Superman

by Larry Tye

  71 IN A 1944 LETTER: Letter from Siegel to Liebowitz, January 1, 1944.

  72 IT WAS CALLED: “Introducing ‘SUPER GI,’ ” Midpacifican.

  73 GEORGE LOWTHER: He already had experience writing Superman stories on the radio, and would go on to an eclectic and impressive career in print and writing, producing, directing, and even acting on television and radio.

  74 MONTHLY SALES: De Haven, Our Hero, 76; “Escapist Paydirt,” Newsweek; Rossen, Superman vs. Hollywood, x; and “Superman Scores,” Business Week.

  75 “YOU DID NOT”: Letter from Liebowitz to Siegel, February 3, 1947.

  76 POPULARITY FADE: The only three comic book superheroes to survive in the same form and without interruption from the pre–World War II Golden Age until today are Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, although Wonder Woman experienced a brief hiatus in 1986. Aquaman and Green Arrow also still are around, but have come and gone as stars of their own series (Wells emails).

  3. A MATTER OF FAITH

  1 KAL IS SIMILAR: The Hebrew word for voice is kole and for vessel is kol. Kal itself means “light,” as in weight.

  2 KANSAS FARMERS: Just where the Kents lived wasn’t made clear for decades. An early Superman radio show placed them in southeastern Iowa. In the 1950s and 1960s, Metropolis was set on the East Coast, with the Kents seemingly not far away. By the 1970s it had been pinpointed as Maryland. But promotional material for Superman: The Movie talked about Clark having been raised on the plains of Kansas, no matter that the film itself didn’t say that, or that the Kansas scenes were shot in Canada. One influential moviegoer, John Byrne, liked the idea of Clark being from Kansas, and it stuck when Byrne led his reboot of the franchise in 1986. Today it is generally accepted that Clark and his adoptive parents lived in the town of Smallville and that Smallville is in Kansas. Or at least the original Earth-2 Smallville was. On Earth-1, it was back in Maryland (Wells emails; and The Essential Superman Encyclopedia).

  3 A 1940 ARTICLE: “Jerry Siegel Attacks!” Das Schwarze Korps.

  4 THE JEWISH 100: That is one in a series of books that explore Superman’s Jewish roots. Others include Disguised as Clark Kent, From Krakow to Krypton, Jews and American Comics, and Up, Up, and Oy Vey!

  5 JULES FEIFFER: Feiffer, Backing into Forward, 73.

  6 FATHER JOHN CUSH: Emails to author from John Cush.

  7 “THE WORD BECAME”: Cornell, “Superman/Jesus Similarities Examined,” Los Angeles Times.

  8 “SUPERMAN, I’VE”: Friedrich, Austin, and Simpson, “Up, Up and Awaaay!!!” Time.

  9 SUPERMAN KNEW: Schwartz, An Unlikely Prophet, 204–5.

  10 HE COULD CRAWL: Author interview with and email from Michael Green.

  11 IT ALSO IS: Author interview with Geoff Johns.

  12 “SUPERMAN IS NOT”: Author interview with Mark Waid.

  13 THE GOVERNOR WOULDN’T: Siegel, “Superman Goes to Prison,” Action Comics No. 10.

  14 “YEARS AGO”: Waid and Ross, Kingdom Come, 194–95.

  15 “I’VE NEVER HAD”: Ramos recently got married—to a “huge Supergirl fan.” The pastor who married them “made mention during the ceremony how Superman made me the man I am,” he says, and “we even had the Superman theme song played at the end of the ceremony (right after they pronounced us husband and wife)” (emails to author from Emilio Ramos, Jr.).

  16 “UP UNTIL I”: Author interview with Peter Lupus.

  17 “I HAD WHAT”: Author interview with and emails from Tom Maguire.

  18 “LET ME GET”: Andrae and Gordon, Funnyman, 17.

  19 BY ONE COUNT: Andrae and Gordon, Funnyman, 5.

  20 “I WRITE ABOUT”: Andelman, Will Eisner: A Spirited Life, 346.

