It was on Jan 16, 1939 the Canadian Joe Shuster’s creation of Superman first appeared in comic strips.
Shuster’s family moved from Toronto, Ontario to Cleveland in the US when he was still fairly young. It was there that the budding cartoonist met another shy young man, Jerry Siegler who became the writer and together they began working on comic book characters.
Their initial idea for “the superman” was as a bald bad-guy who used his telepathic powers to wreak havoc. When that didn’t sell well, they changed focus and the character, creating a handsome good guy with super powers who came from another planet. This new character appeared as one of the stories, and on the cover of the first edition of Action Comics in June 1938.
With some promise there, Superman became a syndicated comic strip in newspapers on this date in 1939, with the first strip telling the story of how he came to Earth from the dying planet Krypton.
At its peak, the strip appeared in over 300 daily papers and 90 Sunday editions with some 20 million readers.
In the very popular TV series “The Adventures of Superman” which ran on North American TV stations from 1952-58, Superman was often shown flying. However, his powers only gave him super strength and as such he could “leap tall buildings in a single bound”, and run at 100 miles per hour, although his powers increased over the years he was drawn and recreated to being “faster than a speeding bullet”, to even being able to traverse space.
The paper where alter-ego Clark Kent worked “The Daily Planet” was originally named the “The Daily Star” and modeled after the Toronto Daily Star, whose papers Shuster had delivered as a youngster. The name was changed to the Daily Planet by the strip’s New York editors.
The tough talking editor of the Planet- Perry White, was likely modeled after long-time Star editor, Joseph “Holy Joe” Atkinson and “Metropolis” was taken from the commonly used term “metro Toronto”
After Superman became one of the most succesful superheroes ever, Shuster and Siegel were involved in a number of lawsuits to gain control of the copyright and for adequate compensation.
Shuster died July 30, 1992 at his West Los Angeles home of congestive heart failure and hypertension. He was 78. His remains were cremated.
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