75 years ago today, the Boys of Steel changed pop culture

A week that brought horror in Boston and shame in Washington also includes an unlikely positive: according to court records, it was 75 years ago today when Superman debuted in Action Comics #1.

Thanks to the Boys of Steel for changing everything, even still: this month inaugurates an (admittedly clunky) tweak to the credit line in Superman stories: 

 from Justice League #19 (first appeared in Action Comics #19, 4/3/13)

If you think it trivializes real-life struggles to juxtapose them with a fictional character, go back to 1938: when America was caught between two of its greatest challenges (the Depression and WWII), Superman brought hope literally to millions...

It couldn't hurt to give the sky more than a passing glance today.

6,291 unclaimed trunks = ? copies "Action Comics" #1?

Forty-nine storage rooms.

One hundred ten buildings.

Six thousand, two hundred ninety-one trunks.

Millions of items, any of which could be worth millions.

In the 8/8/11 New Yorker, a Talk of the Town piece by Nick Paumgarten revealed that there are 6,291 unclaimed trunks of personal belongings in dank storage rooms below Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, a large apartment compound in New York.

These trunks date back decades to the 1940s, when the buildings opened, and of course the reasons they’ve been abandoned vary; the owners of some have died, but most likely most of those reasons will remain as mysterious as the contents themselves.

That is because it does not seem that anyone plans to open them. Well, some have been opened and some have burst open, but the article doesn’t say if there will a systematic cataloguing of the rest of the mass of material.

Which is why I promptly called Rose Associates, the property manager cited in the article.

Thus far, most of what has spilled out of trunks seems worthless—old clothes, canceled checks, ‘70s LPs. But I’m willing to wager that at least one of those trunks, and quite possibly several, contains an original copy of Action Comics #1 (featuring the debut of Superman), Detective Comics #27 (debut of Batman), or any number of other ultra-rare, mega-valuable comics, not to mention other kinds of valuables.

The companies that own the residential complex have been tasked with finding a more profitable use for this storage space. Given the understandably skeeved attitude of the property manager quoted in the article (who describes the air in those rooms as “unsanitary” and who said “I hate to think about the stuff that would come running out” when trunks are moved, etc.), I figured it would be worth a shot to ask if a writer could do research there. For all I know (the article doesn’t say), they might be planning to pulp those trunks.

I didn’t hear back from Rose. I don’t seem have great luck when it comes to New York institutions.

(I proposed holding a signing for Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman at the Bronx Zoo both because of the bat connection and because Bill [Finger] lived in the Bronx when he co-created Batman. They said no. More on this in a future post.)

No matter. I will likely try again. After all, in most cases, searching for an Action #1 is as futile as searching for a Bigfoot in your bathtub, but that doesn’t mean one will never be found; and this is a scenario where the odds seem way greater than most any other I can imagine.

The location is right. (New York was the capital of comics.)

The time period is right. (Action #1 came out in 1938 so surely many copies were still lying around when people began storing trunks under Stuy Town.)

And to me, that amount of nostalgia packed all in one place bodes well.

Therefore even I, a person who has trouble concentrating if my finger accidentally grazes a sticky cup holder at the movies, would be willing to become a Detective, slide on gloves, and risk a rat carcass or two if it meant I might discover some Action.

Who’s with me?

Look, up in the sky...it's a bird...it's a cow...

I've explored the multitude of book covers that manage to show Superman without showing Superman.

Another super-cover phenomenon is the multitude of book covers that pay tribute to and/or spoof Action Comics #1, the comic book in which Superman debuted. That image is not necessarily mainstream but is certainly very well known among pop culturists.

Most of the homages I've seen are on the covers of other comics. But this new one shows it may be more mainstream than I've believed...

Superman saves family...

...from becoming homeless.

This not only makes you feel good but also makes you wonder how many more copies of Action #1 are out there, waiting to be discovered.

Big screen tribute to Superman's debut

As someone who grew up loving the (first two) Christopher Reeve Superman movies, I had high expectations for Superman Returns (2006).

Too high.

I found Brandon Routh more sympathetic than many reviewers, but thought the rest of the major players were miscast. In fact, the only aspect of the film I truly liked was the tribute to the first appearance of Superman, a tribute that the majority of the audience would not have picked up on.

Here's the scene:

Here's the object of the homage:

No, it's not a coincidence.

A single comic that can pay for college

Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman includes an illustration of a man looking at Action Comics #1, the first appearance of Superman and therefore the most valuable comic book in history. (Of the 200,000 printed in 1938, only 100 are known to still exist.)

