Superman—a being no larger than an ordinary man but possessed of powers and abilities never before realized on Earth: able to leap into the air an eighth of a mile at a single bound, hurtle a 20-story building with ease, race a high-powered bullet to its target, lift tremendous weights and rend solid steel in his bare hands as though it were paper. Superman—a strange visitor from a distant planet: champion of the oppressed, physical marvel extraordinary, who has sworn to devote his existence on Earth to helping those in need.
As stations signed on, Bob Maxwell took the helm as producer. He proved to be a hard-driving taskmaster who settled for nothing less than highly entertaining shows with equally high ratings. He knew what he wanted: more excitement! He prodded the writers to produce scripts filled with action and adventure. More tension! He demanded rewrite after rewrite until he felt the script had the right punch. More drama! He made sure the actors, announcers, and sound-effect artists had the chops to turn in top-notch performances. It all added up to more listeners.
As a former pulp writer himself, Maxwell knew he had
to make sure that the writers wove liberal doses of good old-fashioned “blood and thunder” into each story arc. At the same time he walked a delicate line as he balanced Superman’s thirst for action with his good intentions. Maxwell knew that the show’s young listeners—and their parents—prized the wholesome qualities of honesty and fair play. So Superman—by now referred to as the Big Blue Boy Scout by other, edgier comic book superheroes—remained squeaky-clean on the radio.
Jerry Siegel made occasional trips from his New York home in Jackson Heights to the radio studio to watch the production, and he even contributed a couple of scripts that made it on air. He enjoyed being around the fast-paced radio team but knew his place was that of a respected visitor, not a full-fledged team member. Having watched his role in the Superman empire diminish while revenues climbed, he was growing more and more bitter over his role as a wage earner. But for now Jerry kept his anger to himself, and instead fumed internally about how he and Joe were being treated. Still, the Big Blue money machine continued to churn out the green cash. Convinced that he could protect his and Joe’s business interests, Jerry turned down advice from friends to consult a lawyer and bode his time. He could make his demand for a greater cut of the profits in the future.
BEFORE LONG AN ELITE TEAM was producing the radio show with flair and panache at the state-of-the-art studios of the Mutual Broadcasting System in Manhattan. Kellogg’s of Battle Creek, Michigan—the biggest name in breakfast cereal—sponsored the program. The commercials trumpeted Kellogg’s “Pep, the sunshine cereal” with an overly friendly announcer slowly spelling out the letters P … E … P and adding, “Superman says, ‘It’s super delicious.’ ”
Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan Page 6