  21 BOTH CHANGES WERE: “I Didn’t Want to Know,” Alter Ego No. 56, 36.

  22 BOYHOOD PAIN: Andelman, Will Eisner: A Spirited Life, 113.

  23 THEIR NAMES: Fingeroth, Disguised as Clark Kent, 99–100.

  24 “I NEVER CONSCIOUSLY”: Author interview with Stan Lee.

  25 FEWER NAME CHANGES: Julius Shuster and his family were listed in the 1930 U.S. Census as Schuster, which Rosie Shuster says almost certainly was a mistake by the census taker. “People,” she adds, “just want to put that ‘c’ in there. My epitaph will be—‘no “c” in Shuster’ ” (email to author from Rosie Shuster).

  26 CLEVELAND BACK THEN: Vincent, Memoirs of a Life in Community Service; and Rubinstein, Merging Traditions.

  27 HOW TO BE FUNNY: The Library of Congress lists Siegel as the sole author, although his address is given as the Siegel-Shuster School of Humor. The book came out in 1938, just after the first Superman story was published in Action Comics.

  28 WASN’T ENTIRELY TRUE: Emails from Dwight Decker to author, and Decker, “The Reich Strikes Back,” Alter Ego No. 79.

  29 MORE THAN ANYONE: There were other Jewish superheroes over time, although none with nearly the reach of Superman. Gardner Fox’s Sandman, for instance, was half Jewish, but that incarnation of the character, who came to life a year after Superman, faded during the 1940s.

  30 “DONENFELD,” HIS: Author interview with Peachy Donenfeld.

  4. THE SPEED OF SOUND

  1 HE HIRED: Josette Frank, head of the Child Study Association of America, was Maxwell’s primary expert. The strategy was outlined in a May 20, 1946, letter from Mrs. Hugh Grant Straus to the editor of PM magazine (Child Study Association Files, University of Minnesota).

  2 “CLAN OF THE FIERY”: Author’s transcript of the radio broadcasts.

  3 MAXWELL USED: Hayde, Flights of Fantasy, 78.

  4 BUMP IN THE RATINGS: Whiteside, “Up, Up and Awa-a-y!,” New Republic.

  5 “TOLERANCE IS RAMPANT”: “It’s Superflight,” Newsweek.

  6 THE ANGLE THAT: Whiteside, “Up, Up and Awa-a-y!”

  7 KENNEDY PICKED UP: Kennedy, The Klan Unmasked, 91–94.

  8 IT WAS A: Hayde, Flights of Fantasy, 77–78; and Patton, “Investigation of Stephen J. Dubner & Steven D. Levitt Article,” Florida Times-Union. Dubner and Levitt, in their bestseller Freakonomics, lionized Kennedy, calling him “courageous and resolute and unflappable.” After they learned that Kennedy likely had embellished, the Freakonomics authors questioned his credibility in a New York Times Magazine story entitled “Hoodwinked?” The truth is that Kennedy wasn’t the hero he was painted, nor the villain. He did help expose the Klan and he did enlarge his role—which Dubner and Levitt could have determined by asking researchers familiar with Kennedy’s work or comparing tapes of “Clan of the Fiery Cross” with Kennedy’s claims about the Superman broadcasts. Bids to determine what fact-checking the Freakonomics duo performed were unsuccessful: Levitt referred questions to Dubner, who said he would try to answer, then didn’t. Kennedy was more forthcoming. He said he sent the Klan passwords to Superman producer Maxwell, who apparently didn’t use them, but that syndicated columnist Drew Pearson did. Kennedy, who died in August 2011, was mentioned in at least one Pearson column (May 6, 1947) that talked about leaked Klan passwords.