Whenever I speak to students (or any group, really), I show that scene followed by a picture of the actual cover:

Then I suggest that kids get permission to look through their grandparents’ attics and basements. If they find an original copy of it, I urge them to call a lawyer (if they don’t live with one) because that one comic will pay for college.

On 4/1/10, I was honored to speak at Wheeler School in Providence, Rhode Island, for the second time in two months. It was a different presentation but at one point I did (re)show Action #1.

A boy who had seen me present the first time raised his hand.

He said he’d done what I’d suggested. He looked for that rare comic. And, he claimed, he’d found one.

It did not seem to be an April Fool’s joke.

The room itself suddenly felt adrenalized.

In front of the whole group, I asked him questions about it. He said he’d come across a pile of old comics and Action #1 was one of them. I asked if he was sure and he said yes.

After my presentation, I spoke privately with the student and the Head of the Lower School. I asked the Head if I could contact the family to find out just what they’ve got. If it was indeed this Holy Moley Grail of comics, I’d be happy to refer them to a trusted contact at a comics assessment company. The Head graciously put the family and me in touch.

The boy’s family had given the comics to his uncle but his mom kindly e-mailed me a photo of one of the issues, presumably representative of the bunch. I was not surprised to learn the reality. The comic is from 1969 and it’s generally worth between $5 and $20:

(That plot looks like an April’s Fool joke.)

The mother said her son wasn’t clear on just what he’d found. But I understand. And I love that this eager young man really did go on my treasure hunt.

Even though what he turned up didn’t turn out to be newsworthy, it is still a great story. And that, of course, is something I’m always interested in.

Superman vs. Batman: first to a million

The New York City snowfall is not the only force of nature that broke records this week.

On 2/22/10, Superman made history yet again. A original, high-quality copy of his debut, Action Comics #1 (1938), became the first comic book to auction (to sell, period) for $1 million.

A mere four days later, another historic sale made national news. An also high-quality copy of Detective Comics #27, featuring the 1939 debut of Batman (who was, it should be noted, created in response to Superman), sold for $1,075,500.

In true superhero fashion, neither the buyer nor the seller in either transaction has revealed his (or, less likely, her) identity.

This will not settle the decades-long debate about which character is more popular or "better"...but given my forthcoming news about Batman, I'll take it as a good omen. Batman and omens, they do go together.

Two distinguished benchmarks: Superman was first to a million and Batman was first to surpass it. Again, given Bruce Wayne's wealth, that seems thematically appropriate.

But one inevitable day, someone will break this Batman record. Superman's, however, will always be his. And since he is the world's first traditional superhero, that, too, is only appropriate.

3/30/10 addendum: In a presumably unrelated auction, another copy of Action #1 sold yesterday for $1.5 million. That means three major records were broken within one month.

Seventy years ago today...

...Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's Superman first went on sale in Action Comics #1.

My earliest Superman memory is being six, sitting in my pajamas with my parents (who were not in pajamas) in the front row of the single-screen movie theater in my Connecticut hometown, absorbing every colorful moment of Superman: The Movie. Looking back, it feels as though I had a superpower of my own—the ability to watch the whole thing without blinking.

By the time I discovered Superman, Jerry and Joe (both born in 1914) were old men. By today's standards, people in their sixties are not old, but Jerry and Joe had struggled through much of their lives.

I don't remember if I then asked for a Superman comic or if my dad brought one as a surprise, but I do remember the issue: Superman Family #196.

Okay, it's no Action Comics #1.

But every kid's first Superman comic is his own Action Comics #1.

The three covers of "Boys of Steel"

In September 2007, I first saw a sketch of Ross MacDonald's cover concept for Boys of Steel:

Notice anything?

(Yes, besides the misspelling of my last name. Together we can get through that.)

Notice anything missing?

Yes. Superman. There is no trace of the Man of Steel, the creation of whom is the subject of the book.

Granted, we would not necessarily have had approval to put Superman in full form on the cover, nor would that necessarily have been the way to go even if we did, but I felt his presence had to be there somehow.

I suggested a red and blue blur streaking across the sky behind the Boys of Steel. Superman is often depicted this way in comics and, as far as I know, you can’t trademark colorful streaks.

In November, I saw Ross had gone in a different direction, but I immediately bummed a ride that way:

We can all be grateful my original concept (from 2005) was delicately dismissed:

However, I do still like that masthead treatment because it's meant to be a tribute to this:

© Joanne Siegel and Laura Siegel Larson, DC Comics

Three days not too late

My editor is semi-retired and does not work on Mondays (or Wednesdays or Fridays)—rather she does not go to the office.

