January 28: Look, Up in the Sky!

Jerry Siegel, who collaborated with his high school chum Joe Shuster to create Superman, the world’s best-known comic book character, died on this date in 1996. He was the son of Lithuanian immigrants; his father, a sign painter, died of a heart attack brought on by a robbery of his store when Siegel was in junior high school. Jerry Siegel conceived of Superman (originally as a villain) when he was 19, in 1934, but it took four years for him and his cartoonist friend to find a publisher. The themes of Siegel’s life appear in the Superman saga: the Man of Steel (named Kal-El, a Hebraic-sounding name) is an immigrant, a “stranger in a strange land,” who dedicates himself to fighting crime and injustice. Siegel and Shuster had to sue more than once over the rights to their legendary character, and were ultimately each awarded a $20,000-per-year payment from DC comics and a credit on all products connected to the character. For a 1940 Nazi attack on Jerry Siegel and his work, click here.

“As a science fiction fan, I have long been very familiar with the various themes in the field. The superman theme has been one of them ever since Samson and Hercules. I just sat down and wrote a story of that type — only in this first story, the Superman was a villain. A couple of months after I published this story, it occurred to me that a Superman as a hero rather than as a villain might make a great comic strip character in the vein of Tarzan, only more super and sensational than that great character. Joe and I drew it up as a comic book.” —Jerry Siegel