Cleveland unveils statues of Superman and his creators 8/2/25

87 years after Superman debuted...

33 years after original Superman artist Joe Shuster died...

29 years after original Superman writer Jerry Siegel died...

18 years after I first came to Cleveland while researching Boys of Steel...

...the city finally installed statues to honor its hometown legacies Superman, Jerry, Joe, and Jerry's wife Joanne [inspiration for Lois Lane]. 

[I know you're not supposed to start sentences with numbers that are not written out, but Jerry and Joe broke some rules, too, and look how that turned out.]

I'd estimate at least 200 attended.

The Boys [and Girl] of Steel are cast in bronze. Superman is, of course, stainless steel.

Donations are still desperately needed to cover the $2.2 million cost.

Thanks to the Siegel & Shuster Society for their tireless efforts. Getting public art up [up and away] does not go faster than a speeding bullet... [Another example: still no Bill Finger statue in New York City.]

Jerry's daughter Laura Siegel Larson and grandson James

the Gray family, who lived in Jerry's former house 

when I went there for research in 2007 

[and who still live there today], 

and George Gene Gustines, 

who wrote the New York Times article about the event

fellow Super Boy of Steel author Brad Ricca

Tracey Kirksey, who was Executive Director of the

Glenville Development Corporation when I was 

researching Boys of Steel [Glenville was the neighborhood

where Jerry and Joe were living when they created

Superman]

Tracey and me in the background of a CBS affiliate news report

Gary Kaplan, Roy Schwartz, me, Brad Ricca,

Samantha Baskind, Jamie Reigle

center: sculptor of the statues, David Deming

George was perched above the plaza for the unveiling and

caught this guy in gray pants trampling on the landscaping.

Inside the adjoining convention center, an orchestra played

the John Williams Superman theme.

Both are creators!

a view inside the phone booth 

that is part of the installation

I flew in just for the event, landing the night before.

Walking to my hotel at 1:30 am, I passed the covered statues.

Nearby, a city carnival was empty aside from crew, 

but despite the lateness of the hour, still aglow.

Up, up, and...here to stay.

Speaking at the Capital Jewish Museum [AKA DC in DC]

This past summer, I reluctantly loaned Bill Finger’s paperweight—one of the only items he owned that still survives—and other items to a Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum exhibit about the role of Jews in the comic book industry, with special focus on Washington DC-area contributors. 

On 11/11/24, I gave a talk at the museum about Bill—and Jerry, and Joe, and Jews. 

I have long compared the dramas of the creators of Superman and Batman to Biblical tales. I liken the conflict between Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and what is now DC Comics to David and Goliath—an upstart underdog versus a seemingly immovable object. I see the Bill Finger/Bob Kane injustice as a Cain/Abel allegory—brother versus brother. You can’t overlook that homophonic Cain/Kane.

And then there’s the Moses parallel.

Thank you, CJM, both for inviting me to speak with your community and for taking good care of Bill’s bronze bug.

"CBS Evening News" announces Superman creators will receive benefits, restored credit (12/23/75)

Introduced by Walter Cronkite, the closing segment of the 12/23/75 CBS Evening News announced that after decades of lawsuits, humilliation, and other hardships, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster (then age 61) would finally receive yearly benefits and restored credit for Superman, who debuted in 1938.

Segment from the Television News Archive at Vanderbilt University.

The historic route Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel ran in 1933 (time-lapse)

Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman came out in 2008. The year before, I had made my first trip to Cleveland (where Superman was born) for a four-day research binge. That publication year and the next, I made several trips to Cleveland to speak at schools, museums, community gatherings, and other venues. The last was in 2010—until last week, when I returned for a school visit in Warren, OH, about an hour’s drive from Cleveland.

If you told me then that nine years would pass between visits, I would have found that hard to believe, given how often I was in Cleveland from 2007-2010.

The biggest change since then was not unique to Cleveland: this trip will end up being my last by plane for at least a month, if not more, as communities nationwide accept the severity of COVID-19, the coronavirus, and begin self-quarantining. The mood at the school and the few other places I went (namely restaurants) seemed status quo, at times even upbeat, but I was sensing an underlying societal anxiety everywhere I went (even though I was keeping my distance!). Even in rural Warren, store shelves that once displayed disinfectants were barren.