First thing this morning, however, she called me from home to ask if I'd seen the news about the Siegel family ruling in the New York Times (indeed I had, along with 1,894 other articles and posts on the subject; see my last two entries).

She said she had been anxious about it all weekend.

At first I thought she was going to say the book's off.

But before my blood pressure went up, up, and away, she explained that she was anxious because she wouldn't know until today if we'd have time to amend the book's afterword to reflect this.

Though I was told several weeks ago it was too late to make two other small changes to the text (unrelated to the litigation), now it's okay! The book is scheduled to print starting April 3, so we just made it.

The convention is for the author to "sign" the afterword and date it the month the book will publish, even though the book is printed months before. (I wanted to use April 18, 2008, indicated in court papers as the date Action Comics #1 went on sale.) However, if we would not mention this March 2008 ruling while keeping the date as "August 2008," I would look sloppy, to say the least.

Good Timing, I owe you a smoothie.

Fighting for Superman

Numerous other blogs are binging on bytes in their coverage of the seismic Superman ruling of earlier this week. For a more naïve and way shorter view, here are four overly simplistic lists. They are rather quickly done, though, so I welcome your knowledge via comments in making them more accurate and more complete.

How DC Comics (primarily earlier, differently-named incarnations) went wrong

* They condescended to Jerry and Joe when they asked for more money, starting from early on. Even though Jerry and Joe were lacking in some ways, they were wonderfully insightful in others, and regardless, management was unscrupulous to take advantage of their hunger for storytelling.
* They rejected Jerry's pitch for a Superboy character but then began publishing a character by that name after Jerry was drafted and without his involvement.
* They removed Jerry and Joe's bylines after the first lawsuit in 1947. Yes, litigation is miserable, but firing Jerry and Joe and retaining rights to Superman should have been enough for DC. Taking away credit was done solely to steal identity and crush spirit, and that is cruel.
* They knew Jerry and Joe were struggling in subsequent years and did not help more consistently. This may seem incompatible with firing and removing bylines, but I believe DC executives never privately denied Jerry and Joe's significance. Management did allegedly pay for eye surgery for Joe at one point, and possibly took other action I'm not privy to, but a little more on their part could have gone a long way to alleviate the suffering of the two men who made their company.

How DC Comics went right

* They paid Jerry and Joe a good salary for the period, and I believe also gave them bonuses (albeit small) and perks along the way.
* They agreed to a settlement in 1975. Even though it took much pushing and even though it also served as slick PR, it was still moral.
* From the 1980s on, DC treated Jerry and Joe with public (though guarded) respect. Jerry and Joe contributed to the 45th anniversary issue of Action Comics and possibly other comics I'm not well-versed enough to cite. This is small consolation in practical terms, but they ran full-page commemorations when each man died (and possibly some kind of memorial service?):

© DC Comics

How Jerry and Joe went wrong

* They sold all rights to Superman. Many other Golden Age creators did the same with their own do-gooders, but not all. So it was a mistake, but an understandable one. The Depression intensified short-term thinking. Expectations were different then.
* I don't know this as fact, but it seems safe to infer that they did not smartly manage the considerable amount of money they were making in the early 1940s.
* Jerry was a persistent noodge. That is not to say he didn't have the right to voice his displeasure to DC, but he sometimes struck a grating tone in his letters to them.

How Jerry and Joe went right

* They created Superman, on their own, and hustled for more than three years trying to get the idea published. They were not afraid to have unchecked enthusiasm for what they felt was an exceptional idea.
* They had the backbone to sue their employer over what they genuinely felt was unfair treatment.
* Jerry decided against another lawsuit in the 1970s and shrewdly went to the media instead, hoping to get the public on his and Joe's side.
* Even when they had been offered a financial settlement, they held out for creator acknowledgement. Money is finite. Credit is forever.

Few of us are the villains in our own story, yet sometimes there is no hero.

Justice and the American way

This week, the family of Jerry Siegel got some good news.

It's probably too late to note this victory in my book.

First post: first picture book on first superhero

Superman was the first comic book superhero.

Boys of Steel is the first picture book biography of his creators, Jerry Siegel (the writer) and Joe Shuster (the artist).

It wasn't planned this way, but it's coming out in an anniversary year—Superman debuted in Action Comics #1 in 1938. Yes, timing its release for the 75th would have been cooler, but it's already taken three years from selling the manuscript to making this announcement and I don't want to wait another five.

The book won't be available to the general public until August. However, a select group will be able to buy it two months before that...if you want to be among this select group, stay tuned.

Then again, if you want to be among this select group, you can probably already guess what I'm talking about.