Metropolis has always been a very mobile city. Joe Shuster, the co-creator and original
artist of Superman, modeled the city on Toronto
and Cleveland.
DC Comics, the publishers of Superman tales for all these years, have moved the
city between Delaware and New York. If you’re driving on Route 24,
you’ll find Metropolis in Illinois about
halfway between Nashville and St. Louis. They have a giant Superman statue
and a SuperMuseum. For generations, Metropolis has
described a place in the heart where a person can dream of the right thing and
have the power to do it.
Jerry Siegel
dreamed of writing for the pulp magazines of his day. Fresh out of high school,
he hooked up with Joe Shuster and the pair began producing comic strips. They
had some minor successes before their creation Superman appeared on the cover
of Action Comics No. 1. The character
was an instant success, soon spreading to newspapers across the country.
The duo spent the
next 10 years watching their creation grow into a commercial juggernaut,
appearing on radio, in movie serials, and on every little thing imaginable.
Most of the money from these off-shoots went into the coffers at DC Comics’
corporate predecessor. In the mid-’40s, Siegel and Shuster initiated the first
in a periodic series of lawsuits with DC (or related entities) over the use of
their creation. It took a public relations campaign upon the release of the
first Christopher Reeve Superman film
(1978) for Time Warner to award Siegel and Shuster a $35,000 annual honorarium
and permanent credit on all Superman media.
In Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the
Birth of the Comic Book, Gerard Jones chronicles the struggles of these two
creators, along with many of the other people responsible for so much of what
appears on the modern silver screen (such as Superman Returns, now in theaters). For a much more intense take on
the wrongs that were perpetrated in the name of comic book capitalism, see Rick
Veitch’sThe Maximortal.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2006.
