Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book
The nerd in question is Jerry Siegel, the writing half of the teenage team that in the mid-1930s created Superman, the original comic book hero. The primary subject of Men of Tomorrow, Gerard Jones’s new history of the early comic book industry, Siegel is also, for Jones’s purposes, pop culture’s nerd zero.
Siegel and Shuster drew up some sample strips and started submitting “The Superman” to the big-time Chicago syndicates, hoping their creation would someday run alongside Dick Tracy or The Phantom in newspapers. But competition was stiff: in the mid-30s Chicago alone boasted cartoonists Chester Gould, Frank King, and Russell Keaton. The national market was dominated by giants like George Herriman, E.C. Segar, Milton Caniff, Hal Foster, and Roy Crane.
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Over the next ten years Superman became a national craze, especially for kids discovering comic books, a brand-new medium geared to them. Charles Schulz had been one of those kids, and in his senior years could still recall his excitement at seeing Action Comics for the first time at a friend’s house. Grown-ups still didn’t care much for it (another plus for kids), and no less than George Orwell, watching fascism and Stalinism on the rise, warned that Superman’s popularity was “bully worship,” but Superman still inspired radio adaptations, cartoons, movie serials, toys, clothing, and war propaganda.
For decades the legend of this swindle grew among comic book fans, but by the late 70s Siegel was no longer a lone nerd–there were millions of fans. When Superman: The Movie was announced Siegel launched a letter-writing campaign to newspapers that attracted the attention of the press and comics stars like Neal Adams and ultimately resulted in a 60 Minutes story that made Warner Brothers and DC Comics cringe. After decades of poverty, Siegel and Shuster were granted a $35,000 annual pension by the publishers and their names were restored to the title page of the comic. A screen credit, “Based on the comic book by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster,” rolled at the top of Superman: The Movie. Now Siegel’s estate is in a position to gain half-ownership of Superman again, a case still being negotiated.