  9 THE VETERANS: Hayde, Flights of Fantasy, 78–79.

  10 “SLAP A JAP”: In an undated comic strip called “Superman Scores Again,” Jerry and Joe showed U.S. troops destroying a Japanese invasion fleet. But they reminded readers that “most Japanese-Americans are loyal citizens. Many are in combat units of our armed forces, and others are working in war factories. According to government statements, not one act of sabotage was perpetrated in Hawaii or [the] territorial U.S. by a Japanese-American.”

  11 “WE HAD BEEN”: Whiteside, “Up, Up and Awa-a-y!” Not everyone was clapping. Dorothy Lewis of the National Association of Broadcasters wrote that “while Superman often tries to crusade in civic affairs, he does so at the expense of the dignity of the community. This leads to confusion and lack of faith” (November 13, 1947, letter from Lewis to Josette Frank, Child Study Association Files).

  And while Maxwell led the chorus for more shows on civil rights, he was less broad-minded when it came to portraying America’s war
time enemies to his juvenile listeners. “I am, at the moment, teaching this vast audience to hate. If not to hate individuals, to hate that for which they stand,” he wrote in an April 12, 1943, letter to George Zachary at the Office of War Information. “A german is a Nazi and a Jap is the little yellow man who ‘knifed us in the back at Pearl Harbor.’ ” Zachary was taken aback, and consulted his colleagues for their reactions to Maxwell’s letter. They observed, Zachary wrote, that “the notion that it is necessary to hate our enemies is crude and childish and unreal. It is the invention of frustrated civilians who don’t know anything about war” (April 3, 1943, letter from Zachary to Allen Ducovny, Maxwell’s partner at Superman, Inc. Both letters are in the Child Study Association Files).

  12 COLLYER DREW: Hayde, Flights of Fantasy, 33; and Tollin, Smithsonian Historical Performances: Superman on Radio, 12–13.

  13 EVEN THOUGH THEY: “It’s Superflight,” Newsweek.

  14 PORTRAYING SUPERMAN: Tollin, Superman on Radio, 14.

  15 “THE PRODUCERS”: Jane Hitchcock’s eulogy for her mother, Joan Alexander.

  16 THE LAST FOUR: Superman’s motto of “Truth, Justice and the American Way” debuted on August 31, 1942, when his live radio serial debuted on the Mutual Broadcasting System. Prior to that, he fought for “Truth and Justice.” Olga Druce—a writer, actress, and child psychologist—took credit for the famous phrase. There was only a one-word difference between the Mutual Broadcasting prelude and the one that would later be used on the George Reeves television show. On radio, the narrator says, “strange visitor from another world,” while the TV narrator says, “strange visitor from another planet” (email to author from Michael Hayde).

  17 “KIDS CAN DETECT”: Tollin, Superman on Radio, 17.

  18 “A RAILROAD TRAIN”: Interview with Edward Langley by Brian McKernan, July 9, 1985.

  19 SUDDENLY FEEL: Tollin, Smithsonian Historical Performances: Superman vs. Atom Man, 7.

  20 “SUCCEED WHERE”: Freeman, The Superman Radio Scripts, 1–43, 199, 203.

  21 “UP IN MY ARMS”: Author’s transcript of “Clan of the Fiery Cross.”

  22 REASSURE PARENTS: Hayde, Flights of Fantasy, 63.

  23 THERE WERE ACTUALLY: Hayde, Flights of Fantasy, 115–16.

  24 THEY THOUGHT BUILDING: Fleischer, Out of the Inkwell, 105.

  25 THE BROTHERS WERE: Dooley and Engle, Superman at Fifty! 64–65; Daniels, DC Comics: Sixty Years, 68–69; Rossen, Superman vs. Hollywood, 7–9; and Cabarga, The Fleischer Story, 174–77.

  26 “THE MOVIE CARTOON”: “The New Pictures,” Time.

  27 “THE FLEISCHERS SHOW”: Maslin, “Film: Animation Art of the Fleischers,” New York Times.

  28 “THESE FILMS”: Maltin, Of Mice and Magic, 122.

  29 “SOME 20,000,000”: “The New Pictures,” Time.