Special thanks to the school, Champion Middle, and especially Andrea Baer and Sandy Amoline, for being such gracious hosts under these uneasy, ever-changing circumstances. Years ago I switched from high-fives to fist bumps, and now it’s elbow bumps, or sometimes no bumps. Everyone understands. Same camaraderie with none of the contact. 

Sandy and her crew went all out decorating to welcome a Superman and Batman junior ambassador. A glimpse:

The other highlight of this short, strange trip was returning to the historic neighborhood of Superman’s genesis, specifically the former house of writer Jerry Siegel and the site where artist Joe Shuster’s apartment stood when these two teens dreamed up the world’s first superhero in 1933. 

Both locations have had a new sheen put on since I was last there, thanks to money raised largely by fans in 2009. Jerry’s house got a major renovation (restoring it to how it may have looked when Jerry lived there) plus a couple of spiffy signs on a front fence. The site of Joe’s apartment is now commemorated by a blown-up version of the first Superman story placed along a corner fence. Both addresses are in the Glenville neighborhood, which used to be predominantly Jewish and is now predominantly black.

 10622 Kimberley Avenue,

where Jerry lived in 1933

 10905 Amor Avenue (AKA 998 Parkwood Avenue),

where Joe lived in 1933

 less angled view of the beginning of the first Superman story,

from Action Comics #1 (1938),

as exhibited at the site of Joe’s former apartment

 street signs on one side of Jerry’s street

  street signs on other side of Jerry’s street

  street signs on one side of Joe’s street

 street signs on other side of Joe’s street

 950 Parkwood Avenue, which is a few doors down

from Joe’s former building (immediately below); both were

clearly built by the same developer (note the white squares)

 former synagogue that is now a church

 note the Hebrew on right

 In January, I had a layover in Cleveland, where I saw for 

the first time this Superman mini-museum in baggage claim.

(It was installed in 2012.)

Jerry and Joe...thanks for the hospitality.

And, you know, for Superman.

Now for the best part.

The legend goes that Jerry was up most of a summer night documenting visions of the character who would become Superman; the morning after, hyped up, he ran from his house to Joe’s apartment to ask his artist friend to draw what Jerry saw.

He would have taken one of two routes: Parkwood Avenue (9.5 blocks, which is about a sixth or a mile) or East 105th Street (eighth of a mile).

Because the Parkwood route is slightly shorter, I suspect he went that way.

And so did I, taking what is probably the first-ever time-lapse of the Jerry Siegel Run.

At the Cleveland airport, I asked the gate agent for my inbound flight if I could get a seat with no one next to it. She said “You already have one”—without asking for my seat number or looking at a screen.

The new abnormal.

Truth, justice, and the worldwide way…

Stay safe, all.

First photo with Phil Yeh, the first journalist to cover Siegel and Shuster's plight

In 2008, the year I started this blog, I had the honor of interviewing cartoonist and writer Phil Yeh. All fans of superhero comics owe Phil a debt: he was at the forefront of a group that helped writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster get (restored) credit and compensation for their genre-launching brainstorm, Superman. As a young journalist running a free California arts publication, Phil helped the industry recognize the imperative of acknowledging (and fandom the imperative of speaking up for) the creative underdog.

Without him, I might not have written Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman. 

That interview was conducted by email but Phil and I have since met in person several times, mostly at comic conventions. Yet we had not taken a photo together till 10/3/18, when I spoke at a school in San Bernadino, where he lives. He and his wife Linda (a public librarian, and more) kindly came to my talk.

A warm man committed to the arts.

"The Joe Shuster Story: The Artist Behind Superman"

Today is the 80th anniversary of the first appearance of Superman. In honor of that...

Comic book creator duos often mirror their creations: one is the star, one is the sidekick. In the Bob Kane/Bill Finger dynamic, Bob hoarded the spotlight—until recently. In the Jerry Siegel/Joe Shuster partnership, Jerry has tended to overshadow Joe, but in a less contentious way than the Batman boys. Joe was simply the more soft-spoken of the two, always in Jerry's wake in their efforts to receive more for Superman. But unlike Bob and Bill, and despite intermittent frictions, Jerry and Joe remained a unit for most of their superhero saga.