  30 REACTIONS LIKE: Hayde, Flights of Fantasy, 47, 58.

  31 ONE BIT OF: Younis, “Superman and the Phone Booth,” www.supermanhomepage.com.

  32 SHORTS IN FRANCE: France blew hot and cold when it came to Superman’s comic books. Some were published under alternative names and ascribed to French authors during the Nazi occupation. But the postwar French government banned them, either because they were seditious capitalist influences or, as some reports suggest, because it was too much of a stretch to say he could fly. In any case, they were back by the 1960s (Wells emails; and Bart, “Advertising,” New York Times).

  33 “IF THEY GUESS”: “Jungle Sam,” Time.

  34 “I SAID, ‘WAIT’ ”: Brennan, “Kirk Alyn: Man of Steel,” Washington Post.

  35 FIRST ACTOR: Technically, the very first was Ray Middleton, an actor hired to portray Superman at the 1940 World’s Fair in New York.

  36 “I VISUALIZED”: Tollin, Smithsonian Historical Performances: Superman with Batman & Robin on Radio, 22.

  37 KATZMAN ANNOUNCED: Alyn, A Job for Superman, 6.

  38 “I WAS SAVED”: Alyn, A Job for Superman, 18.

  39 PRODUCERS ALSO: Grossman, Superman: Serial to Cereal, 43–44.

  40 PARTS OF THE: Schoell, Comic Book Heroes, 23–25.

  41 TWO YEARS: Schoell, Comic Book Heroes, 25–28.

  42 HE LOVED IT: Grossman, Superman: Serial to Cereal, 23, 30.

  43 BILL FINGER’S TALE: “The Origin of Superman,” Superman No. 53.

  44 IT TOOK ANOTHER: Finger, “Superman Returns to Krypton,” Superman No. 61.

  45 COMICS TO GIVE: Siegel, “The Archer,” Superman No. 13.

  46 WHO WAS THE INSPIRATION: Joanne Siegel, “The True Inspiration for Lois Lane,” supermanhomepage.com; Sherwood, “Superman Still Makes Millions,” Washington Star; and author interview with Lois Amster.

  47 WILSON HIRSCHFELD: Emails to author from Dan Hirschfeld, Wilson’s son, and materials supplied by Dan.

  48 “NO MAN ON EARTH”: “The Origin of Superman,” 55.

  49 ALTHOUGH JOR-EL BECAME: The el became El in the comic book letters columns of the 1960s (Wells emails).

  50 “IT WAS NOT”: Lowther, The Adventures of Superman, 24–28.

  51 BETTER FIX ON: Waugh, The Comics, 334–49.

  52 “I THOUGHT”: “The Archer.”

  53 “WHAT SORT”: Siegel, “Europe at War,” Action Comics No. 23.

  54 “LET’S TEST”: Cameron, “The Mxyztplk-Susie Alliance,” Superman No. 40.

  55 “A CHANGE OF”: Siegel, Creation of a Superhero, 5: 3.

  5. SUPERMAN, INC.

  1 “BE A WHOO”: National Comics Publications, Superman-Tim, 1949.

  2 THE NEW NAME: The comic book publisher’s name changed often enough that it was difficult to keep track. It started in 1935 as National Allied Magazines, became National Comics Publications in 1946, and switched to National Periodical Publications in 1961. National Periodical Publications merged with Kinney in 1967 to become Kinney National Services, and Kinney National was renamed Warner Communications in 1971, although National Periodical Publications continued to be used to describe the publishing operations. There were other iterations in between, including the holding company called Superman, Inc. Only one title was there from the very first, with Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, and has survived: Detective Comics. It was there on the banner of America’s longest continuously published comic book, was sometimes used to refer to the company as a whole, and was the only name most readers recognized. In 1976 the company let its fans have the final word by adopting an abbreviated version—DC Comics—as its official title (www.dccomicsartists.com; and author interview with Levitz).

  3 “LOOKS EXACTLY”: Murray, “The Kryptonite Crisis.”