That makes a new graphic novel written by Julian Voloj and illustrated by Thomas Campi especially inviting. It takes an atypical approach by unspooling Superman's real-life origin story from Joe's perspective. In most tellings, including my own (Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman), Jerry and Joe are presented on equal footing. In The Joe Shuster Story: The Artist Behind Superman, the sidekick speaks up.

That voice is largely fictionalized. Though meticulously researched, the book is heavy on dialogue, much of which had to be imagined. However, based on what I remember from my own Siegel and Shuster research (way back in 2004), most of it reads as authentic. Joe sounds here like he sounded in my head. And though tragedy recurs in both men's timelines, Joe suffered in ways Jerry didn't (namely, his eyesight deteriorated for most of his adult life—particularly brutal for a visual artist). 

Voloj cleverly frames the story with a 1975 incident in which a police officer rouses a downtrodden Joe resting on a bench in a Queens, New York park, then treats him to soup at a nearby diner. It's a woefully low point for one of the minds behind a high-flying hero—the opposite of the way many would expect such a story to start. And that's why it works. It punctures the skin immediately. In Joe's passivity is a pathos that is painful to observe. 

Like Joe himself, the book has a gentle aura. The lettering is small and delicate, the colors a wash of muteness. This has the effect of lulling the reader, which gives certain turning points (even if small) more kick, such as when Joe meets Jerry—but not the Jerry you're thinking of.

The book does a deft job of weaving in historical context from World War II to the machinations of the sometimes shady characters who called the shots at the company that would become DC Comics. This is especially well done with respect to the softcore artwork a conflicted yet desperate Joe agreed to do in the 1950s, and the paranoia and fear he felt when it was revealed that the Brooklyn Thrill Killers, prior to their murder spree, had read some of the lurid stories Joe had illustrated. One choice that I feel is a cliché is the way Bob Kane morphs into the Joker when he betrays Jerry and Joe in their first attempt to sue National.

I loved seeing scenes I have read (and written) about and places I have visited come to life in this format, which allowed for a good but not overwhelming amount of depth. This was no easy book to illustrate. Though at its core a story of two people at desks, in execution it is much broader than that, requiring scenes in grand-scale settings such as the 1940 New York World's Fair. Campi has clearly done thorough research and it's a joy to absorb the details he includes throughout. 

In terms of text and pace, a standout passage is a sweet seven-page scene where young Joe takes lead (Jerry is there, too) in welcoming a similarly young female model to his apartment so he can sketch from life. That model, Jolan Kovacs, would be one of the inspirations for Lois Lane, would later reinvent herself as Joanne Carter—and would become Jerry's (yes, Jerry's) wife. Joe left in the dust again. 

Being stringent about accuracy, I was disappointed to see that Joe can see—he is depicted without eyeglasses. To an extent this is defensible because in most if not all photos of Joe from the early days of Superman, he is not wearing glasses. But he did wear glasses then—except when being photographed. I don't believe it was a stylistic choice to leave out the eyeglasses, but this oversight (pun not intended) can be overlooked if interpreted thematically—Joe was "blind" to dominance (first Jerry's, later National's) insofar as he let both steer his course.

I also felt the ending was underwhelming. Again like Joe, it was too quiet for its own good. I craved a more trenchant emotional payoff. The material is there; perhaps a slightly more dramatic breakdown of the text or a more memorable final image would've done the trick. 

Despite my few quibbles, I highly recommend The Joe Shuster Story. I'm happy that Joe, like Bill Finger not long ago, is finally getting his chance to be the hero, or at least the heart, of the story.

Note: Julian Voloj is a friend and I was sent an uncorrected advance review copy.

The three Jerrys

My school presentation includes both Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman and Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, which means the audience must keep straight three Jerrys:

• Jerry Siegel, co-creator/original writer of Superman
• Jerry Robinson, early ghost artist on Batman/co-creator of Robin and the Joker
• Jerry Bails, first known person to interview Bill Finger, revealing him to fandom in 1965

 Jerry (Siegel)

 Jerry (Robinson)

Jerry (Bails)