  4 “LED TO HER”: Author interview with Jerry Fine.

  5 “BELLA WENT”: Letter from Siegel to Liebowitz, November 11, 1946.

  6 “I NEVER”: Andrae and Gordon, Funnyman, 53.

  7 “PRACTICALLY NONE”: Siegel and Shuster Against National Comics Publications, 1947, 204.

  8 “IN LINE”: Letter from Siegel to Shuster, September 18, 1946.

  9 THEY DESPAIRED OF: Jones, Men of Tomorrow, 215–16, 228; author interview with Peachy Donenfeld; and “Company Formed,” Middletown Times Herald.

  10 IN THE TEN YEARS: Joanne Siegel and Laura Siegel Larson v. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., 2004.

  11 SIGNED AN AGREEMENT: Siegel and Shuster Against National Comics Publications, Final Judgment, May 21, 1948, 6.

  12 BOB KANE PROVED: There has been endless speculation whether Kane got a better deal than Siegel and Shuster, and if so, why. Some say his deal was comparable but looked more lucrative because he didn’t have to split it in two the way Jerry and Joe did. Others say Kane’s father helped him negotiate better terms, in part by tapping the father’s friendship with Liebowitz, and that Kane used Siegel and Shuster’s lawsuit to get Liebowitz to settle amicably and lucratively with him.

  13 LI’L ABNER: Capp, The World of Li’l Abner, 120–26.

  14 BELLA SUED: Bella Siegel vs. Jerome Siegel, Petition for Divorce, July 14, 1948.

  15 CARTOONISTS SOCIETY: Siegel fam
ily lore says that Marlon Brando judged the costumes (Weber, “Joanne Siegel, the Model for Lois Lane, Dies at 93,” New York Times).

  16 “JERRY AND I”: Andrae, “Of Supermen and Kids with Dreams,” Nemo No. 2.

  17 THE MARRIAGE COULDN’T: Winchell, “ ‘Superman’ Artist Weds a Model,” Syracuse Herald-Journal; Jolan Kovacs and Jerome Siegel’s applications for marriage license, October 13, 1948, and November 3, 1948; and Jolan’s birth certificate. One possible explanation for the dual marriage licenses was that court fees were not paid in Jerry and Bella’s divorce settlement until October 29. Could that mean Jerry was still married to Bella when he married Joanne in October 1948? No, say Ohio matrimonial lawyers, explaining that paying the fees is a technicality and should not have held up his divorce or his remarriage.

  18 AFTER HIGH SCHOOL: Handwritten letter from Joanne to unknown recipient, May 25, 1992.

  19 “THE URCHIN IN”: Ellison, “It Ain’t Toontown,” Playboy.

  20 THAT CELEBRITY LET: Kobler, “Up, Up and Awa-a-y!”

  21 SUPERMAN, INC., STARTED: Matetsky, The Adventures of Superman Collecting.

  22 “LET SUPERMAN BE”: Daniels, The Golden Age, 48; and Daniels, DC Comics: Sixty Years, 74.

  23 IT WORKED: Matetsky, The Adventures of Superman Collecting, 17.

  24 “SUPERMAN TURNED”: Matetsky, The Adventures of Superman Collecting, 138.

  25 “FOR THE WHOLE UNIVERSE”: Email to author from Vincent Maulandi.

  6. THE DEADLY TRUTH

  1 ON A COOL: “Boy Kills Self Showing Chum Gun Roulette,” Washington Post. While his mother said he read about Russian roulette in a comic book, police said they were told he had learned about the dangerous revolver gamble in a movie.

  2 TWO MONTHS: “ ‘Comics’ Blamed in Death,” New York Times.

  3 THE COMMON: Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 34, 97, 118.

  4 “UNLESS WE”: North, “A National Disgrace,” Chicago Daily News.

  5 “WHAT’S WRONG”: Doyle, “What’s Wrong with the ‘Comics’?” Catholic World.